American Modernist Florine Stettheimer Gets Catalogue Raisonné

After decades of being overlooked, Florine Stettheimer is finally getting her own catalogue raisonné. In collaboration with Dr. Barbara Bloemink, the Wildenstein Plattner Institute (WPI) announced plans to publish the American modernist’s entire known oeuvre online.

Being the subject of a catalogue raisonné—a comprehensive, annotated accounting of an artist’s entire body of work—is a notable achievement. Such a record facilitates the reliable identification of artworks, which is critical for providing authentication and furthering scholarship. This is especially important for artists like Stettheimer who experience a resurgence after having faded into obscurity.

The WPI’s Florine Stettheimer catalogue raisonné will cover all the artist’s known works, including paintings, drawings, set designs, and furniture. Most of Stettheimer’s surviving works belong to major museum collections in the United States, which helps simplify the process. The publication also aims to include information about the handful of works that are privately owned and have never been recorded. Notably, the Stettheimer catalogue raisonné is the first WPI initiative devoted to an American woman artist. Executive director Elizabeth Gorayeb said, “A critical investigation of Stettheimer’s corpus is long overdue….the artist’s legacy will be celebrated and safeguarded by this critical publication.”

Art historian Dr. Barbara Bloemink is the lead scholar on the Stettheimer catalogue raisonné, which has been decades in the making. After publishing her first of many writings on Stettheimer in the nineties, Bloemink took on the task of identifying, authenticating, and dating the artist’s work. In a WPI statement, Bloemink said, “The Wildenstein Plattner Institute not only understood the significance of Stettheimer’s work but through the WPI’s agreement to publish the catalogue raisonné and make it available to the public, they have ensured that the work of this extraordinary artist—from beautiful early sketches to remarkable but rarely seen paintings—will be easily accessible to scholars, students and the public. For me, it is a 25-year dream come true.”

Florine Stettheimer Catalogue Raisonné Will Be Digital

The Florine Stettheimer catalogue raisonné will be published in “a dynamic digital format” on the WPI’s platform in the coming years. The WPI will make the publication free to access online, which aligns with the institution’s “commitment to fostering accessibility to archival materials that support critical research in the field of art history.” Additionally, as a digital publication, the Stettheimer catalogue raisonné can be continually updated and expanded with new information and scholarship.

Digital publications like the Stettheimer catalogue raisonné are becoming more popular. The WPI is concurrently working on digital compendiums dedicated to Claude Monet’s pastels and still lifes by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. In conversation with Artnet, Gorayeb explained the perks of digital publications: “With our catalogues raisonné, we list the ownership or exhibition history of a work, and you can click on these links and see what else the owners may have owned. For example, someone like [art critic] Henry McBride, who was a friend and subject of Stettheimer’s, was an important player in the market, and you can see his connections with other people in the cultural landscape.”

Born in 1871, Florine Stettheimer was an American painter, set designer, poet, and feminist. Her work was fantastical, theatrical, and subversively feminine—and it did not go unnoticed during her lifetime. Stettheimer was well-respected and positively reviewed by her contemporaries. She exhibited at dozens of museums, exhibitions, and salons in New York and Paris. She never formally aligned herself with a specific 20th-century movement or artistic school, and as such, her work defies easy categorization.

After Stettheimer’s death, fellow artist Marcel Duchamp organized a successful 1946 retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art. It was the museum’s first major solo retrospective for a woman artist. However, Stettheimer’s distinctive work and cultural influence were gradually forgotten until recent years. Now, Stetthieimer is experiencing a renaissance in museums and on the market, partly due to growing interest in and demand for the work of forgotten female artists. Of the new catalogue raisonné, Bloemink said, “Florine Stettheimer has again been accorded the significance she deserves as a highly innovative, influential, and important 20th-century artist.” She also added that it is “critical that [Stettheimer’s] reputation and work be protected from the increasing number of fakes appearing on the market.”