Besides its artistic excellence, this photo is a technical achievement. Keeping the fully sunlit exterior in balance with the much dimmer interior, without obvious manipulation, is quite difficult, even today.

All three of Clarence H. and Jane Felix White's sons went on to creative careers. The oldest, Lewis Felix White (1895-1967), seen here between his brothers, became a book designer, typographer, and photographer, and was the founder and head of L. F. White Company, Inc., a small printing company based in New York City. Maynard Pressley White (1896-1961), far right, obtained his doctorate and became a widely respected petroleum geologist and paleontologist. The youngest, Clarence Hudson White, Jr. (1907-1978), in the doorway, succeeded his father as Director of the White School of Photography in New York City, worked during World War II as a photographer and photography instructor for the Manhattan Project in New Mexico and in the Pacific, and later founded the important Photography program at Ohio University.

The Library of Congress photo collection has an original platinum exhibition print of this photograph, signed in the lower right corner by Gertrude Käsebier, who evidently titled the shot "Sunshine in the House." Interestingly, that print is reversed from the example seen here, with the parents on the right and the sons on the left. The LOC also includes the detail that the house in Maine was that of F. Holland Day, another influential "pictorialist" photographer and a close friend of both White and Käsebier.

Clarence White was a master photographer, as was Gertrude Kasebier. His wife was Jane Felix.

I wonder what the chances of getting your two teenage sons to wear matching sailor suits would be in this day and age?

It's so unusual to see an interior shot in such a "candid" situation done with available light AND be shot with an 8x10 camera....wow! Beautiful.

Had Rockwell been painting for the Saturday Evening Post in 1913, this would've been an ideal subject for one of its covers. The backlighting on the young lad's blond hair makes him look absolutely angelic. Belated kudos to Gertrude.

I'd go back to live in those times in a heartbeat.

This photo looks like a painting! And the youngest boy has such a happy grin. Though the picture is obviously posed, his smile is so authentic.