The Remarkable Rarities of Florine Stettheimer

By Gabriella Sotiriou

Born in 1871, Florine Stettheimer was an American painter, poet and stage designer working during New York’s jazz age. Her mother was born into New York’s German-Jewish wealthy upper class, meaning that Florine and her four siblings lived surrounded by luxuries. Due to this, Florine was able to gain a rich art education both in the United States and throughout Europe. She was heavily influenced by and promoted the extravagances of the avant garde from the budding American first wave feminist movement to emerging modernist painters. Her well-to-do background allowed her an unusual amount of artistic freedom. Not having to rely on selling her work freed her from having to create art that catered to the desires of a buyer. Stettheimer was an avid feminist and supporter of female liberation, causing her work to engage with topics and themes that were controversial for the time period. 

In her works, the mind of the emerging modern women is made visible. Stettheimer’s paintings are colourful, clever, witty and daring in subject matter; however, the rarity of such works serves as a reminder of the instances in which she was not so bold. After a failed solo exhibition in 1916, Stettheimer swore off any future public career, and kept much of her work private, so that it was only occasionally seen by anyone outside her inner circle. Stettheimer died in 1944, unrecognised as an artist. Yet, thanks to a member of her close circle, namely the provocative dada artist Marcel Duchamp, a posthumous retrospective of her work was held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1946, allowing the public to wade into the indulgent scenes of Florine Stettheimer. 

A large number of the works exhibited at the MOMA were portraits. Mostly of her friends and family, they show Stettheimer’s tendency to prioritise humour and playfulness over likeness. Arguable one of her most controversial works of this kind, however, is A Model (Nude Self Portrait). Painted when Stettheimer was 45, it presents the artist as a contemporary reinterpretation of the classical trope of the female nude. Stettheimer was Influenced by controversial past depictions the motif such as Francisco Goya’s Nude Maja (1800) and Edouard Manet’s Olympia (1863). 

Florine Stettheimer, A Model (Nude Self-Portrait) 1915. Oil on canvas, Properties, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University in the City of New York. Gift of the Estate of Ettie Stettheimer, 1967

Both of these paintings show nude reclining women, and both were considered profane at the time of their creation. Goya’s portrait is thought to be the first painting that featured visible female pubic hair, and the shameless nature of Manet’s Olympia, a prostitute resting in her ‘boudoir’, caused quite a scandal. Stettheimer employs the traditional subject to take a stance against the previously mentioned paintings and what they say about the subordinate position of women in the male/female relationship. In A Model, we see Stettheimer reclining with her upper body being held up by large pillows to the right of her. Her head is balanced delicately on her finger tips. The porcelain paleness of the setting and her skin is set against the blush toned embroidery, a golden bead necklace that lays by her side, her auburn hair, and the large bouquet of flowers she holds up and away from her body. This collection of flowers makes direct reference to the flowers held by Manet’s Olympia, while the position of the flowers, which are held away from her body to reveal her public hair, references Goya’s Nude Maja. The boldness of the model’s pose and her intriguing facial expression - one full of knowing, bemusement and confrontation - shows a reversal of the typical dynamic between male and female, artist and muse, the controller and the controlled. We see the model regaining power over her own body and its depiction, no longer allowing it to be concealed and exposed against her will. We see a woman regaining control over who gets to look at her and the intention of their gaze. This painting is not an environment aimed to encourage the male gaze but instead an openly feminist painting. It is a work of a woman, made by a woman, for women.  

Florine Stettheimer, Natatorium Undine, 1927. Oil and encaustic on canvas, Gift of Ettie Stettheimer, 1949

Stettheimer’s work often contains unusual female orientated contexts as seen in the 1927 painting Natatorium Undine. Centred around an idyllic swimming pool, this is a scene taken from Stettheimer’s luxurious lifestyle in New York at the start of the twentieth century, illustrating the way in which the artist’s life informed her work. However, the scene travels through a rose-tinted filter, allowing abstract details to merge seamlessly with reality. We see willowy bodied women lounging by the side of the water in exaggerated glamourous poses, whilst others frolic around in the water, which seems to magically generate its own waves. Scattered upon the surface of the pool are huge oyster shells, upon which women lounge, as one leans over the side of the shell to run her fingers through the water. Each figure moves with graceful ease through this impossibly perfect world in which humans and mystical beings, like those in the right of the image who burst up from the surface of the water revealing their golden tail, can move and live in in harmony. As was common in her oeuvre, Stettheimer features members of her family and friends within this image. Her little sister Ettie lounges at the upper left of the scene, holding an umbrella, sporting swim wear and a sunhat. Florine herself also features alongside her sister. She is depicted in a dress and heeled shoes, working at a table to document the scene around her by creating a sketch. That sketch, we can image, might look something like the final painting which we look at.

Amongst the frivolity of the image are two interesting, somewhat usual elements. Over to the right we see an area in which a male instructor is teaching an aerobic exercise class. The man is the central focus of this area, as he stands on an elevated platform, drawing the attention of the viewer to him. This is possibly a reinvention and reversal of the male gaze. Typically, a woman’s body would be presented for male viewers to admire. However, in this instance, it is the man who is placed in a position of admiration. Florine Stettheimer managers to brilliantly include this issues within this luxurious and fantastical image. She engages with another issue to the left of the painting. There, a trio of black musicians are playing jazz, cornered off from the rest of the scene and hidden by a curtain on a rail. Unlike the aerobics class, this group is not allowed to be seen by the pool dwellers for whom they provide entertainment. This is a reminder of the segregation that occurred throughout the majority of the twentieth century. Here, again, we see Stettheimer engaging with the trials and tribulations, as well as the indulgences, of her time.

Florine Stettheimer creates remarkable illustrations of a twentieth century New York fairy-tale. The artist was fortunate in the sense that this fairy-tale, at least materially, was the world in which she lived, awarding her the privilege of not having to search far for subjects, but instead being able to document the events and lives around her. She provides an amazing insight into an elite and exclusive environment, one that Peter Schjeldahl of the New Yorker brilliantly described as a world that was ‘whipped cream on top of whipped cream.’ Stettheimer’s style combines both realties and added magical elements, although it is often difficult to discern where the line between the real and the imagined lies. Since her death, Stettheimer’s work has been more widely exhibited in galleries, allowing the public to be in awe of the mind of the ‘new woman’ -  a modern liberated female artist. 

Bibliography

‘Florine Stettheimer’, https://www.artsy.net/artist/florine-stettheimer [accessed July 17 2019]

‘Life and Work of Florine Stettheimer, Painter of the Jazz Age’, Hall W. Rockefeller. March 11 2019 https://www.thoughtco.com/florine-stettheimer-biography-4428091 [accessed July 17 2019]

‘Seeing Florine Stettheimer’s “A Model (Nude Self-Portrait)” Through Language’, The Jewish Museum, August 10 2017 https://stories.thejewishmuseum.org/seeing-florine-stettheimers-a-model-through-language-3436cf293078 [accessed July 19 2019]

‘Revisiting Florine Stettheimer’s Place in Art History’, Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker. May 9 2017https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/15/revisiting-florine-stettheimers-place-in-art-history [accessed July 19 2019]

‘Florine Stettheimer’, Antonia Pocock, National Gallery of Art, https://www.nga.gov/features/exhibitions/outliers-and-american-vanguard-artist-biographies/florine-stettheimer.html [accessed July 20 2019]