This and the following lot were acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1989 with a group of important Strand photographs from the Estate of Kurt Baasch (1891-1964). While little about Baasch has been documented, it is known that Strand and Baasch met about 1911 at the New York Camera Club. Baasch, born in Venezuela and raised in Germany, began to photograph as a teenager in Hamburg, keeping an amateur involvement with the medium at least through the 1910s and into the 1920s. Correspondence from 1922 in the Yale University Library indicates that Strand, with his wife Rebecca, and Baasch, with his wife Isabel, were together in June of that year and that the two men photographed each other, with Strand feeling that he might have obtained at least one good negative of Baasch. The 1913 portrait may have been made on the occasion of Baasch's departure for Puerto Cabello, Venezuela in that year. (This information, along with reproductions of both the 1913 and circa 1922 portraits of Baasch can be found in the J. Paul Getty Museum publication, Acquistions/1989, figs. 76 and 78).

It is interesting to note that in 1911 Paul Strand spent six weeks travelling through Europe, including Germany. When he returned to New York he exhibited in the Camera Club's Annual Member's exhibition where his Temple of Love from Versailles won third prize. It was perhaps on that occasion that Strand first met Baasch.

It should be noted that the lot offered here is the only known print of this portrait aside from the other signed, titled and dated print it duplicates in the Getty Museum's collection. In addition, there are three variant printings from the same negative which will remain in the collection of the Getty Museum.