W. Caflin (active 19th century)
Miniature of John L. Gardner III (Jackie), about 1865
Watercolor on leather with gold locket-frame, 4.4 x 3.5 cm (1 3/4 x 1 3/8 in.)
A miniature portrait of a very young boy against a gray-blue background. He is turned slightly to the viewer’s left exposing one small ear. He has reddish blond hair and light eyes which look out at the viewer. He has a light complexion and a round face with chubby, rosy cheeks and chin, and little skin folds at his neck. He has a small nose and rosy, cupid’s-bow lips that are slightly parted. He is wearing a diaphanous white drape wrapped below his shoulders and around his chest. It is in a gold, fluted locket frame with a loop on top.
Little Salon
Commentary
Isabella Stewart Gardner commemorated her experience as a mother through the portraits enshrined in this case. Her child, John L. Gardner III (“Jackie”), died of pneumonia in 1865, just three months shy of his second birthday. Her grief was acute: Gardner had adored her blue-eyed little boy. When her husband’s nephews were orphaned a decade later, she and Jack Gardner raised the three boys as their own. Sadly, their nephew Joseph Peabody Gardner, Jr., also died as a youth. In a moving tribute, she placed his photograph alongside similar portraits of herself and Jack, and beneath a portrait of Jackie.