Caroline Haskins Gurrey (American, 1875-1927) two-toned gelatin silver print depicting a young female of French, Portuguese, and Hawaiian ancestry seated on the floor with a beaded headband and necklace, wearing a simple dress, her right hand resting upon a ukelele and the other on her leg. Pencil signed lower right "CH Gurrey" with the studio blind stamp lower left. Additional pencil inscriptions en verso. Possibly housed in the original carved gilt frame. Photograph: 12" H x 9" W. Framed: 13 1/2" H x 10 1/2" W.W. Note: Caroline Haskins Gurrey (ca. 1878-1927) was a pictorialist photographer based in Hawaii, active during the early twentieth century. Born in Oakland, California, Gurrey attended the University of California at Berkeley. In 1901, she traveled with her aunt and two cousins to Hawaii, where she met and obtained a job with photographer J. J. Williams. She was making photographs in her pictorialist style as early as 1902, when her work was praised in the newspaper, The Pacific Commercial Advertiser. She married photographer Alfred Gurrey, Jr., the following year and opened her own photo studio in 1907. Between 1905 and 1909, Gurrey produced a series of fifty portraits of Native Hawaiians and other young men and women of mixed heritage, largely depicting people from the Kamehamaha School. These portraits were exhibited at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle, Washington, and some were shown at the 1915 San Francisco Exposition (source: Smithsonian Online Virtual Archives).

CONDITION: Light overall toning. Minor chipping to left upper corner and top margin. Losses to gilt on the frame, additional age-related wear.