Eleanor Parke Custis c1930s Bromide Photograph of Berkshires, Massachusetts
Original Bromide Photograph by Eleanor Parke Custis c 1930s Eleanor Parke Custis, a direct descendent of Martha Washington, was born in 1897 in Washington, DC. She was given her first Brownie camera when she was twelve and was soon printing her own negatives. At the age of sixteen, she began painting watercolors and in 1915 started her career as an artist with a three-year program at the Corcoran School of Art. Her interest in photography was rekindled in 1933, and she returned from a visit to the Mediterranean with as many photographs as paintings. A decade later she put her theory that universal principles governed the creation of both paintings and photographs into a book titled Composition and Picture. By the 1930s she was writing about photography, serving as a juror for photography salons, and in 1937 was elected an Associate of the Photographic Society of America, and of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain. She began exhibiting her photographs internationally and won numerous awards; in 1946 she was honored with a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Institute. An article in the New York Times covering an exhibition of her work at the Bruce Gallery in 1996 describes her distinctive approach to photography: “Viewers are struck at the outset by the rich look of her pictures. Custis employed what is called the ”bromoil process,” developed in 1907. It involves bleaching a print made on bromide paper to remove the blackened silver. Areas intended to be dark are painted with oil paint applied with a brush. What results in Custis’s work is that her whites are whiter than white and the blacks are very opulent.” These aspects are readily visible in this photograph that Custis took in the Berkshires in the late 1930s and printed using the bromoil process.This photograph was purchased from the artist’s estate and bears a sticker from her studio on the reverse. Some tape residue on back and adhesive on front (see final photo). Sheet: 14 x 11 inches.