Roger Clark
Date1898
Artist
Gertrude Käsebier
(American photographer, 1852–1934)
MediumPlatinum print
Dimensionssheet: 7 7/8 × 5 1/4 in. (20 × 13.3 cm)
Credit LineGift of the Estate of Nathan M. Clark, 2021
Object number2021-57.1
On View
On viewClassificationsPHOTOGRAPH
Label TextAt the end of a worldwide voyage, British businessman Roger Clark stopped to have his portrait made by Gertrude Käsebier in New York. He'd been introduced to her by British architectural photographer Frederick H. Evans. Clark posed in a beret (almost certainly the photographer's) and a voluminous dark coat, appearing more like an artist than a businessman. These portraits may have been meant to evoke Rembrandt's Self-Portrait at the Age of 34 (1640), in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, London. At Käsebier's studio, Clark befriended her assistant Tom Harris. Clark owned three portraits of Harris--one in the very same beret--which were donated to the Museum with Clark's portraits by Käsebier.
Toward the end of his travels, Clark stayed with his relative William Poole Bancroft in Wilmington, Delaware. He met and fell in love with Bancroft's daughter (his third cousin), who he would later marry. This brought him into the orbit of Samuel Bancroft, whose Pre-Raphaelite collection was donated to the Delaware Art Museum in 1935.
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