Object details
Object number
P3n18
Creator(s)
William James, Jr.
(Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1882 - 1961, Chocorua, New Hampshire)
Title
Henry James
Date
1911
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
66.5 x 56.5 x 2.4 cm (26 3/16 x 22 1/4 x 15/16 in.)
Provenance
Commissioned by Isabella Stewart Gardner from Williams James, Jr., nephew of the sitter, writer Henry James (1843-1916), who sat for the painting in Cambridge, 4-14 March 1911.
Gift from William James, Jr. to Isabella Stewart Gardner on 29 March 1911.
Commentary
Isabella was a close friend of the celebrated novelist Henry James for nearly forty years. She commissioned this portrait of the writer from his nephew William "Billy" James. Henry informed Isabella about the progress of the painting: "I have 'sat' day after day to dear Bill... The admirable result (still incomplete) immensely justifies me." Isabella displayed it in the Blue Room along with his letters in the Crawford / Chapman Case.
Bibliography
"New Honorary Doctors." The Harvard Graduates' Magazine, vol. 20 (1911-1912), pp. 60-61, ill.
Catalogue. Fenway Court. (Boston, 1912), p. 1.
Morris Carter. Isabella Stewart Gardner and Fenway Court (Boston, 1925; Reprint, Boston, 1972), p. 225.
Philip Hendy. Catalogue of Exhibited Paintings and Drawings (Boston, 1931), pp. 194-95.
Gilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston, 1935), p. 39.
Stuart Preston. "Henry James" in Alfred M. Frankfurter (ed.). The Gardner Collection (New York, 1946), p. 54, ill. (as painted on the sitter's last visit to America, about 1910)
"William James, Portrait Artist: Son of Philosopher Dies--Painted 'Copey' of Harvard." New York Times. 28 September 1961.
Clara Kozol. "Henry James and Mrs. Gardner: A New Perspective." Fenway Court (1972), pp. 3-4, 6-7, ill. (as begun by March 1911)
Philip Hendy. European and American Paintings in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1974), pp. 126-28, ill.
Leon Edel et al. (eds.). The Complete Notebooks of Henry James (Oxford, 1987), pp. 331-33, n6. (as 4-14 March 1911)
Hilliard Goldfarb and Susan Sinclair. Isabella Stewart Gardner: Woman and the Myth. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1994), pp. 19, 33, no. 3. (as 1910-1911)
Rosella Mamoli Zorzi (ed.). Henry James: Letters to Isabella Stewart Gardner (London, 2009), p. 268, n2; pp. 293-94, no. 95. (as 4-14 March 1911)
Colm Tobín. "Henry James, Shadow and Substance" in Colm Tobín et. al. Henry James andd American Painting. Exh. cat. (New York: The Morgan Library and Museum, 2017), p. 70, fig. 23.
Gallery
Blue Room
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