CLARA E. SIPPRELL, Still Life, c. 1935, 9.375x7.375" Gelatin silver print, Printed c. 1935, Signed in pencil on mount recto below lower right of print. Gallery number inscribed in pencil on mount verso.

Clara Sipprell made luminescent prints, whether still lifes, portraits, or landscapes.

Clara E. Sipprell (1885-1975) was a Canadian-American photographer, known for her landscapes and for portraits of famous actors, artists, writers and scientists. Sipprell was born in Canada, Henry, her brother, went to Buffalo, New York, where he found work and soon drew the rest of the family after him. The eldest boy, Frank, became a photographer and soon had a shop of his own.

Sipprell spent her free time in her brother's shop. At the age of sixteen she left school and devoted her entire time to what was to become her life's work. For ten years she assisted her brother Frank, learning photographic techniques during the period of the glass plate and platinum paper. When artificial lighting began to be used, her brother adopted it, but Sipprell stuck to the old ways. By doing so, she was setting up her own standards and establishing her own ideas of what a photograph should be. She never used artificial lighting, believing that natural light would give the result she preferred. She did not enlarge, nor did she crop her photographs to manipulate her composition; implicitly the composition must be complete before the picture is made. It was claimed that she did not retouch her negatives, although there is some evidence to the contrary.

Her early exhibitions were at the Buffalo Camera Club at a time when its membership was closed to women; one year she won half the prizes offered. Her first New York show was at Teachers College, Columbia University, and she subsequently opened a studio in Greenwich Village. The work of several New York photographers taught her much, she said; Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Dr. Arnold Genthe, Max Weber, Clarence White, Gertrude Kasebier, and Alice Boughton were among them. She became a member of the Pictorial Photographers of America, the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, and the Arts Club of Washington.

A Russian friend arranged for her to photograph Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre troupe, the first of a number of seminal opportunities for her. A trip to Vermont opened up further vistas, and she engaged a studio in the Connecticut River Valley village of Thetford, which she maintained for seventeen summers. Many famous personalities came to her for portraits. Among these were Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Edwin Markham, and Pearl Buck, as well as musicians and composers.

During the 1920's and 1930's, Sipprell often received prizes in various national and international exhibits which included her work in landscapes and still lifes as well as portraits. One of her cityscapes, "New York - Old and New," was one of the first photographs acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in 1932.

Elizabeth Gray Vining, "Introduction" to Moment of light, photographs of Clara Sipprell, New York, John Day Company, 1966.

CREDIT: https://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/s/sipprell_ce.htm

Excellent. Minor wear. Moderate wear on mount.