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Carl Sprinchorn
Silhouettes of the Stettheimer sisters
1933-34
Florine and Ettie Stettheimer Papers
Artist Carl Sprinchorn, a friend of the Stettheimers and a guest
at their parties, made construction paper silhouettes of the sisters,
each beside a refined and fashionable male figure. Sprinchorn
styled the images to appropriately represent the sisters’
individual qualities: Florine, the painter, is holding her palette;
Ettie, the writer, is holding an open book; and Carrie, known
for her style and sophistication, is wearing an elegant dress
with a train. |
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Salon hostesses Ettie, Carrie, and Florine Stettheimer—one
a writer, one the designer of an extravagant, one-of-a-kind dollhouse,
and one a painter—counted among their friends the most important
artists and writers of the early twentieth century including Carl Van
Vechten, Francis Picabia, Leo Stein, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Charles
Demuth, and Marsden Hartley. The sisters were, one historian has written,
“an exotic if somewhat strange trio: Ettie in red wig, brocades,
and diamonds; Carrie, who dressed never in the fashions of the day but
in the elegance of a past era; Florine in white satin pants.”1
Everyone agreed that there was no one else quite like them; “they
were all very different,” Georgia
O’Keeffe wrote, “but they were also very much more like
each other than they were like the rest of us.”2
Florine Stettheimer’s paintings were popular with artists and art
critics who visited the sisters but her work was rarely exhibited outside
their home. As a result, her work was ignored for most of the twentieth
century. Her clever and vividly colored paintings included city scenes
and many portraits of friends. “She put into visible form in her
own way,” O’Keeffe
wrote of her paintings, “something that they all were, a way of
life that is going and cannot happen again, something that has been
alive in our city.”3
Ettie Stettheimer, a novelist, published several books under the pseudonym
Henrie Waste, a name derived from her own full name, Henrietta Walter
Stettheimer. That her writing was overtly feminist comes as no surprise,
considering that the sisters were all examples of the “new woman”
of the 1910s who resisted societal pressure to marry and did as they
pleased.
Among their friends, Carrie Stettheimer was celebrated as a gifted hostess
who managed a spectacularly beautiful home and planned elegant and surprising
meals (feather soup was a favorite dish). Carrie was also the designer
of an elaborate dollhouse; she paid close attention to details such
as lampshades, wallpaper, and furniture; she even included miniature
playing cards.
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