Eva Watson (1867-1935) started art school at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She was 16. After graduation, she made her living doing photo-reproduction and bit by bit gained an excellent reputation for beautifully composed portraits for which there was high demand.

Simultaneously, she immersed herself in the expression of fine art photography. Prior to 1900, she exhibited extensively in the US, Russia and Europe.

She was a founding member of the Photo-Sucessionist Movement, and had an issue of Alfred Stieglitz’s publication Camera Work dedicated to her.

The photos here are representative of her portraiture as well as her fine art photography. She met Hervey at Hull House where the image “Hervey in the Nature” may have been taken as it shows Hervey when young. She and Vivian Bevans were friends. Eva gave the photos to Vivian before she died.

We cannot know if they were commissioned or taken to exhibit. Only the family photo can be dated to 1907, the year my father was born.

I am happy to present these top-quality prints of previously unknown photographs by a seminal American woman artist.

– Christie White Dauphin, 2016