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(c) 2017 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Isabella Stewart Gardner at a Medieval Banquet, Gloucester, Massachusetts
(c) 2017 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
(c) 2017 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Isabella Stewart Gardner at a Medieval Banquet, Gloucester, Massachusetts

primary
subject (Philadelphia, 1855 - 1942, Gloucester, Massachusetts)
subject (La Porte, Indiana, 1873 - 1936, Gloucester, Massachusetts)
subject (New York, 1840 - 1924, Boston)
Date30 July 1908
Place MadeGloucester, Massachusetts, United States, North America
MediumGelatin silver print
Dimensions8.4 x 10.5 cm (3 5/16 x 4 1/8 in.)
ClassificationsPhotographs
Credit LineIsabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Accession numberARC.007460
eMuseum ID725044
Other Numberv.1.b.4.26.x
EmbARK ObjectID33257
TMS Source ID16789
Last Updated8/14/24
Status
Not on view
Web CommentaryAfter the economic panic of 1907, the Rhode Island senator Nelson W. Aldrich, asked economist A. Piatt Andrew to go to Europe to study their monetary systems. This photograph shows the farewell costume party hosted by the painter Cecilia Beaux, his neighbor on Gloucester's Eastern Point. Andrew, attended dressed as a Roman emperor and sat on a red throne. Isabella also sat on a throne, albeit a smaller one than the guest of honor, draped with purple velvet emblazoned with a gold initial 'Y' for "Ysabella"--her royal alter ego. 
BibliographyNotes
Joseph E. Garland. Eastern Point: A Nautical, Rustical and More or Less Sociable Chronicle of Gloucester’s Outer Shield and inner Sanctum, 1606-1990 (Beverly, 1999), p. 305.
Tripp Evans. “Be My Guests,” Historic New England magazine, vol. 20, no. 3, (Winter 2020) p. 13.

MarksNotesInscribed in pencil (upper): removed from v.1.b / 4.26 / 1918 / #44 [Guest Book, Volume XV] 
Inscribed in pencil in former archivist Susan Sinclair's handwriting (upper): ISG in Y chair / at Red Roof / Medieval banquet [erroneously identified as being at A. Piatt Andrew's home Red Roof; the dinner party took place at Cecilia Beaux's studio]
Marked in pencil (upper right): v.b 426 / vol xv / 1918 / #44
ProvenanceNotesEntered Isabella Stewart Gardner’s collection between 1908 and 1919.