As a fellow of the Photo-Secession—which aimed to raise photography to the status of a fine art—Alice Boughton made painterly photographs of allegorical nudes and produced portraits of the artistic, literary, and theatrical circle in her New York City studio. Boughton “skimmed the very cream of the intellectual world of her day,” as aptly described in the foreword to her book of portraits, Photographing the Famous. The publication showcased artists and writers such as Maxim Gorky, Henry James, and William Butler Yeats. This image of Irish playwright Lennox Robinson also later illustrated Robinson’s entry in the 1913 book Irish Plays and Playwrights, which featured several other portraits by Boughton.