Cast of an Urn
sculptor
John Singer Sargent
(Florence, 1856 - 1925, London)
Date1916-1921
Place MadeBoston, Massachusetts, United States, North America
MediumPlaster
Dimensions20 x 7 cm (7 7/8 x 2 3/4 in.)
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineIsabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Accession numberS33w53
eMuseum ID731071
Previous NumberXS6
EmbARK ObjectID16354
TMS Source ID4686
Last Updated8/9/24
Status
Not on viewWeb CommentaryThe Museum of Fine Arts, Boston commissioned John Singer Sargent to decorate the rotunda of their new building in 1916. He designed not only the paintings and sculpted reliefs but also the architectural elements. Sargent probably gave Isabella Stewart Gardner this maquette for an urn that was part of his 1/8-scale model of the rotunda. He planned two monumental pairs of them to adorn balconies over the rotunda’s side entrances and also experimented with placing one in a niche but ultimately substituted it with a plaster cast of an ancient sculpture from the museum’s collection. Gardner installed it with many other objects of personal importance in the Vatichino, a densely filled semiprivate space on the ground floor of the museum, next to the MacKnight Room.
BibliographyNotesCarol Troyen. Sargent's Murals in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1999), pp. 13-14, fig. 6, ill.
ProvenanceNotesMade for the model of the rotunda, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Gift from John Singer Sargent to Isabella Stewart Gardner after 1918.
Gift from John Singer Sargent to Isabella Stewart Gardner after 1918.
