In 1889, as a thirty-seven-year-old unhappily married mother of three, Gertrude Käsebier made the unusual decision to attend art school. She quickly mastered photography, and by 1899, her work had caught the eye of Alfred Stieglitz, at the time the most influential figure in photography, who called her “the leading artistic portrait photographer of the day.” Renowned for her delicate, atmospheric photographs depicting women, girls, and motherhood, she was also an outspoken advocate of photography as a career for women, writing in 1898, “I earnestly advise women of artistic tastes to train for the unworked field of modern photography. It seems to be especially adapted to them, and the few who have entered it are meeting a gratifying and profitable success.”