Portrait - Miss N. (Evelyn Nesbit)

A chorus girl and an acclaimed beauty, Evelyn Nesbit was a popular model among New York painters and photographers. In 1905 she married millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw. A year later, an insanely jealous Thaw murdered Stanford White, a renowned New York architect and former lover of Nesbit’s. The subsequent trials spawned newspaper accounts, books and films for a good part of the century. Käsebier seems to have foreseen the havoc Nesbit would wreak on the New York social scene. Seated on a sofa, Nesbit leans forward suggestively, with a bold, dreamy expression. The jug in her hand symbolizes both womanhood and Pandora's Box.