Florine Stettheimer

Stettheimer, who lived with her mother and two sisters in Manhattan, was part of the city's avant-garde cultural elite. Between the World Wars, the Stettheimer women hosted social and intellectual gatherings, attended by artists and writers such as Marcel Duchamp and Carl Van Vechten. Florine used these salons as inspiration for over 150 paintings in which she portrayed the lifestyles and interactions of New York's leading luminaries. During the summer of 1919, she recorded the summer version of their activities in "Lake Placid." That season, she, her sisters, and their mother stayed at a large cottage owned by their cousins on Moose Island. Many of their sophisticated friends from New York City joined them during their vacation, and Stettheimer commemorated their visits and pleasurable pursuits in this large painting, filling her canvas with more than a dozen friends and family.