Clara E. Sipprell

Clara E. Sipprell was one of America's most important pictorial photographers of the early 20th century. Born in Canada, she moved to Buffalo, New York after her oldest brother Francis opened a photography studio. She worked part-time as an apprentice, but eventually dropped out of school to work full-time at his studio, where she learned all different types of photographic techniques. She partnered with him in 1905, and after working together for ten years and having many successful shows, she opened a studio in New York City and eventually traveled all over the world.

Sipprell's use of a soft-focus lens and her reliance upon entirely natural light gave her photographs an atmospheric effect and moody romanticism. She was a successful portraitist, photographing such notable people as Eleanor Roosevelt, Robert Frost, and Albert Einstein. However, she did not confine herself to that genre. Her landscapes, cityscapes, and still-life subjects were exhibited in national and international salons, galleries, and museums. There are over 1,000 photographs by Sipprell in the Amon Carter Museum collection, a gift from The Dorothea Leonhardt Fund of the Communities Foundation of Texas, Inc. The Burchfield Art Center (now Burchfield Penney Art Center) presented a solo exhibition of her work in 1991.

In 1937, Sipprell moved her Vermont summer studio from Thetford Hill to Manchester Center at the suggestion of Vermont poets Walter Hard and Robert Frost. Soon after she met Phyllis Reid Fenner (1899–1982), a writer, librarian, and anthologist of children's books. Fourteen years younger than Sipprell, Fenner soon became her housemate and traveling companion. This relationship continued through the final thirty-eight years of Sipprell's life. In the mid-1960s, they had architect Harold L. Olmsted design and build them a house in Manchester, which included the first darkroom that Sipprell ever had in the same place she lived.

Biographical History

Clara E. Sipprell (1885-1975) was a Canadian-American photographer known for her landscapes and portraits of famous actors, artists, writers and scientists.

Sipprell was born in Ontario, Canada, a posthumous child with five brothers. Her widowed mother had to work to support the family, and Clara lived with her grandparents until she was old enough to go to school. Henry, the next to eldest, went to Buffalo, New York, where he found work and soon drew the rest of the family after him. The eldest boy, Frank, became a photographer and soon had a shop of his own.

Clara spent her free time in her brother's shop. At the age of sixteen she left school and devoted her entire time to what was to become her life's work. For ten years she assisted her brother Frank, learning photographic techniques during the period of the glass plate and platinum paper. When artificial lighting came into use her brother adopted it, but Clara stuck to the old ways. By doing so, she was setting up her own standards and establishing her own ideas of what a photograph should be. She did not use artificial lighting, believing that natural light would give the result she preferred. She did not enlarge, nor did she crop her photographs to manipulate her composition; implicitly the composition must be complete before the picture is made. It is claimed also that she did not retouch her negatives, although there is some evidence in the collection to the contrary.

Her early exhibitions were at the Buffalo Camera Club at a time when its membership was closed to women; one year she won half the prizes offered. Her first New York show was at Teachers College, Columbia University, and in 1915 she opened a studio in Greenwich Village where she shared an apartment with long-time friend Jessica Beers. The work of other New York photographers taught her much, she says; Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Dr. Arnold Genthe, Max Weber, Clarence White, Gertrude Kasebier, and Alice Boughton were among them. She became a member of the Pictorial Photographers of America, the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, and the Arts Club of Washington.

A Russian friend, Irina Khrabroff, arranged for Sipprell to photograph Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre troupe, the first of a number of seminal opportunities for her. A trip to Vermont opened up further vistas for her, and she engaged a studio in the Connecticut River Valley village of Thetford which she maintained for seventeen summers. In 1923 Irina married Yugoslavian Feodor D. Cekich (alternate spellings in related collections at other repositories include Zekitch and Cekic), through whom Sipprell was introduced to that country as a subject for her photographs. Sipprell and the Cekiches remained close friends and traveling companions for many years. Nina, the child of this marriage, was Sipprell's god-daughter and a frequent subject of her photographs from birth through marriage and motherhood. Sipprell traveled to Sweden in 1928, where her friends arranged access to the Royal Palace and the opportunity to photograph King Gustav and other members of the Swedish royal family.

Many famous personalities came to her studio for portraits, including Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Edwin Markham, and Pearl Buck. During the 1920s and 1930s, Sipprell's work was recognized in both national and international exhibits which included her work in landscapes and still lifes as well as portraits. One of her cityscapes, "New York-Old and New", was one of the first photographs acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in 1932.

In 1937 Sipprell moved her Vermont summer studio from Thetford Hill to Manchester Center. Shortly thereafter Sipprell met writer and librarian Phyllis Fenner, who became her housemate, traveling companion, and close friend for the next thirty-eight years.

Annual trips to Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Japan, Great Britain, France, and to visit friends in Yugoslavia provided new experiences and new subjects for her camera. A collection of sixty photographs, which included several taken as a result of these trips as well as many portraits of those whom she regarded as the "great ones", was chosen for exhibition at Syracuse University in 1960. Sipprell died in 1975 at the age of 89.

[Much of the above adapted from Elizabeth Gray Vining, "Introduction" to Moment of light: Photographs of Clara Sipprell, New York, John Day Company, 1966. Some information about Nina (Cekich) Strauss Helms taken from obituaries in the Valley News, 28 Feb 2016, and on the Rand-Wilson Funeral Home guest book.]  

(Clara E. Sipprell Papers, Syracuse University, https://library.syracuse.edu/digital/guides/s/sipprell_ce.htm)