Evelyn Nesbit, by Gertrude Kasebier
…all forcing me to post about you all the time. Shorpy‘s on a Gertrude Kasebier kick, who I just love. And, all the portraits seem to be of people who either have a whiff of scandal or they die of tuberculosis (I <3 consumption so hardcore). Like Evelyn Nesbit here, whose husband killed her former lover.
Update: Oh, and read the comments, too! Like this one:
This is one of the tamer photographs that [her lover] Stanford White had taken of Evelyn, who was one of the models for Charles Dana Gibson’s “Gibson Girl” drawings. After White dumped her for more “virginal” girls she was the mistress of John Barrymore. After White’s murder by her husband Harry K. Thaw, she was promised a million dollars by Thaw’s mother as a divorce settlement. Evelyn got the divorce but not the money. After an indifferent career as a vaudeville performer, silent film performer and club manager, she overcame alcoholism and an addiction to morphine as well as a number of suicide attempts. She eventually settled down and taught classes in ceramics. She died in California in 1967 at age 82.
