A Painters Eye for Photography

TRA is proud to display a beautiful large oil painting from 1923 by G. Maillard Kesslere. Although widely known as a photographer he was trained in painting, where he learned to interpret the form and how light and shadow plays a role in portraiture.

beautiful scene between two lovers

close up on the rich colors used in the portraits

G. MAILLARD KESSLERE (1894-1979)

Kesslere devoted his photographic art to theatrical portraiture and fashion. Trained as a painter, at Syracuse University under American impressionist painter William Merritt Chase, he pursued a parallel career as a fine artist, excelling in pastels. Upon graduation, he established a portrait studio in Syracuse, New York, in which he practiced both photography and painting. He also collaborated on several mural projects. Though his camera work won immediate recognition for its artistry, Kesslere could never support himself with his lens since the maximum the market could bear was 150$ per dozen prints.

In 1921 THE DEBUTANTE, a New York periodical catering to 'the four hundred,' invited him to become art editor, Kesslere lept at the chance, moving to New York City

Noticing the vogue in the cultural magazines for hazy photographs of nude dancers, Kesslere in 1923 began developing a series of paintings and pastels of diaphanously draped nude girls running in the open air. This arty sort of pin-up painting attracted the attention of Broadway flesh merchant, Earl Carroll who installed Kesslere as his official photographer after the death of John De Mirijian in 1928. The programs for Carroll's 'Vanities' series featured paintings and photos by Kesslere, and an effusive appreciate of his art by some cultural luminary of the day. In the world of theatrical photography, however, his fame did not rest on representations of the body, so much as his evocative and experimental treatments of the head. He was one of the finest of the bust format photographers of the late 1920s and 1930s. For his portraiture he was awarded recognition by the British Royal Academy of Photography, so appended B.P. to his signature in later life.

In the mid-1920s following the lead of Orval Hixon and M.I. Boris, he developed a style of vignette photography in which a portrait bust would float disembodied in pictorial space coalescing out of a drawn rendering of the sitter. The success of these mixed media portraits led others, for instance Hal Phyfe, John De Mirijian, even Irving Chidnoff to experiment with the style, leading to a moment in 1926-27 when a distinct New York style of art portraiture prevailed Even in the later 1930s, when a straight style of depiction became standard, Kesslere's images were so heavily retouched that they seemed graphic rather than photographic.

On March 26, 1935, Kesslere exhibited 500 of his photographs, paintings, drawings, and etchings in the Patricia Lounge of Loew's Ziegfeld Theater. In the catalogue for the show, the titles were misnumbered causing humorous juxtapositions that provoked much mirth in the press. In the 1930s, Kesslere became involved in book projects, such as the 1936 illustrated PERSONALITITES OF RADIO.

On July 1, 1947 a traveling exhibition of Kesslere’s work, 'Stars of Yesterday and Today,' toured the United States under the sponsorship of the Theatre Library Association.

In April 1952, Kesslere donated 6,000 photographs and 500 paintings to the Theater Collection of the New York Public Library. Kesslere's studio, however, caught fire short before transfer of the images, and many of the items that were saved and transferred to the NYPL collection suffer from water damage and rough handling.

TRA Art Group is proud to display such an amazing painter by one of America's Finest Artists.
Painting fully framed, you must come and see in person! The colors are spectacular!