Object details
Accession number
P17e26
Primary Creator
William Morris Hunt
(Brattleboro, Vermont, 1824 - 1879, Appledore Island, Maine)
Full title
William Amory Gardner
Creation Date
1873
Provenance
Probably made in preparation for an oil painting of the same subject (current location unknown), for which this drawing is the preliminary sketch, commissioned by Joseph Peabody Gardner (1828-1875), the father of the sitter classicist William Amory Gardner (1863-1937), in 1873.
The oil painting and likely this drawing entered Isabella Stewart Gardner's collection, when she and her husband, John L. Gardner, Jr. (1837-1898), adopted their three orphaned nephews including the sitter, William Amory Gardner, on 11 June 1875.
Marks
Signed (above the sitter's right shoulder, in monogram): W M H
Dimensions
52 x 42 cm (20 1/2 x 16 9/16 in.)
Display Media
Charcoal on buff paper
Web Commentary
This charcoal of William Amory Gardner by William Morris Hunt depicts the sitter at age 10. William Amory Gardner was Isabella Stewart Gardner’s nephew. When William Amory’s father, Joseph Peabody Gardner, died in 1875, Isabella and her husband, Jack, raised twelve-year-old William Amory and his two brothers as their own. Isabella placed several pieces by Hunt throughout the museum.
Permanent Gallery Location
Short Gallery
Bibliography
Philip Hendy. Catalogue of Exhibited Paintings and Drawings (Boston, 1931), p. 191.
Gilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston, 1935), p. 127.
“Notes, Records, Comments.” Gardner Museum Calendar of Events 6, no. 15 (9 Dec. 1962), p. 2.
Rollin van N. Hadley (ed.). Drawings: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1968), pp. 36-37, no. 17.
Philip Hendy. European and American Paintings in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1974), p. 125.
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