Object details
Accession number
P17w51
Primary Creator
Thomas Sully
(Horncastle, Lincolnshire, 1783 - 1872, Philadelphia)
Full title
Isabella Tod Stewart
Creation Date
1837
Provenance
Collection of the Stewart family, New York.
Presumably bequeathed by David Stewart (1810-1891), Isabella Stewart Gardner's father, to Isabella Stewart Gardner, 1891.
Marks
Inscribed (on the canvas, verso, in red paint): TS 1837 [the 'TS' joined]
Dimensions
75 x 62 cm (29 1/2 x 24 7/16 in.)
Display Media
Oil on canvas
Dimension Notes
Frame: 100.1 x 87.5 cm (39 7/16 x 34 7/16 in.)
Web Commentary
Isabella Tod Stewart was Isabella Stewart Gardner's paternal grandmother and namesake. This portrait was painted by Thomas Sully--an American artist famous for having painted Queen Victoria. Sully’s canvas shows a graceful woman with fair coloring and wearing an almost translucent bonnet. This painting, probably passed down to the younger Isabella’s father David Stewart and then to her, was a family heirloom and likely treasured by the founder. She displayed it in the Short Gallery opposite her own portrait by Anders Zorn.
Permanent Gallery Location
Short Gallery
Bibliography
Philip Hendy. Catalogue of Exhibited Paintings and Drawings (Boston, 1931), pp. 347-48, ill. (as soon after Sully's first visit to London, 1809)
Gilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston, 1935), p. 123.
Morris Carter. "Mrs. Gardner & The Treasures of Fenway Court" in Alfred M. Frankfurter (ed.). The Gardner Collection (New York, 1946), pp. 4-5, ill.
Philip Hendy. European and American Paintings in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1974), pp. 244-45, ill. (as before May 1837)
Hilliard Goldfarb and Susan Sinclair. Isabella Stewart Gardner: Woman and the Myth. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1994), pp. 2, 33, no. 4. (as 1837)
Rights and reproductions
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