The artist photographed in his studio in the Atelier Building about 1938. The portrait of his mother is in the background.
The artist’s mother in old age with her daughter Adelina Gähler-Müller photographed at the Haus Müller-Lombardi in Hospental.
Assuming this is the picture exhibited at Duveen’s in 1925 it was described in American Art News as ‘somber, low-keyed’ but this description could also have applied to the portrait painted in 1905 and which he apparently kept in his studio until the late 1930s.
In Karl Iten’s book the picture is wrongly stated to have been painted in 1910; it is almost certainly painted towards the death of the sitter in 1920, c.1918.
There are duotone photographs in the artist’s papers bearing the stamp of Mary Hopson which were presumably made around 1920, but there is also a photograph stamped ‘Keystone Photo Service, 1231 South Olive Street, Los Angeles, Calif.’ which suggests that the artist took the picture with him to Pasadena in 1925-1933.
