Venice

Paul Henry Tilton’s seascape of Venice — depicting a statue of the Madonna and Child underneath a bronze canopy in the foreground, and in the background, the city through the haze of the sailboat-filled lagoon — caught Jack Gardner’s eye when he and his wife Isabella Stewart Gardner were visiting their favorite city in September of 1886.

Born into an artistic family as the son of the American landscape painter John Rollin Tilton (1828-1888) the New York Times listed Paul Tilton in a group of talented progeny of established artists in 1880. “There are some young artists in Rome, says the Parisian, who still call themselves students, but who give great promise, and their talent is hereditary… young Tilton is a painter, and the buying public has already found its way to his studio.” The Gardners visited the artist’s studio multiple times when they were in Venice.