(c) 2015 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

John Singer Sargent Painting in the Gothic Room

photographer John Templeman Coolidge (Boston, 1856 - 1945)

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.006293

eMuseum ID716809

EmbARK ObjectID23243

Other NumberP27w19.3

TMS Source ID8370

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.

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, fig. 32.
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. 11, fig. 1.

ProvenanceNotesProbably a gift from John Templeman Coolidge to Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1903.