Edward Steichen - Marion Morehouse

The American model was a favourite, during the 1920s and 1930s, of numerous Vogue and Vanity Fair photographers such as Cecil Beaton, Baron George Hoyningen-Huene or Edward Steichen who described her as ‘the greatest fashion model I ever photographed.’ Tall, thin with brown eyes and a narrow face inherited from her native American ancestry, Marion Morehouse was often compared to a Modigliani painting. In 1932, she met the author and painter E.E Cummings whom she would be married to until his death, in 1962. When her modeling career ended, she took on photography herself fueled by her past experience and a modernist aesthetic just like her friend and colleague Lee Miller.

Rob Couteau wrote in his book[1]: "In the late Twenties and early Thirties, before meeting Cummings in 1932, Marion was one of the most widely recognized fashion models of the day, appearing in both Vogue and Vanity Fair. The renowned photographer Edward Steichen called her “the greatest fashion model I ever shot,” adding: “Miss Morehouse was no more interested in fashions as fashions than I was. But when she put on the clothes that were to be photographed, she transformed herself into a woman who really would wear that gown or that riding habit or whatever the outfit.” She was also a favorite of the photographers Cecil Beaton and Baron George Hoyningen-Huene. Two years before her death, Beaton wrote:

It was not until Miss Marion Morehouse was discovered by Steichen that photographic models became so well known that they exerted an influence on the public. The aim of models at this time was to be grand ladies, and Marion Morehouse, with her particularly personal ways of twisting her neck, her fingers and feet, was at home in the grandest circumstances."

[1]  Rob Couteau - On the Trail of the ‘Elusive’ Lillian and Marion Morehouse - Unraveling the Genealogical Mysteries of the World's First Supermodel