Sargent Fireplace at Green Hill
photographer
Unknown
DateMay 1919
Place MadeBrookline, Massachusetts, United States, North America
MediumGelatin silver print
ClassificationsPhotographs
Credit LineIsabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Accession numberARC.007885
eMuseum ID723964
Other NumberU27w550
EmbARK ObjectID33659
TMS Source ID17141
Last Updated8/14/24
Status
Not on viewWeb CommentaryIn 1886, Henry James introduced Isabella Stewart Gardner to renowned painter John Singer Sargent, beginning a friendship that spanned almost 40 years. Isabella was delighted when the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston commissioned Sargent to decorate their new building in 1916 and she closely followed the project’s progress.
Sargent designed not only the rotunda’s paintings and sculpted reliefs but also its ceiling moldings. He experimented with many different designs and tested them in a scale model of the rotunda before settling on his final choices for enlargement and installation. Isabella collected the cast offs and used them to construct a fireplace hood at Green Hill, her home in Brookline. Sargent commented that if “architecture is frozen music" he would like to be around when the “fireplace melted.”
Isabella sold Green Hill on 1 April 1919, leaving the fireplace hood behind, and making the fourth floor of the museum her sole residence.
Sargent designed not only the rotunda’s paintings and sculpted reliefs but also its ceiling moldings. He experimented with many different designs and tested them in a scale model of the rotunda before settling on his final choices for enlargement and installation. Isabella collected the cast offs and used them to construct a fireplace hood at Green Hill, her home in Brookline. Sargent commented that if “architecture is frozen music" he would like to be around when the “fireplace melted.”
Isabella sold Green Hill on 1 April 1919, leaving the fireplace hood behind, and making the fourth floor of the museum her sole residence.
BibliographyNotesElizabeth Reluga, "Sargent's Melting Fireplace," Inside the Collection (blog), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 25 August 2020, https://www.gardnermuseum.org/blog/sargents-melting-fireplace
MarksNotesInscribed in pencil (verso, top right corner): R11 W
Inscribed in ink in Isabella Stewart Gardner's hand (verso): Photograph of the Sargent fireplace / at Green Hill / Brookline, May 1919
Inscribed in ink in Isabella Stewart Gardner's hand (verso): Photograph of the Sargent fireplace / at Green Hill / Brookline, May 1919
ProvenanceNotesEntered Isabella Stewart Gardner’s collection at an unknown date.
