Designed by John Singer Sargent (Florence, 1856 - 1925, London)
Rosette for the Rotunda Ceiling Mouldings, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, about 1919
Cast plaster in a wood support, 7 x 14.9 cm (2 3/4 x 5 7/8 in.)
This circular object is approximately 6 inches in diameter and is composed of wood and plaster. The gray plaster cast is in the shape of a rose and is set in a light tan wood molding. The petals of the plaster flower are depicted as having jagged edges and fan out in a counter clockwise direction from the bud at the center of the wheel. The plaster rose can be removed to reveal a darker stained wood underneath.
Macknight Room
Commentary
John Singer Sargent painted murals for the rotunda of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston from 1916 to 1924. He designed not only the paintings and sculpted reliefs but also the moldings for the ceiling. A commemorative pamphlet printed by the museum for the unveiling of the murals proudly declared “even the mouldings have been done by Mr. Sargent’s own hand.” Whether Sargent gave this example to Isabella Stewart Gardner or she took it from his studio remains a mystery. Sargent experimented with many different types of moldings and tested them in his scale model of the rotunda before settling on his final choices for enlargement and installation. Gardner collected the remains and constructed a fireplace hood with them for Green Hill, her Brookline estate (ARC.007885). Sargent commented that if “architecture is frozen music" he would like to be around when the fireplace melted. If this rosette constituted part of that group, then Gardner presumably acquired it before 1 April 1919, when she sold Green Hill to George Peabody Gardner. She kept it in her desk in the Macknight Room along with other objects holding personal meaning.