Object details
Accession number
P11n15
Primary Creator
Wilton Lockwood
(Wilton, Connecticut, 1862 - 1914, New York)
Full title
Peonies
Creation Date
about 1913
Provenance
Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from the Wilton Lockwood exhibition at the Brooks Reed Gallery, Boston for $250 on 8 January 1914.
Marks
Inscribed (lower left): WILTON LOCKWOOD
Inscribed (on a label affixed to the frame): Sold / Frost & Adams [an artists' supply firm in Boston, established 1869]
Dimensions
60 x 71 cm (23 5/8 x 27 15/16 in.)
Display Media
Oil on canvas
Web Commentary
While violets were Isabella's favorite flowers, peonies must have been a close runner-up. She cultivated the pretty plants in her extensive gardens at her home in Brookline and won first prize from the Massachusetts Historical Society for her "vase of [peony] blooms on long stems, arranged for effect."
Her enthusiasm for peonies even informed the artists she patronized. Wilton Lockwood cultivated peonies on Cape Cod, and his paintings of the flowers became his most popular subject. Isabella purchased this painting in 1914 at a Boston art gallery, and it was later exhibited at the Worcester Art Museum, along with 27 other Lockwood paintings (12 entitled Peonies).
In Massachusetts, peonies typically bloom in June. Thanks to this purchase, Isabella enjoyed peonies year-round.
Permanent Gallery Location
Macknight Room
Bibliography
"The Lockwood Pictures: Exhibition to be Extended in Time - Collection Going to Worcester - Purchase by Mrs. Gardner." Boston Evening Transcript (Boston, 15 January 1915).
Exhibition of Paintings by Wilton Lockwood. Exh. cat. (Worcester: Worcester Art Museum, 1915), pp. 1-2. (one of the several paintings entitled "Peonies," nos. 17-22, 24-26)
Philip Hendy. Catalogue of Exhibited Paintings and Drawings (Boston, 1931), p. 200.
Gilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston, 1935), p. 71.
Philip Hendy. European and American Paintings in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1974), p. 137, ill.
Rights and reproductions
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