John Singer Sargent - Study of a Seated Male in a Roundel, 1921

John Singer Sargent (Florence, 1856 - 1925, London)

Study of a Seated Male in a Roundel for the Rotunda of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1921

Collotype print on blue-grey paper , 58.5 x 47.6 cm (23 1/16 x 18 3/4 in.)

Commentary

In 1916, John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) met Thomas Eugene McKeller (1890–1962), a young, Black elevator attendant, at Boston’s Hotel Vendome. McKeller posed for most of the figures—both male and female—in Sargent’s murals in the Museum of Fine Arts. The painter transformed McKeller into white gods and goddesses, creating soaring allegories of the liberal arts that celebrated the recent expansion of the city’s premier civic museum. Sargent then gave several preparatory drawings of McKeller to Isabella Stewart Gardner, ensuring their preservation in perpetuity.

Following the murals’ completion, the Museum of Fine Arts reproduced several of Sargent’s drawings and sold them in the museum shop. Thomas McKeller posed for this one, not preparatory for any single figure in the final paintings but perhaps a souvenir or commemoration of the project.