American, Boston
"Noted Artist Landing in Boston Today: Sargent Home from Visit in Europe", 1922
Ink on paper, 36 x 11.1 cm (14 3/16 x 4 3/8 in.)
Short Gallery
Commentary
Isabella Stewart Gardner regularly clipped and saved newspaper articles featuring her friends. This item about John Singer Sargent, who was introduced to Gardner by Henry James in 1886, describes a tense homecoming after a European tour. Beneath a candid photograph of the artist descending from an ocean liner, the article cites the controversy surrounding one of Sargent’s recent murals in the Boston Public Library. The caption notes that the mural, Synagogue, “has given offence to persons of the Jewish faith” for its allegorical representation of Judaism as a fumbling old woman.