Object details
Object number
ARC.009262
Creator(s)
John Templeman Coolidge
(Boston, 1856 - 1945)
Title
John Singer Sargent Painting in the Gothic Room
Date
1903
Medium
Platinum print
Dimensions
16.2 x 13.7 cm (6 3/8 x 5 3/8 in.)
Provenance
Probably a gift from John Templeman Coolidge to Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1903.
Commentary
John 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.
Bibliography
David McKibbin. Sargent's Boston, with an Essay and Biographical Summary and a Complete Check List of Sargent's Portraits (Boston, 1956), pp. 47-50.
Alan Chong. "Mrs. Gardner's museum of myth." Res 52 (Autumn 2007), pp. 212-220.
Christina Nielsen (ed.). Sargent on Location: Gardner's First Artist-in-Residence. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2018), p. 28, ill. p. 32, fig. 19, p. 57, no. 6.
Diana Seave Greenwald, "Who's Laughing in the Gothic Room?" Inside the Collection (blog), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 5 May 2020, https://www.gardnermuseum.org/blog/whos-laughing-gothic-room
Gallery
Long Gallery
Case
Sargent / Whistler Case
Rights and reproductions
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