Peter Fox Smith and Clara Sipprell

By Jennie Shurtleff

I was saddened this past week to learn of the passing of Peter Fox Smith. For most of my life, I had known of Peter as a host on VPR, an opera aficionado, and – most importantly – father of Alice, one of my friends in elementary school whom I admired immensely for being kind, brilliant, beautiful, and athletic. It was a pleasure to get to know her father, Peter, as a friend years later because he and Alice clearly shared so many of the same qualities.

While perhaps best known for his expertise in opera and classical music, Peter was also extremely knowledgeable about poetry, art, and photography, and he was willing to share his knowledge. Twelve years ago, he graciously agreed to do a program at the Woodstock History Center on Clara Sipprell, and in it he shared not only information about Sipprell’s life but also personal remembrances of the time he spent with her.

Clara Sipprell

In 1974, when Peter was working with the Vermont Arts Council, Clara was named as the recipient of the prestigious Governor’s Award. Since Clara was in her late eighties at the time, Peter drove to her house in Manchester, Vermont, to deliver the award. Four hours later, as he left her home, he realized that he had met a true kindred spirit. Clara clearly felt the same way about him because a short time later she sent Peter a copy of an out-of-print book that he had admired while at her house. Thus started their friendship which included plans for cataloguing Clara’s collection and publishing a book of her photos. 

So who was Clara Sipprell? A hundred years ago a mention of her name would need no further explanation. She was then a wildly-renowned photographer, who travelled and mixed with the rich and famous. Her life began, though, much more humbly. 

Clara Sipprell was born in 1885 in Tillsonburg, Ontario, Canada. Her father passed away before she was born, leaving his wife with six children to raise. It was undoubtedly difficult to support so many children on a housekeeper’s wages, which perhaps explains why Sipprell’s older siblings went to live with their grandparents and eventually three of the brothers moved to Buffalo, New York, when they were old enough to hold down jobs. By the time Clara was ten years old, she and her mother had followed in her brothers’ wake and moved to New York.

From an early age, Clara was fascinated with photography, and she would often visit one of her brothers, Frank, who worked in a photography studio. Although he was well-versed in photography, Frank never formally tried to teach Clara how to be a photographer. Rather, he allowed her free rein to experiment with the equipment in the studio and develop her own artistic judgment and techniques. At the age sixteen, photography was the main focus in her life, and she decided to leave school and become an assistant for her brother. She worked with Frank for the next ten years.

Her skills and aesthetic proclivity were recognized in 1910 when she entered her work in the Buffalo Camera Club’s photo exhibition and won a second-place award. Interestingly, Sipprell could not officially join the Buffalo Camera Club because she was a woman. Still, she continued to show her work in their exhibitions, and, in 1913, she won six prizes—which was more awards than any of the Buffalo Camera Club’s official members.

A few years later, Sipprell opened her own studio, which focused mainly on portraits. Her reputation quickly spread, and she was able to establish a list of clients that included celebrities and cultural icons, such as Pearl S. Buck, Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Maxfield Parrish, and Eleanor Roosevelt. She also became known as one of the leaders of pictorial photography—a movement that was characterized by the use of soft focus and an attempt to capture a subject’s essence rather than just its outward appearance.

Portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt by Clara Sipprell, 1949. From the collection of the National Portrait Galley, Smithsonian.

By the 1920s, Sipprell was living with a young woman, Irina, who became her friend and business manager. Even after Irina married, Sipprell continued to live with Irina and her husband. In 1924, the three of them travelled to Europe, where Sipprell took many photos of the countryside and the people who were then living in Europe, including a group of expatriates from Russia. Sipprell became friendly with some of the expatriates who were sympathetic with the Stalinists, whereas Irina, who was originally from Russia, and her husband strongly sympathized with the czarists. This difference in political views ended up creating a schism in the friendship. In addition, Sipprell (who was single and by this time had a flashy lifestyle that included smoking cigars, drinking bourbon, and driving roadsters very fast) had chosen a very different manner of living than Irina, who had married and started a family. Ultimately Sipprell moved out and got a place of her own.

Clara continued to work and support herself as a photographer, which was virtually unheard of for a woman in the early 1900s. In addition to portraits, she became famous for her still lifes and landscapes, which reflected the same soft-focus, pictorial style.

While Clara Sipprell was an extremely famous photographer in the early and mid 1900s, her name has largely been eclipsed by time. Peter Fox Smith noted that the reason for this is because she refused to change stylistically and adopt new technology, such as artificial lighting.

Ellen Kidder in her garden in Woodstock by Clara E. Sipprell. From the collection of the Woodstock History Center.

Today her work, which includes locals such as Ellen Kidder, Loomis Dana, Betty Emmons, and the Dana brothers of Woodstock, resides in both private and public collections, including the Woodstock History Center’s photo archive.

Loomis Dana by Clara E. Sipprell. From the collection of the Woodstock History Center.

Togo Hill in Woodstock by Clara E. Sipprell. From the collection of the Woodstock History Center.