Fenway Court: 1976

Fenway Court

TENWAY COURT Isabella Stewart Gardner JVIuseum

Publi hed b' the Trustee of the Isa bella tewart Gardner \lu se um, Incorporated Bos ton , j\ !a ssach use tt s Copyright 1qr Designed by Larry \\'ebste r Type set and printed by Thomas Todd o, Printers, Boston

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Cover: X-ray detail of a child in Rembrandt 's A Lady and Gentleman in Black.

Contents

1 . Child's Play in Rembrand t's A Lady and G entlem an in Black

John W alsh, Jr.

9. Astarte: Sa rgent's Study for Th e Pagan G ods Mural in the Boston Public Libra ry Doreen Bolger Burke 2 1.

Ah Wilderness !

Sargent in the Rockies, 1916

30 . W ood Sculpture in Rena issance Lombardy

Rebecca W. Karo

Rollin v an N. Hadley

36. An Italian Hy pothesis fo r th e T wo Saint Ag nes Sculptures a t Fenway Court Giovanni Previtali The Isabella Stewa rt Ga rdner Mu seum, Incorporated Fi fty-second Annu al Report for the Yea r 1976 43. Report of the Preside nt M alcolm D . Perkins 47 . Repo rt of the Di rec tor Rollin van N. Hadley 53. Note on the Organiza tion of the Museum 54. Publications 56. Tru stees a nd Staff

Figure 1. Remb rand t, A Lady an d Gentleman in Black, 1633, oi l, 131 x 109 cm . Inv . No. P21s9, Dutch Room, Isa bell a Stewart Gardne r Muse um .

Child's Play in Rembrandt's A Lady and Gentleman in Black

Recent visitors to the Dutch Room will have noticed that Rembrandt's double portrait of 1633, A Lady and Gentleman in Black (fig. 1), has been newly cleaned and relined, and that it makes a stronger impression than ever. 1 The delicate flesh tones and the fresh colors of the woman's stomacher had been somewhat deadened by wax that had attracted dirt, and the subtle value-contrasts with which Rembrandt modelled the woman's black skirt had been obscured. Cleaning has also made it easier to see the curious interior setting, if not to understand its structure, whose arbitrariness is typical of Rembrandt's spaces. We can now get much of the full effect of the picture, which depends not only on the contrast of attitude between husband and wife, but also on Rembrandt's use of intervals and spaces that seem charged wit h significance. The empty chair, in particular, its red cushion touched with raking light, adds to the oddly expectant and momentary air of the entire arrangement of figures and props.

As all of this was so finely calcula ted by Rembrandt, it has been a surprise to discover that the picture is even more complex than we might have guessed. X-rays have revealed that there was a child between the two adults, that the mother looked at the chi ld, and that something other than a chair was planned for the floor in the left foreground (fig. 2). Other changes are visible as well.

The largest is in the arm and hand of the woman, which can also be seen in an earlier position resting on her ri ght leg (this seems more likely to be her arm than the child's). There are many alterations of contour that are typical of Rembrandt's

work: the man's hat brim was widened, the edges of his breeches and shoes were moved slightly, and the bottom of the woman's skirt was changed considerably (her extended foot was not planned for)."

In the X-rays what we see of the child, and of the rest of the picture, is chiefly the lead white Rembrandt used in greater or lesser amounts to paint the light areas. Compared to his parents the child appears more sketchily painted; he may have been blocked in roughly but never finished, then painted out, evidently because Rembrandt or his patrons thought better of including him . It is also possible that the child died. But what was he doing while he was there? And what did the picture look like before Rembrandt reworked it into the form we see today?

An X-ray detail (fig. 3 and cover) shows firs t of all that the child really is a boy, not a girl; although the costume is not altogether clear, the hair is worn down over the ears, with locks over the forehead, a style typi ca l for boys at this time but not for girls, who normally wore their hair swept back and capped (see figs. 6 and 7). H e looks down toward the lower left and rai ses h is right arm, not to hold his fat her's hand, as we might expect, but to brandish above his head a stick of some sort that can s till be seen through the paint Rembrandt used for the wall that covers it.

Sticks are not exactly common in Dutch portrayal s of children. This one might have been intended as a wh ip : Frans Hals shows a boy holding a whip in a portrait of about 1620, but there is a goat pulling a cart at hand, and there is no 1

Figure

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X-ray montage of the lower portion of A Lady and Gentleman in Black .

Fi gure 3 . X-ray deta il of A Lady and Ge ntleman in Black .

Figure 4. S oo langh de Ro e wanckt, fro m R. Vissche r, Sinnepoppen , Amsterda m, 1614, 3rd pa rt, XL!!!.

doubt what he is meant to do with the whip . ~ It might also have been a whip of another kind, one that children used to spin a top (fig . 4). I do not yet know of another portrait of a Dutch child with a top, but these toys are found in a number of later genre scenes that treat the education of children, by Dou and Netscher among others/ and there is no question that the motif would be perfectly appropriate, if novel, in a family portrait.

For the moral of the top is that to keep spinning it needs to be whipped ; in the words that accompany Roemer Visscher's emblem (fig. 4) , " if the rod is far behind, people become lazy in the service of God" . 5 Jacob Cats also saw whipping the top as a handy simile for the discipline of children : The top spins merrily on the floor, whipped by a biting cord, and the harder one hits the better it spins. But let up a bit with the whip and it falls in the dust. From then on it won' t do a single turn, but lies forever like a block . One

never wa tches it better than in times of sorrow or unhappiness . For if an yone lives without pain, he rusts at once fr om idleness . When man has too much leisure, yo u see, tha t's when the heart yearns for lust.6 It would be satisfying if we could confirm our suspi cion that Rembrandt incorporated this common Calvinist thought into his picture by reporting that an overpainted top h ad been found on the floor of Rembrandt's picture, but we cannot ; if the top is actually there, it is covered by the dense layer of lead white used fo r the floor, and is invisible to X-rays .

What we do see of Rembrandt's original plan fo r the fl oor is very hard to decipher (fig. 2) . He blocked in the floor, using paint containing a good deal of lead white in strokes parallel to the steps, and he reserved the irregularly-shaped dark area a t the lower left that we see in the X-ray. Something dark was planned to lie on the flo or, some3

Figu re . Rembrandt, Jan Rijksen and G riet .Jans (" The Shipbui lder and His Wife"), 1633, oil, 5 5 x 165 cm. Her Majesty the Queen, Buckingham Palace.

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thing th at never received any modelling in lead w h ite, conceivably a piece of cloth. The ac tive silhouette may even suggest the shapes of animals that th e child might be threatenin g with a whip, but h ere we are beyond the eviden ce, and beyond any precedent or analogy known to me. It seem s tha t originall y there was no plan fo r a ch air, and that the chair was added some time later, partly over the da rk area; subsequentl y the form was further adju sted by the substitution of a turned leg an d by rework u nder th e seat and around the fin ial. This rework is easily visible to the naked eye. The original dark area, no matter what the arti st intended for it, served as a forma l 4

counterweight to the figure s for which he needed a sub stitute, th e chair whose presence is now so powerful in the picture.

Wha tever the child was doing, he introduced an elemen t of physical action that may at first seem surprising in a Rembrandt portrait. It should not seem so surpr ising in a work of 1633, however.

This was the year after the Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, in which Rembrandt took up a staid formula for a gro up portrait and introduced an air of gen eral agitation and high drama. In 1633, among a great many portraits that are relatively ordin ary in con ception, Rembrandt produced a few remarkable works in which the figures are

Figure 6. Rembrandt, Ja n Pellicorne, with his Son Caspar, oil, 155 x 123 cm. Permis sion of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London.

Figure 7. Rembra ndt, Susanna van Co llen, Wife of Jan Pellicorne, with her Daughter Eva Susanna, oil, 155 x 123 cm . Permission of the Trustees of the Wallace Collec tion, London.

shown in action: the pair portraits now divided between the Metropolitan Muse um of Art in New York and the Taft Museum in Cincinnati,' in which the man gets up from his chair to ges ture thea trically toward his wife ; and The Shipbuilder and His Wife in Buckingham Palace (fig. 5), 8 in which the wife has entered the room to deliver a message to her husband . Within the next few yea rs he painted the portrai ts of Jan Pellicome and his wife with their children in the Wallace Collection, London (figs. 6 and 7) ,9 in which the action is sedate but charged with meaning: the father entrusts the son with a money bag, apparently signifyi ng the family's inheritance, and

the mother gives the daughter a co in from her purse, probably sign ifying some part of the family's domestic economy . In sh ort, there is ever y reason to expect that in this yea r of experiments Rembrandt might ha ve the child in the Gardner picture do some thing dramatic and possibly obstreperou s, and to suppose th at the ac tion wo uld not merely be childish , but have some serious significa nce as well : action moralise, so common in Dutch art of the seventeenth century. In any event Rembrandt's first solution did not satisfy, either because the artist or th e sitters or both were displeased with it. The portrait migh t have been toned down by giving the child a less 5

Figure 8. Pie ter Codde, Portrait of a Man , a Wo:nan , and a Boy in a Ro om, J.640, 011, 48 x 65 cm . N a t10na l Gall ery, London, Cou rtesy of th e Trus tees.

vigoro us role to play, as Pieter Codde did in a famil y portrait seven yea rs la ter (fig. 8), but instead Rembrandt removed the child altoge ther.

There is anoth er curious case of a painted-out child in a well-known Remb ra ndt portrait, the half-length Woman with a Carnation, Metropolitan Museum of Art, N ew York, a pendant to the Man w ith a Magnifying G lass in the same collection .' " X- rays reveal in the lower left the head of a child who looks up at the wo ma n ; here, too, th e child was eliminated by Rembra ndt himself.

Rembrandt's trea tment of the man and wom an, minus their child, fits a general scheme for portraits of married couples that is fa miliar from many examples of his time, in which the couple is shown, indoors or out, preparing to go for a walk, or ac tually walking (in fi g. 9, a work of the early 163o's, the couple is seen p romenading outside) .11 In the Gardner picture the man wea rs his ha t and cape and holds one glove, and his pose 6

Figure 9. A sc rib ed to Thomas de Keyser, Portrait o f a Man an d a Wo ma n, oil, 40 x 27 cm. National Ga ll ery, London, Courtesy of the Trustee s.

suggests he could turn on his heel and ascend the steps behind him ; the woman also has gloves, but she still sits in her chair, and her gaze is as unfocusse d as her husband's is direct. The contrasting attitudes, sitting and standing, passive and active, dreamy and intense, give the picture some of its richness as a record of a relationship between the couple. The picture represents another of those special achie vements of Rembrandt in which he seizes a for mula and invests it with unexpected complexities, both formal and human .

The case is all the more interes ting now that we

reali ze that these effects were achieved partly b y subtrac tion : the elimination of a child who would have made it quite another p icture.

Joh n Walsh , Jr .

Professor of Art Hi story Barnard College and Columbia Univ ersity Note: I a m gratef ul to Ga bri ell e Kope lm an for a num ber of di scussio ns a bout th e exa min a tion and trea tment of th e pain tin g, a nd for m any sugges tions; a nd I a m glad to acknow ledge th e kind he lp of Seymo u r Slive.

NOTES 1 Basic information about th e pic ture is s umm arized in P . H endy, European and American Paintings in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston , 1974 , p. 201.

Examination with st rong light and an infra-red viewer revealed a large diamond-shaped armorial table t, unfortunately illegible, on the dark, a n gled wall directly above the wo m an's right hand.

We are grateful to Elizabeth Jones a nd the Research Labora to ry , Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for assistance in the preparation of X-rays and th e exam ina tion of the picture .

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3 The Three Children with a Goat Cart, Koninklijk Muse um voor Schone Kunste n, Brussels , which Seymour Slive has shown was cut from a large family portrait, the other part of which is in the collection of Visco unt Boyne, Bridgnorth , Shropshire (S. Slive, Frans Hals, London , 1970-74, I, pp. 60-66, fig. 44; II , pis.

29-30; Ill , pp. 10-11, Nos. 15 , 16.

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E. Snoep-Reitsma, " Chardin and the Bourgeoi s Id eals of his

24, 1973 , pp . 20507, where a fuller discussion of the top and its meanings is given. Dou's The Schoolmaster of 1.645 is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cam bridge (Catalogue of Paintings, I, 1960, No. 33 , pl.

16); etscher's A Lady Teaching a Child to Read of the 167o's is in the National Gallery, London (N. Maclaren, National Gallery Catalogues路 The Dutch School, 1960, pp. 269-70, No. 844; Plates, 1958, ll , pl. 228) . The top may also se rve in other contexts as a

Time ," Nederlands Kunsthistorisch ]aarboek ,

m etaphor for the brevity of hum an life , as it does in another of Visscher's emblems, 1. St part, XX (see note 5), and in the portrait by Pieter Pietersz. of Cornelis Schelli nger in the Maur its huis , The Hague (both repro du ced and discussed b y E. d e Jongh, Zinne- en minnebeelde n in de schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw, n .p. , 1967, pp. 79-81, figs . 65, 66).

R. Visscher, Sinnepoppen 1 Amsterdam, 1.61.4 , 3rd part, XLIII , cited by Snoep-Reitsma, op. cit ., p. 206.

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G J. Cats, Alie de Wercken, Amsterdam, 1726, pp. 238-39, ci ted and translated by Snoep-Reits m a, op. cit .1 p. 206. i

Bredius 172 and 341; Ne w York , Metropolitan Museum of Art ,

Dutch Couples: Pair Portraits by Rembrandt and His Contemporaries, 1973, No . 6.

8 Bredius 408; the sitters have recently been identified as Jan Rijcksen and Griet Jans (London, The Queen's Gallery, Buckingha m Palace, Dutch Pictures from the Royal Collection, 1971-72, p. 78, No. 22, pis. II , III , 5).

9 Bredius 406 and 407; Wallac e Collection Catalogues: Pictures and Drawings, 1968, pp. 258-59, Nos . P82 , P90 .

10 Brediu s 401 and 326.

11 This theme in portraiture will be discussed in a Columbia University dissertation on pair and double portraits in the Netherlands by D avid Smith, to whom I am indebted for ideas about these pictures.

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Figure 1 . John Singer Sargen t (1856-1925), Astarte, 1892-95, oil, 91 x 60 cm ., inscribed: To Sir Frederic Leighton John S . Sargent. Inv. No. P3e17, Blue Room, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Astarte: Sargent's Study for The Pagan Gods

Mural in the Boston Public Library The Gardner Museum's impressive collection of works by John Singer Sargent includes one of the four known preparatory oil studies (fig . 1) 1 for the Astarte figure in his mural Th e Pagan Gods, which was installed in the Boston Public Library in 1895. The success of The Pagan Gods and the two additional murals in this installation assured the extension of Sargent's commission to decorate the remainder of the hall, a project which occupied his attention intermittently for twenty-nine years, from 1890, when he received verbal confirmation of his commission, until 1919, when he made his final installation.

Undoubtedly one of the most important American Beaux-Arts projects, the Boston Public Library occasioned the collaboration of a gro up of distinguished artists, most of them Frenchtrained and cosmopolitan in their point of view.

Of the three primary muralists involved in the decoration of the building - Sargent, Edwin Austin Abbey, and Pierre Cecil Puvis de Chavannes - only the latter was then recognized as a decorative painter. Sargent was a portrait and figure painter whose previous experience as a muralist was limited to work done in Paris while a student of Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran ; Abbey was an illustrator who had just completed his first mural project in New York.

For the Boston Public Library, Sargent, Abbey, and Puvis developed murals that differ dramatically from each other in style and content. In his neo-grec decorations for the library staircase Puvis represented " the four great expressions of the human mind": poetry, philosophy, history, and science." For the Book Delivery Room, Abbey chose a medieval theme, The Quest and Achievement of the Holy Grail, a subject suited to the

carefully researched narrative style which he had developed as an illustrator. Sargent's murals trace the development of religio us thought, from paganism and Judaism, depicted in the north or Hebraic portion of the hall, to Christianity, treated in the south portion. Sargent drew his subject matter from a wide variety of literary sources, his eclectic painting style developing in relation to the different subjects and histori c periods represented in each mural. As Martha Kingsbury, a recent commentator on these murals, has observed: " Sargent's murals were a clear result of historicism.

He approached the mural program with the intellectual assumption that the aesthetic values of an era and their visual manifestations are of one unified texture with the moral and social values of that era ." 3 Installed in the ceiling vault at the north end of the hall, The Pagan Gods is in front of, and most closely related to, The Children of Israel Junette and The Frieze of the Prophets panel. A quotation from Psalm 106, inscribed on an arch projecting from the ceiling vault, summarizes the message of this end of the hall by describing the consequences of Israel's rejection of God's covenant. The confusion and bloodshed represented in this segment of the mural scheme stands as a contrast to the unity and tranquility seen in the la ter murals depicting Christianity.

In Th e Pagan Gods Sargent treats the ancient myth of the cycle of the seasons, the conflict between winter's barren cold and summer's fertile warmth. The mural is dominated by the Egyptian goddess Neith, whose monumental head fills the center of the vault, and whose neck is encircled by a golden zodiac with a starry firmament at its center. An enormous serpent, which symbolizes 9

Figure 2. Sargent, Moloch: The Pagan Gods, 1890-95, oil and mixed media, affixed to the wall, North end, Sargent Hall. Figures 2, 3, and 7. Courtesy of the Trustees of th e Public Library of the City of Bos ton .

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the forces of winter, surrounds two figures who represent the vege tation god Thammuz, shown first as an archer, victorious over the serpent, then as a defeated captive, dormant in its folds until a change in the cycle of the seasons .4 Moloch (fig. 2) , the bull-headed god with four arms, is enthroned on one side of the ceiling arch, with the three gods Isis, Osiris, and Horus standin g in front of him . He is accompanied by five golden lion s, reminders of the destructive power of the sun, which appears directly above his head, its rays surrounding his body.

Astarte (fig. 3), the Babylonian goddess of love and fertility, the queen of heaven who is sometimes called Ishtar or Ashtoreth, stands in an architectural niche on the opposite side of the vault. Her appearance and attributes combine those of several familiar female images. Like the Virgin, she is borne by a crescent moon, a serpent at her feet; like Isis, she wears double horns.

Her orientalized facial features , complicated headpiece, and ceremonial pose recall Indian figures , while her stylized ringlets and regularized drapery folds resemble those of some Greek kore figures.

Sargent's Astarte, however, is more elaborate than the female figures which late nineteenth century archaeologists maintained represented her idol in ancient art. The artist may have gleaned further information about the goddess from the Near Eastern cuneiform texts which were popularized by modern poetic and musical interpretations during the 188o's and 189o's. Among those which featured Astarte (as Ishtar) was the Mesopotamian myth the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was " restored in modern verse" by Leonidas Le Cenci H amilton in 1884. Another, the Descent of Ishtar to the Nether World, was the subject of an article in the London Art Journal that same year and may have suggested the regeneration theme of The Pagan Gods to Sargent.

The ancient sources present a relatively positive view of Ishtar, who like her counterparts, the classical Aphrodite, the Persian Anahita, or

the Indian Nana, is a goddess of fertility and regeneration. Sargent, however, treats the goddess as a femme fatale, allying her with fin de siecle images of Judith, Salome, and the Queen of Sheba, all alluring women who threaten. There can be no doubt that Sargent's contemporaries responded to Astarte with this ambivalence. Within two years after the installation of The Pa gan Gods, the American poet and playwright Rid gely Torrence viewed the mural and in his poem " Astarte" wrote of his repugnance for her "calm inhuman face / That poisoned curved mouth," perhaps because he saw that " through the veil, among the souls, mine own/ Looked back at me, its face grown gray with pain." 5 Sargent's friend Henry James in his short story The Velvet Glove (1909) noted the "shell-curve" of Astarte's mouth and " her terrible moods." 6 James contrives to quote this passage from a novel written by Amy Evans, a beautiful woman who attempts to seduce the story's hero John Berridge so that he will contribute a laudatory preface to her forthcoming publication . Berridge, however, becomes disillusioned with the lady's self-seeking motives . His impressions of her as they part suggest that he has come to regard her as an Astarte, beautiful in spite of her potential for evil. James writes that Berridge " had the sense of his companion, still radiant and splendid, but somehow momentarily suppressed, suspended, silvered over and celestially blurred, even as a summer moon by the loose veil of a cloud . . . . He had felt for an instant as if he were speaking to some miraculously humanised idol, all sacred, all jewelled, all votively hung about, but made mysterious, in the recess of its shrine, by the very thickness of the accumulated lustre." 7

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Figure 3. Sargent, Astarte: Th e Pagan Gods, 1890-95, oil and mixed media, affixed to the wall, North end, Sargent Hall. Boston Public Library.

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Sargent's choice of an ancient but nonclassical theme is unusual, but not exceptional, in American art. For example, William Morris Hunt's mural The Flight of Nig ht, executed for the 11

Figure 4. Dante Gabriel Ro sse tti (1828-1882), Astarte Syriaca, oi l, 183 x 107 cm ., signed : D . G. R osse tti 1877 . City of Manchester Art Ga ll eries.

Albany State Capitol during the 187o's, showed Astarte's Persian counterpart Anahita. Sargent's theme in The Pagan Gods, however, relates to European ar t, which is hardly surprising since Sargent h ad spent most of his life abroad. In his Boston mural, he adopts a type of historicism usually associated with such Royal Academicians as Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and John William Waterhouse. This new historicism can be attributed, at least in part, to his friend ship with the American expa tria te Abbey, at whose Gloucestershire home and studio Sargent prepared many of his studies for the library murals . While working on their Boston decorations, these two neophyte muralists influenced the development of each other's style and artistic approach. Abbey worked in Sargent's broad painterly technique and Sargent adopted his friend's detailed archaeological methods ."

They also shared an admira tion for the PreRaphaelites. Abbey developed this taste during the mid-1870' s through his association with Francis Lathrop, an American student of Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, and Sargent during the mid-188o's, after he se ttled in England.

As early as 1884, Sargent's friend Ralph Curtis had expressed "some mi sgiving" that he might be overly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites.0 In fact, it was D ante Gabriel Rossetti who created the first major modern Astarte image. His Astarte Sy riaca (fig. 4), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1883, shows a femm e fatale large in scale and stylized in appearance. Rossetti's goddess is clothed and accompanied by two attendant fi gures, a precedent for Sargent's treatment of Astarte flanked by two groups of priestesses. Sargent's Astarte also repeats the sexually sugges tive ges tures made by the fi gure in Rossetti's easel painting: her right hand is raised to her breast and her left hand reaches down to grasp and lift her jeweled girdle. The illuminated area which forms a nimbus aro und the goddess's head in Astarte Syriaca - described by a contemporary 12

critic as " the symbolic sun and moon, the former setting in fierce gold, the latter rising in full and paler lustre" - is reiterated in the Sargent mural. 10 Rossetti's Astarte Syriaca is the visualization of a poem which he had written two years earlier.

Beg inning and ending with the word " mystery," he describes A starte " betwixt the Sun and Moon / ... In silver sheen / Her twofold gi rdle clasps the infinite boon / Of bliss ... / And from her neck's inclining flower-stem lean / Love-freighted lips and absolute eye5 that wean / The pulse of hearts to th e spheres' dominant tune. " 1 1 Rossetti's interest in Astarte could have been sparked by literature rather than by the visual arts. Edgar Allan Poe, in 1847, had introduced the goddess in his poem " Ulalume." Like many of his contemporaries, Rossetti was fascinated by Poe.

Figure 5. Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921), [star, frontispiece, soft gro und etching, for J. Peladan, /star, Paris,.

1 888 .

He wrote a parody of " Ulalume," now lost, and illustrated it with a pen and ink drawi ng, dated about 1847-48 (Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery). '" In " Ulalume," Poe describes Astarte' s " miraculous crescent/ . . . wit h a duplicate horn," as it appeared to the poem' s narrator in a " liquescent/ A nd nebulous lustre." The poem also suggests the ambivalence more evident in late r treatments of the goddess. The narra tor describes her as " warmer than Diane:/ . .. With love in her luminous eyes," while his compa nion Psyche counters: " Sadly this star I mistrust - / Her pallor I strangely mistrust." 1 3 Recent scholars hip has emphasized the symbolist treatment and content of Sargent's mural Th e Pagan Gods. The artist' s historicism is undoubtedly related to French symbolists like Gustave Moreau who admired Flaubert and produced paintings and drawings crowded wi th archaeological detail. Sargent' s choice of subject, however, may reflect more specifically the influence of Josephin Peladan, the eccentric leader of the Rosicrucians, and the Belgan painter Fernand Khnopff, both of whom had treated the theme in 1888.

Four yea rs earlier, when Sargent's M adam e Pierre Gautreau (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) was poorly received at the Paris Salon, they had offered the ar tist support a t a cri tical juncture in his career. Peladan was one of the few art critics to respond positively to Sargent's painting ; Khnopff wa s a founding member of Les XX, an avant-ga rde group that invited Sargent to con tribute to its fi rst exhibition, held in Brussels that same year.

Khnopff provided the fronti spiece (fig. 5) for Peladan's autobiographical highly philosophical novel /star (1888) , named for the story's heroine, who, thou gh mortal, is given a vag ue back ground, charac ter, and powers that might be seen as ancient in origin. !star is shown naked, standing in front of a column, her hand s rai sed above her head, her hands behind a placard bearing the inscription: ca libari justitia and with a bizarre,

mask-like object clinging to her th ighs. Peladan himself described this figure as " the Chaldean Venu s [who] has fainted or is dead, her eyes closed, mouth sealed, her noble body still bright, the soul go ne: on the abdomen an old h ag, provin cia l medu sa, whose tresses are made of octopus tentacles, fl a ttens itself, sordid and profane, on the divine lap. " 14 In 1 892, Khnopff's [star appeared again, as an illu stration in a Rosicru cia n exhibition ca tal ogue and in Peladan's publica tion La Q ues te du Graal.

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There are significant differences between Khn op ff' s l star and Sargent's A starte. Sargent's goddess is more properly Victorian: she is modes tl y, even if exotically, dressed; theatrical rather than erotic. Unlike Khnopff, who u ses the naked !star, her placard and her medusa-like mask, to suggest mystical possibilities, Sargent overwhelms his figure with archaeological details that leave little to the imagination or contemplation of the viewer. If he borrowed hi s theme from symbolist art and literature, he simply drew upon them as another treasury of imagery and detaii without concern for their complex philosophical and aes thetic intentions.

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Sargent's biographers have always cited two literary sources for his Astarte figure: Milton's Paradise Lost and Flaubert's Salammbo (1863). 15 Milton explicitly mentions Astarte's idol with "crescent Horns," where " nightly by the Moon / Sidonian Virgins paid their Vows and Songs," and Moloch the " horrid King besmear'd with blood/ Of human sacrifice" (Paradise Lost, I :4 39-41; 39293). By the l89o's, however, Milton's work was nearly a century beyond the peak of its artistic popularity in Britain, and, in any case, the passage does not provide a description of her appearance or even her character or behavior.

Flaubert's pseudo-archaeological novel Salam mbo, on the other hand, had a great impact on Sargent's conception of Astarte. It was a source for specific archaeological details and may also have suggested the essential juxtaposition between Astarte and Moloch. Set in Carthage which is under siege by angry mercenaries, the plot centers around a parallel juxtaposition of the female principle Tanit (transformed into Astarte in Sargent's mural) and her devotee, the Carthaginian princess Salammbo, with the male principle Moloch and the mercenary Math&.

Flaubert's detailed descriptions of Tanit's idol are repeated in Sargent's Astarte. She is sur-

rounded by " tortoise shells, plumes, flowers, and birds ... profusely heaped up . .. to her waist," wears " silver cymbals ... pended from her ears," and stares with " her large eyes." Like the goddess in Sargent's mural, she is guarded by a snake, and surrounded by " twelve blue crystal balls," similar to the dozen ovoid terminations of the tree of life around Astarte. Moreover, Tanit's idol is protected by " le Zalmph," a sacred veil which Carthage's enemies hope to plunder, thereby robbing the city of the goddess's patronage.

It is evident that Sargent must have drawn this important aspect of his goddess's appearance from Flaubert, since it is noticeably absent from previous visual images and literary descriptions of Astarte. In describing the veil, Flaubert wrote that " in the depths of its folds were figures representing .. . monsters ... sacred beasts .. . and numerous other unknown creatures. This passed over . . . the idol, and ascending it spread out over the wall hanging to the corners; it was at the same time bluish - like night ; yellow - like dawn; and purple - like the sun ; harmonious, diaphanous glittering and light." Both Sargent and Flaubert sought to create a powerful visionary image . Flaubert's description of Tanit's awesome appearance could easily be applied to Sargent's Astarte figure: " behold! all the spheres revolved, the monsters roared, music burst melodiously swe!ling forth like the harmony of the planets; the tumultuous soul of Tanit gushed and expanded . She was about to rise . . . and she seemed to fill the sanctuary." 16 Sargent's choice of Salammbo may have musical, as well as literary, roots. The novel was transformed into an opera in five acts, with music by Ernest Reyer and a libretto by Cami.lie du Lode.

After its premiere in Brussels on February 10, 1890, it was presented at the Paris Opera for the first time on May 16, 1892, and achieved a certain popularity. By 1900 it had been performed a hundred times in a variety of locations. 17 The opera follows Flaubert's novel fairly closely :

M

Rose CJron, <111-â&#x20AC;˘1" 1.., 2 l:-o bltou de roe le I V,

Figure 6. L'Illustration, May 21, 1892, p . 418 .

Tanit and her veil play a central role in the resolution of the plot and the juxtaposition of Tanit and Moloch is emphasized by changes in setting - act two is set in Tanit' s temple and act three in Moloch' s. Although the musical score gives only minimal notations about sets and lighting, it does include directions which sugges t that the appearance of the moon and its light were associated with Tanit and Salammbo. A great enthusias t of music and the opera, Sarge nt may actually have attended Salammbo . If not, he would at least have read the reviews of its productions, some of which featured detailed illustrations of its stage sets and costumes (fig. 6) .18 The opera could have renewed Sargent's interest in Flaubert's novel just when he was searching for a subject for his decorative scheme.

As Sargent's mural The Pagan Gods evolved, the artist was inspired by a broad range of visual and literary sources, the variety and number of which demonstrate his eclecticism. He was influenced by British and French contemporary art, ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, and Greek art, and the then current view of antiquity . He drew upon American, British, and French literature, treating the Astarte theme romanticall y. An examination of this figure and its many sources, taken as one example of Sargent's eclectic approach to the entire decorative scheme, demonstrates his ambition, if not his aesthetic success, as a mural painter.

*

*

*

Sargent's working procedure as a muralist at the Boston Public Library is inadequately documented and only a few of the many pencil, charcoal, and oi l studies which he must h ave made in the course of preparations for the mural scheme have surv ived. Among the earlies t known studies for the projec t is a pencil draw ing for the entire north end of the hall, dated January 5, 1892 (fig. 7). Since the vault is clearly divided into seven rectangular segments, each separated by a

Figu re 8. Sargent, Pagan Dieties, 1892-95 , oil, 132 x 31 cm. Co urtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston .

Fi gure 9. Sargent, Study for a Mura l: As tart e, 1892-95, oi l, 98 x 30 cm. Metropolitan Museum o f Art, New Yo rk, Gift of Mrs. Francis Ormond, 1950.

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Figure 7. Sargent, Frieze of the Prophets, 44 x 38 cm. pencil on pape r, dated: January 5, 1892. Bos ton Publi c Lib ra ry.

geometric architectural element, quite unlike the continuous format seen in the fini shed mural, this drawing indicates that in 1 892 Sargent was still considering a composition other than the one ultim a tely selected for The Pagan Gods.

The four known oil studies of the Astarte fi gure in The Pagan Gods are not dated and their sequence of execution is not documented. But some tentative conclusions can be drawn by comparing these studies to each other and to the finished mural. Pagan Dei ties (fig . 8) appears to be the earliest extant study, as it is least like the finished mural. In it, the central area of the vault, eventually allocated to the monumental image of Neith, is filled with a confusing array of gods and symbols, most of them Egyptian in origin . Here the sun rays which surround Moloch in the finished mural are directed toward Astarte instead. In the next oil study, on permanent view at the Boston Public Library, Sargent's composition approximates that of the finished mural : he has added Neith , the serpent coiled around her neck, the archer and the struggling figures, but, unlike the fini shed mural, the archer and the struggling figures are arranged symmetrically, offering no relief to the carefully balanced composition. Astarte still lacks her elaborate jewelry and gilt girdle; she is now flanked by vaguely represented figures, some winged ; and a snake coils around her body, twice, first at her feet, then around her calves, its h ead raised upward in a manner far more sugges ti ve than that adopted in the finished mural. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's oil study {fig. 9) is close to the fini shed mural in color and composition, but it is broad and painterly in execution. Here Sargent introduces the veil. The Gardner Museum 's preparatory study, usually described as the " original" study for - Th e Pagan Gods, would instead appea r to be the artist's final and most developed oil sketch . Executed in a scale approximately half that of the finished mural, it shows Astarte in relation to her architectural setting and to the adjacent lunette, The

17

Figure 10. Sargent, Isab ella Stewart Gardner, oil, 190 x 81 cm., signed: John 5. SargenthBBB. Inv. No. P3ow1, Gothic Room, Isa bella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Children of Israel. These four oil studies show the evolution of the ar tist's conception of Astarte and his attempts to resolve the problems of composi tion, scale, and color whi ch he must h ave encountered in his work on the decora ti ve sch eme .

Sargent must have thought highly of the final Astarte sketch. He inscribed and presented it to the British painter Frederic Lo rd Leighton, perhaps as a gesture of g ratitude, since Leighton had supported his election as an associa te member of the Royal Acade my in 1894. Shortly after Leigh ton's death in 1896, Mrs. Gardner purch ased Astarte and, in 1899, lent it to two major America n exhibitions, an unusual honor fo r a wo rk intended as a preparatory sketch. In a monographic ar ticle on Sargent, John La Farge, himself a prominent muralist, urged hi s readers to " go to see the study .... On that small sca le th e touch indi ca tes all so rts of possibilities, as well as many most ca refully carried out ornamen ta! combinations. The enormous power of the executant is quite as distin ct as in the full- sized work. " 19 Mrs. Gardner would have been interested in this stud y for a number of reasons, most notably for its associa tion with Boston and as a memoir of a period of her ea rly friendship with the artis t.

When Sargent returned to America in 1 889, he saw Mrs. Gardner frequently, not only in Boston, but in New Yo rk. She fo llowed his plans for the library's decoration from this date. H aving made a trip to the Middle East in 1874-75, she must have sh ared her memories of this wi th him and showed him her own wate rcolors of a ncient artifacts and symbols. Her interest must have influenced his decision to make a trip to the Middle East in 1890-91 in order to ga th er material for his murals, for as he wrote to her from Broussa on Aug ust 14, 1 891: " How right you were in insisting that one must go up the Nile and not stay in Cairo however grea t the temptation . . . . The con sequence of going up the Nile is, as might have been fore seen, that I mu st do an Old Testament thing for the Boston Library, besides the 18

arou nd her head . This b ackdrop and her pose es tabl ish a composition o f curves and countercurves close to the striking composition developed on a monumental scale in The Pagan Cods. It is tempting to extend the analogy further to say that the mural's thematic content also carries o ver to Mrs. Gardner. Perhaps Sargen t himself intended (or Mrs. Ga rdner perceived) in his fi gure of Astarte a subtle reference to his patroness, a woma n whose wealth, power, and personality so affected his career, a fem m e fat ale as alluring and as imposing as the goddess enth roned in the nearby Boston Public Library.

other one, and I saw things in Egypt that I hope will come in play" (Museum archives).

Sargent's portra it of Mrs. Gardner (fig. 10), painted in 1887-88, is similar enough to the Astarte fi gure in pose and setting to sugges t a final , and more speculative, explan ation for the collector's interest in the oil study. Sargent has given Mrs. Gardner an unnatural pose: frontal, symmetrical, statue-like, she holds her torso and limbs rigid . Adorned with three ropes of pearls, her black silk dress is ga thered and fans open at her kn ees. She stands again st a backdrop of red and black brocade, carefully positioned so that its pattern creates both a crown for and a nimbus

Doree n Bolge r Burke R esearch Associate American Paintings and Sculpture M etropolitan Museum of Art, New York

NOTES

P. Hendy, European and American Paintings in the Isabella Stewart Gardner M us eu m , Bos ton , 1974 , pp . 224-25. The s tud y was purchased by Dunthorne at the es ta te sa le o f l ord Leighton, held at Chri s tie's in London on Jul y 14 , 1896. Ri chard D avis acq uired it from him fo r Mrs . Gardn e r o n August 4, 1896.

1

2 C.

Puvis de Cha va nnes, " D esc ription of the D ecorative Paintings by Pu vis d e Chava nnes," prin te d ca rd (n.d .), Bo s ton Public Libra ry. Althoug h both this exp lanation of Pu vis' mural s by the artist himself and H enry Jam es's interpretation of Abbe y's murals s urvive, there is no equ all y authoritati ve inte rpretation of Sargent's mura ls.

3 "Sargent's Mural s in the Bos ton Public Library," Wint er thur Port folio, 11, 1976, p. 156; see p . 157, fn. 7, fo r a li s t of earlie r discussion s of th e mural scheme .

D E. C har teris, John Sargent, New York, 1927, p . 57 .

10 " Mr. Rossetti's N ew Pi ctures," The Athenaeum, no. 2581,

April 14, 1877, p. 487 .

11

Ibid.

12 Dante Gab rie l Rossetti: His Fam ily-Letters With

a Memoir

by Wi lli am Michael Rossetti, Lo nd on, 1895, 1, p . 107.

Po ems by Edgar Allan Poe Complete W ith an Original Memoir, N ew Yo rk , 1863, p 70.

13

14 1888, Le Salon de ]os fphi n Peladan, cinquieme annee, Pari s, 1888, p . 88, as quoted in R. Pincu s-Witten , Occult Symbo lism in France , New Yor k, l.976 , pp . 64-65; Pincus-Wi tt en interview w ith aut h or, D ecember l.976.

15

W . H . D ow nes, John S. Sarge nt , Bos ton , 1925, pp . 35, 166-67.

4

S . Baxte r, " John 5 . Sargent 's D ecora ti o n s for th e Bos ton Public Library," Har pe r's W ee kly , 39, Jun e 1, 1895, p . 509.

16 Sa lammb6, W . F. Sheldon, tran s., London, 1886, pp . 98-100.

5 New England Magazine, n .s. l.6 , August 1897, p . 707.

17 A . Loewenb erg, Annals of Opera 1597-1940, Geneva , 1943 ; rev . ed. 1955, 1, col. 113 7.

6 As quo ted in A . R. Tintner, " Sargent in th e Fi ction of H enry

James," Apo ll o, 102, A u gus t 1975, p . 132 .

18 See Revu e illustre, 9 1 March 1, :1890; L' JI lust ration, 48 .. February l.5 .. 1890 ; 50, M ay 21, 1892 .

Th e Complete Ta les of H en ry Jam es, L. Edel, ed ., Philadelphia, 1964, 12, pp . 262-63.

19 The Independent, 51, April 27, 1899, p. 1141.

7

K. A. Foster, " The Paintings," Edwin Austin Abb ey (18521911), ex h ib . cat. , Yale Un ive rs ity Art Gallery , New H ave n , 1973, p . 14 .

8

19

\" ..\~!TY F.\IR

i(j

J O HNS. SARGENT, PAINTING THE TWIN FAL LS IN THE WILD S OF THE CANAD IAN ROCKIES on the ,ce nt o f him and, alter th ree weary weeks o f hot pur•uit. finally discovered and photoj{ril1>hcd him Mr. Sargent wa~ hiding. at 11 distance o f two days' pack rode from the railroad. on the heart of Bri ti sh Columbia.

T o be qu11c uact, he wu p1m11ng at Twin Fall5 in th e Yoho Valley

Everybody has been wondering where John Sar1ent was. H e disappeared 'uddcnly from Bo11on, and, all throu1h September, thnc was no s•R n of h•m anywhere. Mr. In L. H oll. Vanuy F:11r'1 de1ect1ve photol[raphcr - who happened to be uk1ne a vacation dunne September-cleverly go t

SARGENT'S SCULPTURE, THE CRUCIFIXION clc . . ign for the picrc of ~culpturc hy J ohn S. S:ng1:nt, (alled "C rurili 1in thii.:. country . ·1 he liroive group ind1c<:, and !'.'O, con~idc r ab l ) ~m;dlcr th an the work , ;i., it now :qipi;ar', fo rm in~ an cs~entia l p;irt of the arfo,t':-. dt:lOration s in the Bo,ton Pul ilic L ilir.lr) It was m:tdc in the la te nin('tie;:;.

T he Sar~l'nt contrilJution!:> to the hui ld ing form an organic ''hole.

They c\prcs<o, taken all to.i,:cthcr, a phi lo:-.ophical idea. The aim o f the pailller ha" licc n to show the den~lopmcnt of a rl'lii:ious idea, \\ hich wa<; aJ-.o :1 soc ia l or lega l idea. The prophets a rc quite in conrl us h·c in thc1mch-cs, e ither ind iv idu.d ly or collecti\'(·lr. \\" ith ou t the l..ey fu rni ::-hed liy the sculpture they might lx: rei:.:ardcd simpl y a<; express ing what a man of in1.1~in.1tion t h ou.~ ht that these p0t' t~cc rs looked like. But once th e symbolism o f the details of " the crucithion" is unckr ... to0tl it will be seen at a glan ce th at lsaiah a nd J eremiah a nd the rest arc ha rd ly C\'cn links in a chain. They arc ra ther c\planatory spectators, l ike the choni -. in a Greek pl.~y.

HE ong in ;d the pa111tcr ion." i"' now i:<. 201~ hv 29 1 ~

T

TH E fi gure

on th e crOf:::O, with a foot on the serpen t, if: bound to Adam and Eve, who hold chalices in their hands. These cha lices symbolize the means by which the sup reme act of expiation is to be commemora ted through the a~es.

So, in the su mma ry supplied by the sculpture, it become!; clear that th e whole relig ious development, set forth hy the artist , d epend s on one idea, that of expiation. Th is was the th eory, taken from the Roman L aw, that St. Pau l con tributed to the chu rch-a theory that entirely alte red the

anitudc <if th e world toward" Ch ri-.tianitY. St. Paul \\":l"' tht.· .\ri ,1<11\1.· of the church, ju ... \ a.;. St. J ohn was it, Plato. ' I hat ~t. P ;iul in'i"'tl'd on the itk\ oi c.,pi:tti on, l1l'<au-.1..• it "a' thi: onh \\:t\' he could nuk1.· th e citiLcn-. or"Ron{c undcr,1;1nd the ml,lllin~ of thi.: crnrili\ ion, h.ul lht di1.·r1 oi m.1kh1i._:iral, and inl! Chri,1ian1t) '-t.1rt1.·d it on it, c1rv1.·r of 1.'\p.111 !'•on \\ "itl111ut th.it lw id1t~ ,ind clt..1ri11·~, it mii:ht h.1\1.· '•mnnunl til Ill.' tlt1.· c fl"l·d of .1 •llJ.tll and 111•·1 ur•· . . 1·1 t th .1l \\ould h.1\t.· h.1d 1,ut l 11tk d int 1111 11\'llt/1\lllll

toi!dlwr \\ith tlw "ulptutl· tl1.1t liind, tln·m t o~eth1.·r 111.d,l up .1 \'1.•ry d;d.oratc and romplu .1hd I t i-. thC' IJigg1.· .. t ".,ufijt•tt'' t'Wr t.1. l.; lni l1y a n .\me ri can 'tu l ptor. ~umt• 'f'l'I ta tor..;. will be w nknt to look a t the ind1\·1dual li~­ urc..; wi thout liotheri n ~ ahou t tht·ir rcl.1tio11 to th e rl'st. .-\m· "'uch b l.\ and cirde" wa\' of judging the ,;·ork in\"ol~·cs an inju ~ ti cl' to. th e arti:.t, "ho ha" a r i~h t to h ~\\·c his whok lOllC1:ption co1rdully con.:;i dcr1.·d an d rc,1w<.kd. )Ir. Sargent i"' OO\\·. adm ittC'd ly, the mo . . t nm .. picuou.... tigure in American art. T hi;:; .:;culpt urc by him i..;. onlv an othe r link in the C\'i<kncc of !; is extraordinan· n-r.:;atilih·.

Since hi .; d1.·1l•rm(n:lt ion to pa int no more portraits· he ha s dC\'Ol1:d him,1.•lf ( 1} T o mak ing portrait hr ad.s-i n crayon, penci l, and charcoa l.

(2) To water colors, and ( 3) To l and ~<.:apl·, in oi l. 11 was while ) Ir. Saq.:ent W:lS in pursu it of ~ti mulatin~ and OO\'Cl subjects in oi ls that our photographer luckily chanced to come up with him- i n September-at Yoho, the heart of the Canadian Rocki('S.

Fi g ure 1 . Vanity Fair, November 1916.

20

T 111: d1·cor;1 t 1on' of .\ Ir ....ire, nt.

Ah Wilderness! Sargent in the Rockies, 191 6

In the spring of 1916, John Singer Sargent returned to America to continue his part of the monumental decorative program at the Boston Public Library. Sargent, after more than five hundred commissions, had abandoned portrait painting in order to concentrate on monumental decorative work, watercolors, oil scenes, and charcoal portrait heads. In addition to the library program, finished finally in 1919, he accepted the commission in November to decorate the rotunda of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

At the age of sixty, Sargent showed no signs of slowing down . He never took a vacation from painting. He merely brought his paintbox with him everywhere in search of new sights to record.

All his life he had enjoyed Alpine holidays which always included watercolor sketching. This recreation, an important part of his artistic development, became a focus of activity for him in his later years, not unnoticed by the public. Vanity Fair's detective photographer chased Sargent across the continent to the Canadian Rockies and caught what was a typical Sargent vacation pose (fig. 1).

In 1909, the Brooklyn Museum purchased an unprecedented number of Sargent watercolors originally painted for the artist's own study and amusement. At the same time the Boston Museum of Fine Arts began collecting his watercolor and oil scenes . Thereafter, friends and art lovers took notice of Sargent's travel plans, and there was more than a casual interest in his announced intion of taking a summer holiday in 1916 . Part of that season's work at the library had included the Crucifixion sculpture, the artistic and theological center of the decorative scheme. Sargent insisted upon personally supervising the work and spent many hours of hard labor on and around the scaffolding, all the while looking forward to a

complete change of scenery in mid-summer. On June 8, he wrote his friend and biographer Evan Charteris: .. . I am terribly busy h ere with the carrying out of the plaster work of my ceiling .. . modelling things that the workmen wait to carry off and cas t. I doubt if all this is accomplished so that I can put up my paintings before the mid-summer heat se ts in - when that comes in July or August I shall be off to the Rockies for mountain air and sketching and return to this work in September. ... (E. Charteris, ]ohn Sargent, New York, 1927, p. 206) Denman Ros s, Harvard professor, artist, and world traveller, had sent Sargent a picture postcard of the Twin Falls in Canada's Yoho National Park, suggesting it would make a fine subject for a landscape. Sargent agreed and welcomed the chan ce to compare the Rockies with his beloved A lps . Mrs. Gardner encouraged the landscape proposal, commissioning the waterfall for her museum, and Edward W. Forbes, Director of Harvard's Fogg Art Museum, asked for any other large landscape Sargent might paint.

If Vanity Fair lost track of Sargent's whereabo uts, his friends certainly did not . Using Sargent's lively letters and his pictures, themselves, we can piece together a sketch of this summer tour and follow his progress away from civilization. Mrs. Gardner presented him with a fa rewell gift of Japanese h andkerchiefs, and he signed her Guest Book on July 15: Dear Mrs. Gardner I A wave of the japanese handkerchief as I go - au revoir in September - yrs sincerely I John S. Sargent Thus Sargent, wi th his " ten-gallon" Panama hat and his faithful valet Nicola d' Inverno at his side, went West. The first leg of the journey was by 21

Figure 2 . The Bos ton Sunday Advertiser, February 7, 1926. Photographs

taken by Nicola d'lnverno : (left) in the Alps, ca. 1905-10 ; (right) in Glacier Park, Montana, July 1916.

rail, and they were accompanied b y Boston financier Colon el Thomas Livermore and Mrs. Harris Livermore as far as Glacier Park, Montana (fig. 2).

A t Glacier, Sargent did a ch arcoal sketch of Colonel Livermore da ted July 25, the same day h e wrote Charteris : . . . I left Boston a week ago, the wo rk that I person ally had to do with my own h ands bein g accomplished ... in September I will return and put my paintings up . .. . Whether or n ot it is an other of the palpable sign s tha t I am ge tting old, I am rather revelling in the appearan ce this white elephant of mine is tak ing on of am ounting to som ething, aft er all these years.

After the heat of the last days in Boston and of the m any days railway journey across the endless plains it is delicio us to be here among crags and glaciers and pine woods. But I shall make my way further n orth to the Canadian Ro ckies, where the scen ery is gra nder still. I h ave two pleasant companion s and we take daily rides on Indian ponies. (Charteris, p . 207) From his ca mpsi te at th e ba se of th e Twin Falls, Sargent wrote wistfully to his co usin Mary Hale: 22

Life was different in the Montana National Park, with the pleasant company of the Livermores. There we toured about over new trails every day. Mrs. Livermore is perfectly delightful and plays chess. Alas sh e went back east, and struck Chicago in the heat wave . . . .

(Charteris, p. 205) On August 2, Sargent parted company with the Livermores and went North with only Nicola for company. Arriving at Yoho Park, he established his base at the M ount Stephen House (fig. 3) in Field, British Columbia, a first-class hotel run by th e Canadian Pacific Railway. The Mount Stephen H ouse along with the hotel at Lake Louise were oases o f civilization in the mountain wilderness.

The surro unding country had to be approached with camping equipment, horses, and the indispensa ble guides. Aside from the railroad, there was not a good road or trail sys tem. throu gh the area. From Field, Sargent se t out to find the waterfa ll .

The Twin Falls is the last of a series of spectacular waterfalls along a se ven-mile trail which begins with the more famous Takakkaw Falls. It

Mount Stephen House, Field, British Columbia, 10,523 ft . above the sea . Courtesy, Canadian Pacific Railway . The hotel was demolished in 1952.

Figu re 3.

recorded history. Sargent, who wanted to avoid a long explanatory label, modified the title of his painting to Yoho Falls (fig. 4) . Sargent deplored this state of affairs in an amusing letter to Thomas Fox, his friend and architectural collaborator on the Boston Public Library murals.

August 28 Camping out near Mount Stephen House, Field, Briitsh Columbia.

I am about to move on with my tents to some other valley within the reach of Field - two things have got on my nerves - one the roar and hissing and pounding all night long of a tremendous waterfall that I am near, the other the alighting of snowflakes on my bottom when it is bared once a day. Perhaps this is the poetry of camping out .. .. (Courtesy, David McKibbin) 1

Again to his cousin Mary Hale in his letter of August 30, he wrote: was on the railway' s list of tourist attractions, but, as the Vanity Fair photographer found out, it was not an easy site to see. The railway improved matters a couple of seasons later by building a log cabin lodge and teahouse at the base of the Twin Falls, but Sargent had to make do with the comforts his pack horses carried in.

Alas, August was a dreary and cold month that year. He wrote Mrs. Gardner on August 20: I am camping under that waterfall that Mr. Denman Ross gave me a postcard of. It is magnificent when the sun shines which it did for the first two days. I began a picture - that is ten days ago - and since then it has been raining and snowing steadily - provisions and temper getting low - but I shall stick it out tiU the sun reappears. Tell Mr. Ross that he was quite right, but that now there is only one fall of the " Twins," thanks to some landslip above ....

Your handkerchiefs are in constant use and s till hold out in spite of a dripping nose & cold feet.

(Museum archives) Not only was the sunshine scarce, the waterfall itself did not cooperate, a rare occurrence in its

Dear Cousin Mary, At the risk of importuning you with this persistent letter writing, here I go again. As I told you in my first or my last it was raining and snowing, my tent flooded, mushrooms sprouting in my boots, porcupines taking shelter in my clothes, canned food always fried in a black frying pan getting on my nerves, and a fine waterfall which was the attraction to the place pounding and thundering all night. I stood it for three weeks and yesterday came away with a repulsive picture. Now the weather has ch anged for the better and I am off again to try the simple life (ach pfui) in tents at the top of another valley, this time with a gridiron instead of a frying pan and a perforated India rubber mat to stand on. It takes time to learn how to be really happy ....

Please take your courage in both hands and write me a line to this hotel. I will pounce upon it when I get back from my next plunge into canned food - thirty miles away.

Yours ever ... (Charteris, p . 205) As Sargent had fulfilled his commitment to paint the waterfall for Mrs. Gardner, he wrote her on August 31:

Figure 4 . Yoho Falls, oil, 94 x 113 cm ., signed : Jo h n S . S argent 1916. Inv. No. P3 e7, Blue Room, Isabella Stewart

Ga rd ner M useum.

Figure 5. Tents at Lake O ' H ara, o il, 56 x 71 cm ., inscribed : To my friend Fox. Courtesy, Wadswo rth Atheneum, H a rt fo rd .

Figure 6. Camping n ear Lake O ' Hara , waterco lor, 39 x 52 cm ., sign ed : John S . Sargent . Co ll ec tio n of the Newa rk Mu seum, N ewark, New Jersey.

Fig u re 7. Camp at Lake O'Hara, wa terco lor, 40 x 53 cm., insc rib ed : John S . Sargent 1916. Th e M e tro poli tan Mu se um of Art, New Yo rk , Gif t of Mrs. D avid Hecht, 1932, in m em o ry of h e r so n Vic to r 0 . H ec h t.

I have done a picture of a fantas ti c wa terfall , somewhat the same so rt of ni ghtmare as Mrs. Sears' picture - and I a m off ca mp ing to another place near here where I expec t to fi nd other awful sights - wheth er to yo ur likei ng o r not you shall decide . (Muse um a rch ives) After a day's rest and recovery, Sa rgen t se t out again from the Mount Stephen House to the little-known Lake O ' Ha ra, just over the glacier from the popular Lake Louise. It was by tha t lake that Sargent spent his September (and not by the waterfall as Van ity Fair reported) .

Lake O ' Hara was exceedingly isolated in 1916, and only the most adventuresome touri sts visited it, although it was a favorite of the Ca nadian Alpine Club and of mountaineers, who camped there and set out to climb the pea ks th a t surrou nd the valley of the la ke. Swiss guides had been imported to the area to lead such expeditions, and they maintained the lone log cabin in the meadow a short distance from the lake. Th e Canadian Alpine Clu b Journ al for 1922 quotes Sarge nt as saying that Lake O ' Hara was the most beautiful lake he had ever seen .

It was in this isolated spot, away fr om the eyes of reporters, that Sargent spent a busy September painting Lake O 'Hara and a number of camp scenes, all of which were done fr om the front door of his tent. The camp pictures are a wonderful series of variations on a theme, pai nted in different states of sunlight, in watercolor and oil. The camp scenes (figs. 5-11) are brilliant and sure, with bold color schemes featurin g white

(

j 路--~

Figure 8. A Tent in the Rockies, watercolor, 40 x 53 cm., signed: John S. Sargent.

Inv. No. P3w17, Blue Room, Isa bella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Figure 9. In side Tents, Canadian Rockies, oil, 57 x 71 cm., signed : John S. Sargent 1916 . Private co llection.

Fi g u re 10 . Sha v ing in th e Op en , waterco lor, 51 x 63 cm., sig ned : Jo hn S. S arge nt . Private co ll ection .

Nicola d ' ln verno is see n here and in figures 5, 9 and 11 .

Figure 1 1 . Shav ing in th e Open, pencil sketch torn from sketchbook, 11 x 1 6 cm. Courtesy, David McKibbin.

f'1

canvas balanced by the red s in the blankets, bandannas, and campfires, and the cool greens of pines and firs. The canva s tents make a wonderful foil for the shadows and effects of the light; they vary from dull opaque beige to luminescent eggshell white, and are characteristic of the way Sargent loved to use large white patches to catch the light and the surrounding colors.

The painting of Lake O ' Hara (fig. 12) is one of Sargent's best landscapes. From the brilliant white of the mountain snow and the clear green lake, we can tell that the weather did improve.

The simple massive treatment of the landscape conveys the grandeur of the West that was being quickly and irevocably changed by the advance of the railroad. "Altogether unlike his Alpine works, these landscapes have a new flavor, accurately capturing with bravura brushwork the light and color of the West. The extreme visibility of the brush s trokes gives Lake O'Hara a feeling of supficiality which counteracts somewhat the beauty of the scene and the richness of the color."

(K. C. Bolton, III, American Art at Harvard, exhibition catalogue, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 1972, No. 119, illus .).

Sargent returned to Boston and in October was back at work at the Public Library. There was a special showing of the pictures painted that summer at the Copley Society of Boston at the beginning of November, and h e quickly disposed of most of them - to friends , to the Allied War Relief Fund, and to buyers through his Boston gallery Doll and Richards.

He made a present to Tom Fox of the painting Tents at Lake O ' Hara (fig. 5) that now hangs in

Figure

12.

Lake O'Hara, oi l, 112 x 95 cm. Co urtesy, Fogg Art M use um, Ca mbridge, Mass. Lo uise G. Be ttens Fund .

the Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut. Two watercolors, one not located and the other now at the Metropolitan Museum (fig. 7) he exchanged with artist Victor D. Hecht for one of his earlier works. Mrs. Gardner purchased from Doll and Richards, along with Yoho Falls, the watercolor A Tent in the Rockies (P. Hendy, Catalogue of European and American Paintings, Boston, 1973, pp . 226-27, 232). Forbes acquired the rainy day watercolor sketch of the lake (now at the Fogg Art Museum) and Lake O'Hara for the Fogg Art Museum. Mrs. Gardner had also wanted this painting; Forbes wrote her a gracious letter of thanks for spreading the wealth of Sargent's Canadian adventure around. By November 18, Sargent had to decline an offer from the Worcester Museum trustee Fred Pratt : .. . meager results of my Rocky Mountain campaign all gone .. . only did two pictures and Mrs. Gardner for whom I did one insisted on taking both, until Mr. Forbes of Fogg, who had also bespoken one, persuaded me to relinquish one. I only did two or three watercolors, the best one had to go to a sale in New York [Shaving in the Open, fig . 10] of Royal Water Color Society and two others I have given to war Bazaars [Lake Louise, watercolor, private collec-

tion, and Campin g near Lake O' Hara, fig. 6].

(Courtesy, David McKibbin) He did keep, however, some watercolors and his sketchbooks for himself.

*

*

*

In a newspaper interview after Sargent's death in 1925, Nicolo d' Inverno, the valet who had accompanied Sargent, remembered the Rocky Mountain holiday as one of the pleasantest experiences he had had in the artist's service. And this from the man who had to use that frying pan and carry the India mat and listen to Sargent's complaints above the roar of the waterfall!

Sargent's Rocky Mountain idyll was quite an adventure. It provided him with new sights and impressions which he recorded in some of the loveliest pictures to be found of this spectacular wilderness. That summer John Singer Sargent entered the ranks of American and Canadian landscape artists who have left us with a rich pictorial heritage of the West.

Rebecca W . Karo Note: My sincere thanks to David McKibbin of the Boston Athenaeum for sharing with me his notes, letters, and photographs on Sargent' s Rocky Mountain summer.

Wood Sculpture

in

Renaissance Lombardy

Italian w d sculpture ur 1 es from a number of entunes and a a riet' of regi ns. !though not genera ll ' a ord d th distm hon as s ulp ture in stone, 1t ha on a ion d1stingu1 hed hand and often tant m ement in art ' 1th gra nuity.

T' o saints b D natello, the lagdalen in the Baptistry, Flor n , and . J hn th Baptist in th Fran, \'en1 e, both of \ h1 h ha e b n re entl re tor d, ar exampl of the f rmer, while a gr up f bie ts fr m L mbard nd half of th fift enth entur and f the sixt enth may be u f th latter.

Beyond th r gular pr du tion f utilitarian bie t , oft n d ne with gr at st de, wood carver were employed r, mor like! , found a market for a variety of devotional bie ts, small p rtable a ltarpi <.: or figure , and maJ r altarpi c.e made up of ni he figures, c.en s in r It f, or c mbination f the two set in elaborat frame . The habit was t paint th figures naturalt ti a ll y and add gold touche to the garment and the ba kground .

A numb r f th e are found t the n rth of Milan, in the altellin a, often with trong influnces from the wood arvers a ro s the Ip , while other c.an b tra ed to th s uth s tretchi ng into Emilia. cca ionally a name is onne ted wit h the work as in the case of the large altarpie e in th omo athedral or another in the Museo 1vi o, L di .' De pite the bvious affinity to the work of the major Lombard sc ulptors of this period, Amadeo, the Mantegazzi , Benedetto Briosco and Gian hri s tophoro Romano, the objects in wood are for the mos t part from anony-

mou hand , some of \ horn may have been assoiated with the great work on the Certosa at Pavia. . Pet r artyr (fig. 1) in the Gardner Muum in half relief was a quired in enice in 1896 a a pra mg monk by Ambrogi Foppa Caradosso (1 rth Italian, i446.-15-o.). The attribution to arad wa suppla nted by an attribution to Bellano (Paduan, 1434?-1496/7) given in a note from Berenson. In 1928 Eric la lagan, Dire t r of the ictoria and Albert useum, L nd n, uggested that it was Spanish, i t enth entur and 1t \ as atalogued as " probabl pani h, I entury" in the General Catalog11e (B ton, 1Q35, p. 278) .

Its size (10- cm.) and posture suggests that it wa part f a large altarpie e or tableau. The side away fr m the vi ' er 1s flat and unfinished. The head al ne ha been fini hed in three-quarter r It f. nltk figure in th r und made to rest on a surfac this wa to be s en fr m the front only.

Id nttfi at1 n a . P ter artyr is easily made by car au s the top of the head and the sword und m the c.ape. The black habit of the Domrd er has gold s tippling. long the border i a pattern f flower and vase-like ornaments; the hem and the liar have the remains of a Latin in npti n. Gold and brm n paint were used f r th beard and th fie h tone in the face and hand .

Figure 1. 5 Pi!ler M111tyr, Lombard, ca . 1500, polychromed wood, 103 x 39 15 cm. Inv. No. S路ns-, Third Floor ta1r Hall , lsa b Ila Stewart Gardner Museum.

31

or lh Italian, Cil 1500-2i; , poly hrom d "o d, oo i;8 cm John and . labl Ringling :-..tu scum of Art • ar,1,ota , rlonda.

F1g1tr<' • • 5 . P<'f<'' \l artyr

!though no c mpan1on 1s known, iln almost 1st in smaller form in a re · 1dent1Lal fi gu r !angu lar relief (fig. -) in the Ringling arasota, Fl nda Th amt in thi s pan 1 i hown after being s truLk n the h ad by an a e, on his knc writing CREO in th dirt with hi blood.

Th a sass in >lands r him about to deliver the death blow with a sword, n w miss ing . The lay broth er, wh ac rding to tradition had fled , s tands in h rror t the 1 ft. Through a wood of bush-like form ma y be seen the walls of Milan .

The arefu l dupli at1on of th saint must be more than I a l onventi n, and would justify the proposa l that the ardner sa int i by the same hand .

A third example, a nother panel (fig 3), slightly smaller in dimen sion (perhaps ut down when the new frame was added) is in the taatli he Museen, West B rlin . According to th atalogue/ the

32

F1g111c J t\lcct111g of

Lombard, ta a tli Ill'

55 Fm11c1s and Do1111111c,

\' entury, prucewood, 86 x i;o cm. lu• n, B rlin-Dahlem .

cen 1s th meeting f S . Fran is and Dominic.

The two figures in the for gr und, one dressed as the mart •red aint above, the other in an offwh1te habit, have ju t rea hed out to !asp hands.

The sc ne is t against a hurch of Bramantine an:hit ctu re with 5. J hn the Baptist in a niche n the wall. In the ba kground are four Oorninians; the ne with his bla k habit carried over hi s sh ulder 1s very lose t the lay brother in the martyrdom .

In fact it i possi ble to say that all three are from the same so ur e, and as with most of these obje ts in ' ood, th so ur e remains unknown.

Earlier eff rts to link them with the famous n ames of the late fift nth century, aradosso and Bellano for the ardner, or madeo for the Berlin reli f, are, in essen e, futile .

A group f these carved s en s was published

Figure 4. Adoration of the Shepherds, Lombard, end of the XV century, polychromed poplar with gilt, overall: 145 x 170 cm.; inside frame : 100 x 120 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

by Malaguzzi Valeri in Giovanni Antonio A madeo (Bergamo, 1904, pp . 326-30), including two in the Berlin Museum as School of Amadeo, and again in La Corte di Lodovico II Moro where the author sugges ts the existen ce of an Amadeo School. Given the eclectic nature of Amadeo's style, the apparent influence of the other sculptors associated with him, and the wide divergence in quality of the many objects that are illustrated, it is difficult to make this attribution.

These objects in wood reflect the vocabulary used by the sculptors of the grea t monuments of Lombard y that were commissioned in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. The greatest of these was the Certosa at Pavia which attracted a cas t of famous names from th e 146o's on into the beginning of the sixteenth centu ry. This monastery under the patronage of Lodovico II Moro em-

ployed Amadeo as a young man in 1466 and then as one of the directors of the work on the fac;:ade in 1474. He also worked in Bergamo, Cremona and Milan, and his is the first name that one associates with the distinctive style of the Lombard Rena issa nce. The style which one sees in wood sculpture is, however, no t derived from a single artist, but the results of many commissions to various sculptors, tran slated by a number of wood carvers.

The large framed altarpiece of the Ad ora tion of the Shepherds (fig. 4) in the Vic toria and Albert Museum, London, by an anonymous fif teenth century Lombard sculp tor, was linked at one time wi th a number of other objects. Pope-Hennessy rightly points out that it bears no more than a "generic relationship" with most of them .3 Although there are obvious parallels with the three 33

Fig ure 5. Giovanni Antonio Amadeo (North Italian, 1447-152 2), Adoration of th e Sh eph erds, ca . 1480, marble, 91 x 66 cm. City Art Museum of St. Louis .

Figure 6. Th e Na tivi ty, Italian, XV century, polychromed wood, 165 x 90 cm. Courtesy of the Detroit Institute of Arts.

pieces ci ted above - in the drapery of the Virgin's robe, the hair on the angels, and the movement of the figure of Joseph - the Berlin and Sarasota panels have a sure sense of space and perspective and strong narrative quality that is not found here or in the other less forceful examples that h ave been published. By association with the Lodi altarpiece, which is dated 1493-95, Pope-Hennessy provides a general indication for the date of the London Adoration.

An Adoration (fig. 5) by Amadeo in a marble plaque now in St. Louis is an interesting comparison because of its contrast with the wood reliefs. It demonstrates where the former obtained their conventions in landscape, figures or architecture, without approaching the impact of the mas ter's wo rk. The m arble plaque conveys a sense of heightened emotions; the fi gures are crowded, their faces are d rawn . There is an impression of movement, a stirring in the crowd, which is transmitted through the a ttitude of the figures and the mosaic of fra gmented folds in their ga rments.

34

Fi g u re 7. A d oration of th e Ma gi, Mil anese, XV century, 1 0 3 x 6 1 cm. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Art s, Boston.

Joseph stands in the center, unusual for a work of the fi fteenth cen tury in wh ich he would normally be fo und sleeping in the background. In the calmer, more spacio us Adora tion in London he is on the right but h e is the same figure of curving posture supported by a staff, symbols of his old age. The strange landscape is repea ted both below, the h ard sh elf of striated grou nd under the figur es reminiscent of Mantegna; and above, where the sh epherds watch their flock and the approaching band of the Magi transverse terraced field s; behind them rise the spires of a ci ty (Jerusalem ?). Other parallels can b e drawn, in the symbolic architecture wh ich occupies the middle distance, for example.

Two more reliefs in wood will con firm the popularity of these conve ntions. The first (fig. 6) is a comp ac t ve rsion of the London altarpiece in the D etroit Institute of A rts. Ab ove the Virgin there is the straw roof separating the foregrou nd from the fi gures in the terraced landscape. The angel h olding the cape appears again, and th e

shepherd in the background resembles the man to the far left in London . Another quite different Adoration (fig. 7) is in th e Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, set into a contemporary frame with a lunette of S. Jerome in the desert. The number of actors has been greatly reduced, the design is less interesting, the carvi ng is less refined . The familiar iconography persists especially in the background, but again there is a different sculptor.

Two smaller versions of the London Adoration exis t in the Baga tti Valsecchi collection, Milan, and another is in the Mu seo Civico. From the known variations on the London altarpiece, one ma y ass ume that a large number of reproductions with variation s wa s made of this popular subject, and no doubt others will be found in Lombardy or in museums and private collections elsewhere .

As this exten sive production is largely overlooked and misunderstood, there is much room left for research and publication. In the meantime, like S. Peter Martyr in the Gardner Museum, the simple but not insignificant a ttribution is to the anonymous wood carvers of the Lombard Renaissance.

Rollin van N . Hadley

NOTES For these and others see the chapter on Lombard wood sculpture in F. Malagu zzi Valeri , La Cort e di Lo dov ico il M o ro, III, Gli art is ti Lombardi, Milan, 1917. For wood sculpture in the Valtellina , see Ministero dell'Educazione Nazionale, lnve ntario deg li ogge tt i d' arte d' Ital ia, IX, Provincia di Sondr io, Rom e, 1

1938.

2 F. Schottmiiller, Die italien ischen und spanischen Bildw erk e de r R en a issa nce und d es Ba ra ck , I , D ie Bildw erke in S t e in ,

Holz , Ton un d Wa chs, Berlin, 1933, pp . 129- 30, No . 246, illus.

This is ca talogued as from a large altarpiece of scenes from the Dominican legends , and associated w ith a panel in Vienna , Litchtens tein collection, another fo rmerly owned by the dealer Guggenheim in Venice , and a third in the Cas tle in Milan. I have found no pi cture o r description o f the firs t two . For the las t, The M ira culous Healin g o f th e Boy Run Over by a H orse , see Malaguzzi Valeri, op. cit. , fig . 263, which does not seem to be by the same hand, but may ha ve b een from the same shop .

Ca ta log ue o f Ital ia n S cu lpture in th e V ictoria and A lbert Mus eum , London, 1964, I, pp. 383-84, No . 408; III , p . 245, fi g .

403 .

3

35

An Italian Hypothesis for the Two Saint Agnes Sculptures at Fenway Court

The re-evaluation of the artistic outlines of the Italian fourteenth century, the result of research done over the last thirty years especially in the field of painting, with the rediscovery of the flourishing independence of important geographical a reas, ranging from the Lombard to the Bolognese and the Umbrian, has been reflected even in the less advanced studies on sculpture. Many traditional definitions which had stretched the boundaries of the most celebrated schools, namely the Florentine and Sienese, have begun to be questioned, and groups have been formed of works and artis tic personalities which, despite their high quality and strong originality, cannot be assigned, on this accou nt alone, to the better known centers of production .

In particular, a closely related group of wood sculptures, whose most characteristic feature is an unusual synthesis of plastic and graphic mediums, has generally been placed by art connoisseurs in culturally progressive areas which might help to justify its extraordinary quality, if not its style. Consequently, objects of uncertain origin, as well as those of proven Umbrian or Abruzzi origin, have frequently been described as " Sienese School" or even " French School." The latter is the case, to my mind, of both the statues of S. Agnes in the Gothic Room of Fenway Court, now catalogued as probably French, fourteenth century (G eneral Catalogue, Boston, 1935, pp . 265, 269).

Each hangs in a position, however, which does more for the surroundings than for the viewer who wishes to examine them closely.

The first of these (figs . 1 , 3, 5) seems to be related in its technical and stylistic features, to a group of works (G . Previtali, " Sulle tracce di una scultura umbra de! Trecento, " in Paragone, 181, March 30, 1965, pp. 16-25) to which I gave the conventional name of the " Master of the Gualino S. Catherine," derived from what is perhaps the maste rpiece of the gro up (fig. 2) . Like all the works of this artist, the Boston S. Agnes shows a subtle contradiction between a still-archaic frontal posi-

'

Figure 1 . 5. A g nes, M as ter of th e G ua lino S. Ca therin e, Umb ria n- A b ru zzi Sc hoo l (Aquil a) , ca . 1315, po lychrom ed woo d, H . 132 cm . In v. No. S3os37, Gothi c Room, Isa bell a Stewa rt Ga rd ner Mu seum .

Fi gure 2. S. Catherine , Ma ster o f the Gua lino S. Catherine, Umbri a n-Abruzzi School (Aqu ila) , ca 1335, polychromed wo od, H . 138 cm. Gua lino co ll ec ti o n, Rome.

37

Fi g ure 3. 5 . A g nes, side view o f fig ure 1.

Fig u re 4 . Mad o nna and Child, M as ter o f th e G ualino 5 .

Cat he rine, Um bria n-A bru zzi Schoo l (Aquil a), ca . 1 315, wood , H . 71 cm ., s ide vi ew. Fo rm erl y in th e Ca rl o de Ca rl o Ga ll ery, Flo rence.

Fi gure 5. 5. Agn es, de ta il of fig ure 1 .

Fig u re 6 . Mad o n na and C hild, de tai l of fig ure 4.

tion (recalling the Romanesque- Byza ntine) and a ve rtical thrust which hints at something new : benea th the draped mate ri al wh ich closely en fo lds it, th e fig ure ap pears to bend sligh tl y.

O f all the sculpture a ttri buted so fa r to th is Master, this S. Agnes is most closely rela ted to the small Madonna and Child (figs . 4, 6, 71 cm. ), fo rmerly in Florence a t th e Ca rlo de Ca rlo Gallery, which, while surely fr om the same wo rkshop as its mai n counterpa rts, is d is tinguished fr om them, above all, by the broader, more ellip soidal fac e in which a more solid, less pointed nose h as been coherentl y pl aced . When I published the little stand ing M adonna I thought I could expl ain the differences betwee n it and la rger wo rks by considerin g it a less pretentious style (a sor t of " sermo humilis" by the same grea t mas ter), or by call ing it the wo rk of one of his assistants (G. Previtali , " Una agg iunta al Maes tro della Santa Caterin a G ualino," in Parag one, 197, July '1966, pp. 51-53 ).

Th e fa ct th at the same characteristics now occur

in a wo rk of onl y slightly smaller dimensions (132 cm .) than th a t of S. Ca therine (138 cm.), or that of th e M ad onn a and Child in the National Gallery of Edinburgh (137 cm ., kindly noted by Giovanni Romano) , but decidedly larger than the great sea ted M adonna and Child (110 cm.) of de Carlo or th at in the Cathedral of Teramo (105 cm.) , leads o ne to believe th at it is not a question of their being by different a rtists or commi ssioned for diffe rent areas but, more probably, of their belonging to successive periods in the stylistic evolution of the same sculptor.

The adoption of a more slender, pointed facia l type, in th is case, could be considered a sign of a furth er assimilation of Gothic culture of French deriva tion ; th e fuller fa ces of the Boston S. Agnes and the small de Carlo Madonna, on the other hand, could be an indication of closer ties to an ea rlier period of Romanesque solidity. A similar chro nology can be established from recent observa tions on th e changing necklines of feminine

Fi gure 7. S. Agnes, Ma ster of th e Madonna of the

Spoleto Cathedral, Umbria n-Abruzzi School (Spoleto ?) , ca. 1345, polyc hromed wood, H. 153 cm.

Inv. No. S3os5, Got hic Room, Isa bella Stewart Gardner Museum . fa shions in the Italian fou rteenth century, where the rounded, ra ther chaste n ecklin e of this S. Agnes can be seen as earlier than the square-cut and slightly more dar ing necklin es of the large de Carlo Madonna, the Edinburgh Madonna and the Gualino S. Catherine. If fashion rules in Tuscany hold good for Aquila in Abruzzi, th en this particular detail suggests a date b etween 1315

Figure 8. Madonnn and Child, Master of the Madonna of the Spoleto Cathedral, Umbrian-Abruzzi School (Spoleto ?) , ca. 1335, polychromed wood, H. 153 cm.

Cathedral, Spoleto.

and 1335 (L. Bellosi, Buffalm acco e ii Trionfo de/la Marte, Turin, 1974, pp . 51-52).

Seen alongside the S. Agnes wh ich we have already examined, the second S. Agn es of the Gothic Room seems to be quite d ifferent (figs. 7, 10, 12).

Besides the better preserved p olych romy, the statue's co nstruction is more n atural a nd rea listic. The deviations from the norm of hieratic fron tality, 39

Fig ure 9. Mad onna and Child, side view of figure 8.

Fi g ure 10. S. Agnes, side view of figure 7.

barely felt in the other sta tue, are much more daring here : the saint's head turns slightly to the lower right; the lips are parted as if about to speak (a device for making heads more animated which, I may briefly add, was recommended even

by Bernini!); the square neckline widens gener路路 ously over firm shoulders and a breathing chest; the movement of the cloak covering the right leg permits the shape of the thigh and knee to emerge and suggests that the yo ung woman is about to step forward ; the mystical lamb, a distinctive sign of S. Agnes, has been transformed from a symbol traced on a round insignia (fig. 5), into a fully formed lamb which turns to look at us with curio us vi tality (fig. 10). Even from a technical point of view, the thin layer of paint which, in th e first statue, left one aware of the sculptor's chisel is substituted, in the second one, by a layer of gesso which helps appreciably to modify and soften the modelling of the wooden support. One final, ra ther striking, detail that distinguishes thi s S. Agnes from her modest sis ter is the sump-

tuously embroidered plaque which completely covers her chest.

These differences are so numerous that at first the only link between the two seems to lie in their iconography. It must be remembered, however, that the same differences of technique and style separa te the " Master of the Gualino S. Catherine" and, in general, the rest of the Umbrian-Abruzzi production, from the group of "French-inspired" sculptures distributed between Spoleto and Aquila, and which, because of this apparent isolation, was thought by Toesca to have been imported (P. Toesca, Le Trecento, Turin, 1951, pp. 377-78) . Outstanding among this series of " French-inspired" works which must have come at various times fr om the same workshop, are the three Madonnas and Child in Fossa (near Aquila) which are probably the oldest, in S. Silvestro in Aquila itself, and in the cathedral at Spoleto (figs . 8, 9, 11) which, because of the greater complexity in the treatment of the material, is perhaps the most advanced.

It is precisely this last piece of sculpture which, to me, bears the closest comparison to this S. Agnes: from the handling of the drapery with rounded ridges and soft folds, to the wider face with its stronger chin and nose in contrast to the eyebrows and outline of the eyes which are depicted with precise but delicate strokes, to the structure of the hands, the decoration of the two women's cloaks, and even down to the striking plaque, embroidered in a wide geometrical design, which we already observed in the Boston S. Agnes and which is found repeated on the chest of the Christ Child in Spoleto (figs. 11, 12). Moreover, they even have identical dimensions (153 cm).

We must certainly keep in mind that along with the similarities there remain differences which require explanation. First of all, the hair of the S. Agnes statue is painted rather than sculptured as with the rest of the group, and secondly, the special style of the neckline which goes to the shoulders finds no echoes in the other " French-inspired" sculptures . It should be noted, however, that while

Figure 21. Mnd o nna and Child, detail of figure 8, showing the Child' s embroidered plaque.

these two deta ils seem to set the Boston statue apart from the rest of th is gro up, it does not imply that they are from any geographical area other than the one under di scussion, since these details are significantly to be found in the other, also Umbrian-Abruzzi, group of the Gualino S. Catherine (fig. 2) , where indeed the ha ir is always painted and where, in presumably later examples, we find a faintl y squared neckline which seems to anticipate that of the Boston S. Agnes .

The hypothesis, therefore, that I wish to propose is th at of a perhaps more mature work by the " French-inspired" ma ster of the Cathedral of Spoleto, and also of S. Silvestro in Aq uila, who, having begun activity around the third decade of the century (ca . 1325), with works such as the M adonna and Child in Scurcola Marsicana, Fossa, and S. Silvestro, could have continued, in the follow ing decade, with sculpture such as the Madonna and Child of the Cathedral in Spoleto (ca. 1335), and ended, around the middle of the century (ca.1345),

12 5 Agnes, de tail of figure 7, ~howmg th e ai nt's mb ro1de r d plaqu .

Figure

with oth ers such as the splend id S. Agnes m the Ga rdner Muse um in Boston.

Even if the comparisons discu ssed here seem insufficient to make a pos iti ve assignment of the two statues to the flouri shing workshops mentioned above, it is clear to me that the solution of the mys terious origin of the two Bos ton statues is not to be sought on French territory, but instead can be found on the heights of the Apennines, in central Italy, in the area which stretches from Assisi through Spoleto and down to Aquila in Abruzzi. This constitutes in the first half of the fourteenth century a homogenous, culturally autonomous area, not fully appreciated up to now, with a stronger character than its neighbors who are all more or less in debt to the artistic schools of Florence, Rimini, or Rome and Naples.

Giovanni Previtali U niversita deg Ii studi di Siena Note: This article ha s been tran slated from the Italian

by Shelagh Hadley .

41

Green Hill, Brookline, the home of Mr. an d Mrs. G. Peabody Gardner. It was th e summ e r re sidence of Isabella Stewar t Gardner from 1884 to 1919. P ho tograp h by Thomas E. M a rr, 1905.

42

Report of the President

Last year, on September 17, the museum lost its President, . Peabody Gardner, Mrs. Gardner's great-nephew, and the last remaining member of the Board who knew her during her lifetime. His contributions as the leading officer of the museum were of inestimable value to the s taff, the Trustees, and espe 1ally the publi for whose benefit the museum exists. Mr. Gardner's fellow Trustees entered the following in the re ords of their meet ing held 0 tob r 1 5, 1976: G. Peabody Gardner died September J.7, 1976, having served as President of the museum sin e 1962. He was a prominent figure in the world of finan e and industry, and se rved as director of some of the country's largest corporations.

He sat in the inner councils of the best known educational and eleemosynary organizations, such as Harvard and the Boston Museu m of Fine Arts . He was the losest living relative of Mrs . ardner and considerably the senior member of our Board.

A lesser man with such distinctions might have brandished his authority and desi red a ertain degree of deference. Peabo never did . Although he brought to our meetings, and to his s tewardship of the museum, an unequaled store of experience, wisdom and understanding, it quite evidently never crossed his mind that his opinions might be entitled to more weight than anyone else's.

A lesser man might also have found himself too much taken up wi th affairs of national prominence to have time for the Gardner Mu seum. For Peabo Gardner the museum came first. Today it is in good shape, it is what Mrs. Gardner wanted it to be, thanks in large part to the devoted and affectionate attention Peabo gave to it.

Peabo's fellow Trustees will remember him as exactly the right person to be President of this Board, but even more as a friend possessed of unique warmth, charm and grace, and a very contagious enjoyment of companionship.

We will miss him very much indeed.

43

On Nove mber 10, 1976, a concert in Mr. Gardner' s memory was held at the museum . The Tapestry Room wa s fi lled to capacity by an a udience composed ve ry largely of Mr. Ga rdner's fami ly and frie nds.

M r. Ga rdner' s dea th req uired the election of new officers. Malcolm D . Perki ns was made President and Joh n L. Ga rdne r Vice President, in add ition to his position as Treasurer. A Boston lawyer, James L. Terry, was chosen as a new T rustee and elected Secretary.

Most of th e interesting a nd important even ts of the year are detai led in the report of the d irector. In the a rea of fi nances, less interesti ng bu t nonetheless important, I shou ld note tha t infl atio n and governmental actio n conti n ue to erode the museum's capacity for benefi ting th e publ ic.

The cos ts of runni ng th e museum and kee ping it in firs t ra te condi tion, of our concer ts a nd our flowers, ha ve nearly caught up wi th income from endow ment, and soon will leave it beh ind . At the same time, the gove rnment continues to encroa ch on our reso urces th roug h taxes on o ur income as an endowed institu tion, ERISA, and o ther expensive require ments. So fa r we h ave aver ted a defici t by charging fo r adm iss ion on Sunday, whi ch we reg ret, but which is necessary beca use of the tax on our endowme nt income.

44

During 1976 a Music Committee, consisting of Mess rs. Forbes, Perkins and T erry, was formed to consult wi th the director and the director of music, Johanna Giwosky, about concert programs and other musical ma tters. The m useum's Boa rd of Trus tees are onl y seven and generally wo rk as a whole; the new Music Committee and the Finance Committee, which rev iews the work of th e in vestment advisor, are the onl y exceptions.

The director and the staff have distinguished themselves and the museum in 1976, as in prior yea rs. While they are not permitted self-e xpression throu gh acqu isitions, they can be and h ave been truly creati ve in other ways - in publi cations such as the new G uide to the Collecti on, the ca talogue of Oriental and Islamic Art, and ano ther unusually interesting and attrac tive Annual Report ; in b ri ngi ng attentio n to lesser known pa rts of the collection, such as letters, photographs, manuscripts; in musical prog rams of exceptional qu ality three times each week ; in fl oral di splays tha t offer a magical escape from wi nter in Bos to n ; and abo ve all, in the care, tas te a nd judg ment th a t go every day into exhibiting, preservin g and res toring the collections.

M alcolm D . Perkins

45

Report of the Director

In a busy year for the museum, important staff changes may be singled out as having far-reaching effect. For many years the responsibility for the well-being of the collection resided with the director and senior conservator. Now for the first time the museum has appointed a curator who has the direct responsibility for the care and presentation of the objects. Deborah Gribben, who began in August, works closely with conservators, the editor of publications, the security and maintenance staff, and consultants to bring the collection and the installation, including copious records, to the best possible sta te . It is no mean undertaking .

Toward the same end, in December the museum secured the services of Jack Soultanian, presently on a fellowship at the Rijksmuseum, who will come in 1977 as a con servator of objects.

He will join the present laboratory staff which includes the equivalent of five full-time conservators - for objects, textiles and paper. Paintings conservation is carried on by the conservator both at the museum and in her studio in New York.

With this balance and a budget of around $90,000. this year, the museum presents diversity and experience in conservation that is the equal of man y large museums.

In the spring the New England Conference of the American Association of Museums asked permission to hold a conservation clinic in the Tapestry Room. Thirty persons from local museums brought objects and met with a panel of conservators for the entire day. Most of the museum's conservators participated. The fine work done in the textile workroom was recognized by an article in Fenway Court 1975 on the Flemish tapestry The Story of Ahab, which went back on exhibition after about three years of repair work. The authors argued for the patronage of the Duke of Burgundy in its creation, dated by their estimates around 1460. Other textiles in the collection, many u sed as wall hangings, others on furniture, occupied the conservators when not

repamng tapes tries. Among these was the handsome flame- stitch fabric, Italian XV!Ic, which hangs in the Room of Early Italian Paintings behind the fresco by Piere della Francesca, which was repaired and rehung whi le the fresco was down for examination.

In the sa me room is the five-panel altarpiece

by Simone Martini, the only large, complete altarpiece by the master outside of Italy. The Madonna and Child, Saints Lucy and Catherine were cleaned and restored in 1976 as was The Madonna and Child, with a Goldfinch by Bernardo Daddi on the opposite wall. Two fine Impress ionis t portraits, Degas' Madame Gaujelin and Manet's portrait of his mother, were cleaned and a small transferred fresco, Venetian X!Vc, was restored during the year. Reluctantly glass was placed over several pictures which are within arm's reach. Much of the collection is out of reach and can remain unglazed .

Kenneth Hempel of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, who enjoys an international reputation in the conservation of stone objects, came at our request in June . During the week he was here he surveyed the collection and advised the conservators and building superintendent on cleaning and conservation . Further consultation is expected before treatment is made on a large scale . The marble window frames and exterior balconies are a particular problem, but much of the sculpture could be improved in its appearance by cleaning. Vincent Cerbone, conservator of furniture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, also came to advise conservation on two pieces of furn iture, the settee in the Short Gallery and the spinet in the Little Salon. Both have been much improved and are now back in the collection. A thyme! cabinet, built in the museum, was added to the equipment u sed by the paper conservators.

The cataloguing of Mrs. Gardner's collection of books has moved steadily ahead, but at a scholar' s pace. Together with the publica tions edi tor, the

47

cataloguer, Rebecca Karo, worked out a plan fo r the publication of the XV and XVI century books in the collection, approxi mately seventy-fiv e titles in all, to appear in another year. Publications now in the ed itor's hands include the sculpture catalogue, parts of which are being reset prior to the fin al design, and the micro-fiche, the cards of tiny t ransp arencies which will be marketed by the University of Chicago Press under the title, A Selection of Paintin gs, Drawin gs and Wat erco lors in the Isab ella Stewart Ga rdn er Mus eum .

The editor of publications, Paula Kozol, also serves as archivist. She had the able assista nce of two students who provided st ro ng support fo r projects in progress. Eleanor Earle, a senior at Brown University, spent the summer assisting in relocating fil es, sorting out old photographs of the fo under's life as well as that of the museum, and prepa ring letters fo r conservation treatment.

The las t was continued by Anne Elliot, a senior a t Simmon s College, on a work-stud y grant.

Accedin g to obvious pressure for better visibility a t the concerts, the museum purchased a stage wh ich is assembled in front of the firepla ce in the Tapestry Room . The fluorescent lighting over it was replaced with a series of incandescent bulbs, capable of providing different kinds of illumina tion. The regular concert series, three times in the week except in the summer, included several young musician s who played at the museum before their New York debuts. Stephanie Brown, pianist, D aniel Phillips, violinist, and Bori s Bloch, pianist from Russia, subsequently received enthusiastic reviews in N ew York .

Promising local musician s including Fredericka Kin g and Michael Thomopoulos, both pianists, and the Atlantic Wind Ensemble, performed this fall. Other well es tablished local groups found an audience at the museum, among them the New England Chamber Orchestra and the Orpheus Woodwind Quintet. From farther afield came the Rowe String Quartet from Buffalo, the Monte Carlo Quintette and an excellent Irish harpist,

Catriona Yeats. The Festival Bostonian / Portuguese Concert on 21 October was presented in cooperation with the Mayor's Office of Cultural Affair s.

To mark the loss of the museum's president, G . Peabody Gardner, a special concert was held in the Tapestry Room on 10 November at which Richard Kogan and Lynn Chang played the Schubert D uo in A major, and the Sonata for Viol in an d Piano of Cesar Franck. The concert for Mrs. Gardner's birthday was a program of music written by her contemporaries, performed by the N ew England Chamber Orchestra. The memorial service was held the next morning, 14 April, with Father Clayton as celebrant.

Special visits for more than 100 persons were : American Federation for (200) Clinical Research American Gem Society (300) 9 April Simmons College, Office of 10May (150) the President Navy League of the United 20 May (200) States Festival Bostonian / Greek 23 May (300) Month The National Conference of 31 May Jewish Communal Service (500) Harvard University, Gradu16 June (150) ate School of Design Conference of Newer Law 19 June (200) Librarians Guild for Religious 6 July (200) Architecture Dance Teachers Club of 23 July (150) Boston International Ship Structures 24 August (200) Congres s [nternational Society for Con24 O ctober temporary Music, World (125) Music Days 1976 (100) 17 N ovember MacDowell Colony 4 December American Society of (150) Hematology 9 January

Edoua rd M a net (1832-1883), Madame Auguste Manet, oil, 98 x Bo cm., sig ned : Manet.

Inv. No. P3s4, Blue Roo m, Isa bell a Stewart Gardner Mu seum. Cleaned in 1976.

49

The Phaius Tankervi lle orchids from the museum' s greenhouses won the coveted Certifica te of Cultural M eri t of the Am erican Orchid Society at the Massachusetts H or ticultural Society Annual Camelia Show d uring the winter. These orchids received an impressive eighty-o ne points and the head gardener had the d istinction of reg isterin g them under the new n ame Isabella. At the N ew England Spring and H ower Show h eld in M arch , the greenhouses received First Prize and a Gold Medal for a group of fl owering plants in a garden .

The display recreated part of our outdoor gardens at the museum, with greenhouse azaleas in six large urns surrounded by pachysandra. T he Co elogyne Cristata won the award for one of the best plants of the year at the Massachusetts O rchid Society' s show table, W altham Field Station . The greenho uses continue to a ttract garden clubs and other groups who are admitted fo r special tours on written request. Among the groups who took advan tage of the opportunity was the Trustees Committee of the American Association of Museums which took time away fro m their m eetin g in Boston in O ctober.

The Sunday door ch arge h as accomplish ed the desired results of reducing crowds and ra ising a sum sligh tly more than the annual fe deral tax, a tax wh ich the museum h as had to pay since 1969.

Weekdays Sundays Special visits Total

1976 128,942 40,757 4,612

1975 131,947 61,577 4,822

174,311

198,346

Sales for the year were down fro m the h igh mark set wi th the introduction of the paintings catalogue. A fu rther loss came during the period when the G uide Book was out of print but the revision, a demanding and important contribution which took longer than expected, was immensely popular.

Books G uides and In fo rmation Folders Cards Color Transparen cies M iscellaneous Total

1976 $ 6,761.45

1975 $ 9,376.26

11,700.55 11,395.90 686.50 5,690.88

7,3 99.15 9,668 .25 1,799.55 4,332.84

$36,235 .28

$33,576.05

With a tight budget, expenses were held below the previous year and the financial picture was furth er improved by several small grants, providing both a support and a stimulus to our activities. A grant from the National Endowment for the Arts provided fund s for a survey of the building's hea ting and humidity system, in order to test the effi ciency of an old plant and to assure us of the stability of the atmosphere in which the collection is housed . The report will not be ready until Spring. Two other grants were received : $15 ,000 . from the National Endowment for the Ar ts, toward a film tenta tively titled " Mrs. Gardner's Bos ton" directed by Richard Leacock of the fa culty of M .I.T. ; and $4 000 . from the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, to assist our mus ic program, which, like much of our work, is constantly threa tened by the cost of infla tion .

1

Several members of the s taff left for greener pastures, and whi le their departure was not without sadness, their decisions were well taken.

Frances Preston, who ably filled severa l positions during her six years here, was admitted to graduate school at Columbia University. Pam Peterson accompanied her husband to Heidelburg and now works in the conservation of paper at the library there . Patrick Naughton took advantage of an opportunity to return to his native Ireland after serving the museum for eighteen years, most recently as security foreman. Gregg Cartmell, who came to the museum with previous experience in police work and served successfu lly as assistant foreman, was promoted to foreman in October. His appointment, and that of three young men as full-time guards, represents the continuing emphasis on security and the increasing diversity in terms of age and backgro und within the group.

Eight have been engaged for regular duties: Alfred Bedford, guard, 23 November; Lisa 0.

Ehret, administrative assistant, 14 June ; Deborah Gribben, curator, 2 Aug ust; Patrick McCollum, maintenance and security, 16 March; Christian Pierce, nightwatchman, 18 October; Jonathan Randolph, maintenance, 26 October; Harold Reddicliffe, guard, 10 August; Michael Shea, guard, 16 November. Sixteen of the staff have resigned: Ra ymond Bailey, guard, 19 May; John Coffey, guard, 28 January ; Stuart Collind, maintenan ce, 11 March; Edward Conley, guard, 16 April ; James Culhane, guard, 11 April; Edward Daley, guard, 29 O ctober ; Benjamin D onahue, guard, 24 June ; Neil Jamieson, guard, 26 August; Thomas Jennin gs, guard, 2 November; Erving Kinney, guard, 15 July; Patrick Naughton, security foreman, 29 O ctober ; Pam Peterson, paper conservator, 28 May; Frances Preston, cur a to rial assistant, 25 June ; Martin Roper, guard, 18 November ; Thomas Sisco, assistant security foreman, 1 March; Barbara Sykes, information desk, 24 June .

onservation

linic

Joseph B. Pratt retired after a long distinguished career as the museum's photographer. He is the last of a faithful staff which began work in the 193o's under the museum's first director and which served until the 197o's. Fortunately he continues on a shortened schedule.

Employed for shorter periods on special proje ts were: Matthew Buechner, J. Anderson Carpenter, John Colleran, Fred Creager, Marlene Eidelheit, Joyce Haynes.

Much appreciated by the staff was the volunteer work of eight students: Nancy Dolberg, Eric Gordon, Barbara Stahler in the Conservation Lab 路 Ellin Anderson, Eleanor Earle, Mary O ' Brien'.

Rachel Sagan, Deborah Shah with the administrative staff.

The director spoke at the Nichols House Muse um, Boston, and at the Allentown (Pa.) Art Museum on various aspects of this museum .

All of the staff members continued to serve the museum well and deserve more than these simple lines convey. Their cooperation and devotion to duty makes the director's work rewarding.

As always the trustees respond to requests for extra help beyond the excellent guidance which their meetings provide. To both, my renewed th anks and appreciation .

Rollin van N. Hadley 51

Note on the Organization of the Museum

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Mu seum, Incorporated (Museum orporation), a Massachusetts charitable orporation, is the sole trustee under the will of Isabella Stewart Gardner.

Upon her death in 1924, Mrs. Gardner left to seven individual trustees the property which now onstitutes the Museum Fenway ourt and the works of art she had collected there, some of which were owned by her directly and some by a corporation of which she owned all the capital stock, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the Fenway, In orporated (Fenway Corporation).

She also gave her trus tees an endowment fund for the support of the Mu seum.

In 1936 the individual trustees under Mrs. Gardner's will organized the Museum Corporation and resigned as trustees under the will. The Museum orporation was appointed by the Probate Court to be successor trustee in their stead and now holds all the trust property, consisting of the real estate, the collection (owned either directly or through Fenway Corporation), and the endowment.

Under the By-laws of the Museum Corporation it is managed by a board of seven trustees who have the power to fill vacancies in their own number. The officers, elected annually by the trustees, are a President, Vice-President, Treasurer and Secretary. A Finance Committee of at least two members appointed by the trustees is responsible for the Museum's investments.

Under the terms of Mrs. Gardner's will full authority over the Museum, the collection, and the staff is vested in the Director, who is appointed and subject to removal by her trustees (now the Museum 路Corporation).

53

Publications

II

GUIDE TO THE COLLECTION 1976 An illustrated guide for visitors, with a brief sketch of the founder. Highlighting the collection, room by room, with attributions and descriptions reflecting recent publications; 2nd edition; 116 pp .

Paper bound $ 2.00 Postage and $ .40 (domestic) packing $ .45 (foreign) ORIENT AL AND ISLAMIC ART IN THE ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM, by Yasuko Horioka, Marylin Rhie an d Walter B. Denny 1975 A fully illustrated catalogue; this small collection includes sculpture, paintings, ceramics, lacquer ware, miniatures and carvings.

Paper bound $ 3.50 Postage and $ .5 0 (domestic) packing $ .60 (foreign) EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN PAINTINGS IN THE ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM, by Ph ilip Hendy 1974 A descriptive catalogue, with biographies of the artists and reproductions of all the paintings; 282 black and white illustrations, 38 color plates.

Cloth bound $30.00 Postage and $ 2.00 (domestic) packing $ 2.25 (foreign) DRAWINGS / ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM, edited by Rollin van N. Hadley A small group of notable drawings ranging in date from the late fifteenth to the early twentieth century; 38 illustrations, frontispiece in color.

Paper bound $ 1.25 Postage and $ .40 (domestic) packing . $ .45 (foreign)

54

TITIA 'S RAPE OF EUROPA , by A rtli11r Pope A study of the omposition and th mode of representation of this and r lated paintings; 26 illustrations; 62 pp.

Paper bound $. 95 Postage and S .4 0 (domes tic) $ .45 (foreign) packing Cloth bound Postage and pa king

S 1.95 $ .5 0 (domes tic) $ .5 5 (foreign)

ISABELLA STEWART GARD ER A D FE WAY COURT, by Morris Carter A biography of Isabella Stewart ardner and a history of the formation of her colle tion by the first director of the museum ; foreword by Peabody Gardner; illustrated; third edition.

Cloth bound $ 6.oo Postage and S .50 (domestic) $ .60 (foreign) packing

FE Y OURT 1966-1970 Smgl i su , illustrated arh les on the collection . list of 22 subie ts wil l be sent on request.

10 nt p r issue.

(Libra ry d1 lOUnt off red only on et of 22 issues.)

A list of ~/ides a11d color reproductions is available 011 request.

Libraries and allier educational i11stit11tions are offered a 40째/o discount on most items.

Mail orders will be sl11pped by 4tli class, book rate (domestic) or ~11rface rates (foreign). Please make cl1cck or money order payable to tlie Isabella Stewart Gardner M11se11m Mai111scnpts on s11biccts related to tlie collection will be considered for publication. Please send proposals to the editor of p11blications.

A CHECKLIST OF THE CORRESPO DE E OF ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER AT THE GARDNER MUSEUM Writers, composers, performers, politicians, historians, and friends from the 186o's to the 192o's, numbering over 1000 names, with a guide to the locations of collected letters in the museum ; 12 pp .

Paper bound $ .10 Pos tage and $ .15 (domestic) $ .25 (foreign) packing FENWAY COURT Ill us tra ted articles on the collection and the archives, from Sargent's watercolors to Mrs. Gardner's trip to Bayreuth; museum reports by the president and director . Annual Reports for 1970 and 1972 through 1976 are available. $ 2.50 (1970: $2.oo) Paper bound Postage and $ .30 (domestic) packing $ .35 (foreign)

55

Trustees

Staff*

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Incorpora ted, Sole Trustee under the will of Isabella Stewart G ardner

Director Emeritus George L. Stout

Conservator of Objects Leo V. Klos, Jr.

ADMINISTRATION

Paper Conservators Kathryn Carey Caroline A. Graboys

President Malcolm D. Perkins Vice- Presiden t an d Tr easure r John Lowell Gardner Secre tary James L. Terry

Elliot Forbes Mason Hammond Francis W. Hatch, Jr. Jam es Lawrence

Director Rollin van N. Hadley Assis tan t Director Linda V. Hewitt Cura tor Deborah Gribbon Research Associate Rebecca W . Karo Publications Editor Paula M. Kozol Administrative Assistants Susan Sinclair Lisa 0 . Ehret Photographer Joseph B. Pratt Director of Music Joh anna Giwosky Docents Marie L. Diamond Judith E. Hanhisalo Clara S. Monroe Phyllis London Sales Clerk Loren L. Benson Information Desk Betty Farina Janice Smith CONSERVATION

Conserva tor of Paintings Gabrielle Kopelman Conservator of Textlies Yvo nne A. A. Cox Assis tant Conservators, T exti les Marjorie R. Bullock Lawrence R. Williams

SECURITY AND MAINTENANCE

Supervisor of Buildings John F. Niland Securi ty Foreman Greg Ca rtmel Maintenance Foreman Alfred J. Smith Shop Technician Michael Finnerty

Francis R. Gillis Edward Gray John H . Holland Michael Hurley John J. Kennedy John J. King Charles A. McStravick Daniel O 'Connell Edwin J. Olson John Pantano Charles R. Parsons Joseph Rajunas Harold Reddicliffe John C. Rihner Michael Shea Patrick H. Slevin David A. Twomey Eric Watmough

MAINTENANCE AND WATCH

GARDENING

Robert Anderson Elizabeth Bing Patrick Burns Stephen F. Duffe William Evans Robert French Thomas Little Paul W . McCurdy Yvonne Mercer Jo se ph Miniutti Patrick T. Niland Christian Pierce Jonathan Randolph Alfonso Walker

H ead Gardener Robert M . MacKenzie

GUARDS

Maurice B. Ahern Alfred C. Bedford Daniel Browne Kenwood M . Cappers Jeremiah J. Clifford Bernard Doherty Edward P. Downs Frederick C. Doyle Dennis Fitzgerald John W. Fleming Anthony Flynn

* on regul ar duty 31 December1976

Gardeners Charles P. Healy, Jr. Joseph F. Kiarsis Stanley Kozak