The Subjects Steichen Returned To Across a Long Career

Steichen is often filed under painting, but his most recognizable subjects sit in photography. Portraits, city landmarks, flowers and a single lake shaped a career that spanned seven decades.

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The short answer

The most recognizable subjects in Edward Jean Steichen's work are celebrity portraits, New York landmarks such as the Flatiron Building, close studies of flowers, especially delphiniums, and moody landscapes around Lake George. Strictly speaking, most of these are photographs rather than paintings, which is the first correction any honest answer has to make.

First, a correction about the medium

The question assumes Steichen was a painter. He painted, and painted seriously in his early years, but the work that made his name is photographic. He was born in Luxembourg in 1879, raised in Michigan, and by the early 1900s he was the most celebrated pictorialist photographer in America. Alfred Stieglitz showed his work at 291, the gallery that did more than any other to argue photography belonged among the fine arts.

This matters when you are trying to understand what he depicted, because the subjects are photographic subjects. A fog-bound building, a lit face in a dark studio, a flower caught at close range. Anyone searching for what he painted most often will mostly find what he photographed most often, and the distinction changes how the images look on a wall. A guide to choosing between a canvas print and a framed poster for Steichen's work [[A1]] deals with that difference in practical terms.

Portraits, landmarks and the famous few

Portraits are the core of his reputation. As chief photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair in the interwar decades, he photographed the leading actors, writers and figures of public life of his time. Gloria Swanson, veiled and staring through a patterned lace, is probably the single most reproduced image he ever made. His portrait of J. P. Morgan, cropped low and lit from above, turned a banker into a looming presence.

Before the celebrity years came the city. The Flatiron Building in early evening mist, printed with heavy gum bichromate tones, is his best known early image and one of the defining photographs of New York. Both the portraits and the landmark share a method. He simplified, darkened the edges, and let one element carry the frame. Anyone drawn to that approach will find its logic explained in what makes his signature style recognizable [[A3]].

Recurring subjects in Steichen

Celebrity portraits made for Condé Nast magazines between the wars
The Flatiron Building and other misted New York cityscapes
Close studies of flowers, above all delphiniums
Lake George landscapes, revisited across decades
Early soft focus figure studies in the pictorialist manner

Flowers, Lake George and late fame

Flowers gave him a second register. His large prints of delphiniums, blown up beyond natural scale and printed with dramatic contrast, were exhibited as serious art in the 1930s and remain among his most recognizable images. They suit reproduction well, since the graphic weight survives printing better than his softest early work does. A framed poster of one of these flower studies [[P2]] keeps the drama intact.

The other private subject was Lake George, the estate where his family summered. He photographed and painted its trees, water and weather from youth into old age, producing quiet, tonal landscapes that contrast with the studio portraits. These are the works that read most like paintings, and they are the ones most often mistaken for them. For a smaller room, a landscape of this kind [[P1]] carries less visual weight than a portrait and sits more easily among furniture.

Steichen spent his first decade proving photography was art and his last proving it could be popular. The subjects never really changed.

Subject	Period	Defining trait
Pictorialist cityscapes	Early 1900s	Soft focus, heavy tonal printing
Celebrity portraiture	1920s to 1930s	Hard light, plain backgrounds, one strong prop
Flower studies	1920s to 1930s	Enlarged scale, graphic contrast
Lake George landscapes	Across his whole life	Quiet tonal scenes of trees and water

Where the recognizable subjects sit in his career

Key takeaways

Steichen's best known subjects are portraits, city landmarks, flowers and Lake George landscapes.
Most of these are photographs, not paintings, despite how they are often labeled.
The Gloria Swanson portrait and the Flatiron Building image are his most reproduced works.
His graphic flower and portrait studies reproduce better than his softest early pictorialist work.

Related questions

Did Edward Steichen paint as well as photograph?

He did. His early paintings were shown alongside his photographs in the 1900s, and he returned to painting at points later in life. But the images people recognize today, from the Flatiron Building to the celebrity portraits, are photographs. Any reproduction labeled a Steichen painting deserves a second look.

What is Steichen's single most famous image?

The 1924 portrait of Gloria Swanson, shot through patterned lace with a direct stare, is probably it. The 1904 Flatiron Building photograph runs a close second and is the more common choice for a wall, since its tonal depth suits large printing.

Are Steichen's subjects in color or black and white?

Almost entirely black and white, with a few early experiments in toning that give a muted color cast. His late color work exists but is not what he is known for. Buyers looking at his work should expect a monochrome palette as the default.

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