Cyclamen – Mrs. Philip Lydig, from Camera Work, No. 42/43 (April/July 1913)

A member of the Linked Ring and a painter of great talent, Steichen was one of the founders of the Photo-Secession and was instrumental in the establishment of the Photo-Secession gallery, for which he gave over his apartment at 291 Fifth Avenue. His work was the most represented in Camera Work, from which this photograph comes.The subject, Rita Lydig (born Rita Hernandez de Alba de Acosta, 1875-1929), was an American socialite regarded as “the most picturesque woman in America.” In addition to Steichen, she was photographed by Adolf de Meyer and Gertrude Käsebier, sculpted in alabaster by Malvina Hoffman, and was painted by Giovanni Boldini and John Singer Sargent, among others. She also wrote one novel, Tragic Mansions (1927), under the name Mrs. Philip Lydig, a society melodrama described as “emotionally moving and appealing” by the New York Times.Famous for her extravagant lifestyle, Lydig would arrive at the Ritz with a hairdresser, masseuse, chauffeur, secretary, maid, and forty Vuitton trunks. In Paris, she joined ranks with musicians, artists, intellectuals, and philosophers, names like Rodin, Duse, and Yvette Guilbert (see Steichen’s photograph and Toulouse-Lautrec’s print of Guilbert in this gallery). Lydig lived in New York, Paris, and London, and counted Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin, Leo Tolstoy, Sarah Bernhardt, Ethel Barrymore, and Claude Debussy among her friends.