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(c) 2018 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
John Singer Sargent Painting in the Gothic Room
(c) 2018 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
(c) 2018 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

John Singer Sargent Painting in the Gothic Room

primary (Boston, 1856 - 1945)
subject (Florence, 1856 - 1925, London)
Date1903
Place MadeBoston, Massachusetts, United States, North America
MediumPlatinum print
Dimensions16.2 x 13.7 cm (6 3/8 x 5 3/8 in.)
ClassificationsPhotographs
Credit LineIsabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Accession numberARC.006297
eMuseum ID717158
EmbARK ObjectID26374
Other NumberP27w19.7
TMS Source ID10175
Last Updated8/9/24
Status
Not on view
Web CommentaryJohn Singer Sargent was the first artist-in-residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. During the month of April 1903 he slept in a guest room (now called the Macknight Room) and created new works of art in his temporary studio, the Gothic Room. John Templeman Coolidge, an artist and friend of Isabella’s, took several photographs of Sargent painting the portrait of Gretchen Osgood Warren and her daughter Rachel in the Gothic Room. These candid pictures show Sargent in a whirl of activity with brush and palette in hand—and a cigarette in his mouth. A dark curtain attempts to block the light coming through the stained-glass windows behind the seated pair. Surely delighted with their surroundings, Gretchen and Rachel laugh as Sargent turns to smile at the camera.
BibliographyNotesDavid McKibbin. Sargent's Boston, with an Essay and Biographical Summary and a Complete Check List of Sargent's Portraits (Boston, 1956), pp. 47-50.
Louisa Hall Tharp. Mrs. Jack: A Biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner (Boston, 1965), p. 250.
Christina Nielsen (ed.). Sargent on Location: Gardner's First Artist-in-Residence. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2018), p. 28, ill. p. 29, fig.16, p. 57, no. 6.
Diana Seave Greenwald, "Who's Laughing in the Gothic Room?" Inside the Collection (blog), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 5 May 2020, https://www.gardnermuseum.org/blog/whos-laughing-gothic-room
ProvenanceNotesProbably a gift from John Templeman Coolidge to Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1903.