George H. Seeley was undoubtedly familiar with the ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow, the influential artist, photographer, teacher and aesthetician of the Arts and Crafts period. As an art instructor in the Stockbridge, Massachusetts, public schools, Seeley may have referred to the exercises in Dow's popular manual Composition for his teaching. Seeley often printed his softly focused landscapes, still lifes, and portraits doubly, in platinum and gum bichromate, to enhance their tonal, impressionistic effect. The paring down of compositional elements and the emphasis on abstract shapes in this example can be seen as a herald of the modernist vision that was on the horizon.

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