Woman's portrait photograph

This image is a photograph of a cabinet card portrait of a woman. The cabinet card was propped against a rail or post before the photograph was taken. The unidentified woman in the cabinet card portrait is wearing a square-necked dress or blouse. Her hair is pinned back, but a loose curl hangs down the back of her neck. The photographer may have been Reverend Henry E. Cooke (1857-1915), son of the prominent American banker and financier Jay Cooke (1821-1905). Henry E. Cooke acted as his family's historian and photographer. He created or compiled poetry, sketches, humorous anecdotes, and several thousand photographs that documented three generations of the Cooke family. Henry E. Cooke graduated from Princeton and had his first posting at Trinity Church in Manchester, New Hampshire. He later became the head of the Episcopal Church in San Francisco. After only a year, he returned to Ohio and eventually became head of the Church in Cleveland, Ohio. He married Esther Clarkson Russell (1863-1945) and had two children, Henry Eleutheros Cooke (Harry) and Russell Cooke. Gilbert & Bacon, the portrait studio established by Philadelphia photographers Charles M. Gilbert (b. ca. 1848) and William F. Bacon (ca. 1843-1900), operated ca. 1874-ca. 1929. The firm specialized in celebrity portraiture and photographed actors, baseball players, and members of high society. Following the death of Bacon in 1900, the firm continued in business under the management of Gilbert and Bacon's son Frank T. into the early 20th century