Fenway Court: 1974

Fenway Court 1974

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Fenway Court

~ENWAY

COURT

Isabella Stewart Gardner Jvfuseum

Pu blished by th e Trus tees of th e Isabella Stewa rt Ga rdner Mu se um, Inco rpora ted Boston, Massachuse tts Copyrig ht 1975 Designed by La rry We bs ter Type se t a nd printed by Th omas Todd Co., Pri nters, Bos ton

Pho togra phs by Larry Webster Front ispiece: Nas turtium s in th e af ternoon sun p . 46 : A crab app le tr ee in the M on ks' Garden p . 48: A to ur in the Dutch Room p . 54: A tour in the Titian Room p . 59: Th e eas t wall of the Cour t Other c redits Ly nn Mc Laren -

p . 53: The pape r conse rvato r

Pa m M . Peterson Jo seph B. Pratt -

p . 56: Vis ito rs in the East Cloister

p . 50: The acaci a tr ee in the Court

Cover : A. Pia tt Andrew, Okak ura-Ka k uzo, Mrs. Ga rdn er, Carolin e Sinkler a nd Henry Sleeper a t Red Roof, Glouces ter, 6 O cto ber 1910

ant 11t

l.

A

w England Bio msbury

A11drew Cray

5. Ber n on and Mr . ardn r 路 The Muse um Years Rollin van . Hadley 1111d Frances L. Preston :i4. Some orresponden e of Matthew Stewart Pri hard and Isabella tewart ardner Walter M11ir W/11teh11l 30.

harle Martin Loeffler :

38. Portraits m Bia k and

om poser at hrte

ourt

Ralph P. Locke

Pam Matthia s Peterso11

Th Isa bella Stewart ardner Mu seum, Incorporated Fiftieth Annual Report for the Year :i974 47 . Report of the President 49. Report of the Director 55.

C . Peabody Gardner

Rollin van

. Hadley

ote on the Organization of the Museum

56. Publications 58. Trustees and Staff

The Tapest ry Room in 1915.

Foreword

Humor, candor and sentiment, and, not infrequently, strong emotions were carried in letters addressed to Isabella Stewart Gardner. O ccasionally they came from sources strange and novel, but mostly from an inspired group of friends.

Those presented here are Matthew Stewart Prichard, classicist and aes thete ; Bernard Beren son, critic and connoisseur; A. Piatt Andrew, economist and statesman; and Charles Martin Loeffler, violinist and composer.

In each of the articles the authors have added new m aterial to the resources available at the museum. Walter Muir Whitehill has pieced toge ther part of Prichard's romantic career. Andrew Gray, A. Piatt Andrew's nephew, introduces a peninsular society discovered by Mrs. Gardner in the early years of this century. Letters to and fr om Berenson durin g this period present the sequel to their earlier correspondence (18871900) w h ich was edited for Fenway Court 1972.

The growing friend ship between patron and artist emerges in Ralph Locke's work with Loeffler's letters . Often fri ends wrote sending their formal photographs and these remain scattered in cases in the museum. Pam Peterson has selected a few to illustrate the way in wh ich the invention of photography was quickly exploited. All of these articles reveal more of the intimate, dayto-day world that exis ted in Boston before and shortly after World War I. Looking back, it seems a confident, prosperous time, in which the arts flou ris hed, and a letter was often a work of art.

Postcard from A. Piatt Andrew, you deserve. A.

24

December

1912.

To " Y" -

wishing you the Merry Christmas that

JI New England Bloomsbury

Mrs. Gardner was exceptionally witty, but spoken wit is notoriously difficult to capture and preserve on paper. So much depends, after all, on inflection, expression, and timing:- " The immigration laws are stricter these days," she once remarked to a lady boasting of Mayflower ancestry. But all the anecdotes, many of them no doubt apocryphal, offer only a frail echo of her sparkling acerbities, of conversational brilliance that could command the attention, and allegiance, of a Henry James.

If its wit is to survive, a circle must include several literary figures, for when writers gossip, particularly about one another, the reverberations resound in many a memoir. The circle formed around Mrs. Gardner on Gloucester's Eastern Point in the decade before World War I, however, included no writers, and little of this New England Bloomsbury has survived in print. " The Colony," as Mrs. Gardner dubbed it upon her first visit in the autumn of 1907, consisted initially of a string of summer cottages on Gloucester's inner harbor, a half mile from lighthouse and breakwater. Their occupants comprised three maiden ladies of strikingly divergent endowments, Cecelia Beaux, Caroline Sinkler, and Joanna Davidge, and two bachelors, Henry

Sleeper and Piatt Andrew. The appearance of Mrs. Gardner in this combustible milieu touched off a display of social pyrotechnics.

Who were these people, and what drew Mrs. Gardner to them? Cecelia Beaux, of course, was already a friend of some years' standing. A portraitist whose career had taken her into the White House to paint Edith Roosevelt and her daughter Ethel, she was one of the few women - Agnes Irwin was another - whom Mrs. Gardner would willingly tolerate on terms of equality. Joanna Davidge ran a fashionable girl's school in New York, and Caroline Sinkler well, she was triumphantly herself, a native of Charleston who h ad come to be known by then as " the enchantress of Philadelphia." Henry Sleeper, architect and antiquarian, was on the verge of a career as one of the country's first interior decorators. As for Piatt Andrew, he was teaching economics at Harvard, and his articles in Frank Taussig' s Quarterly Journal on the myriad banking problems of the time had already won him renown beyond the confines of Cambridge. Later, this group would be augmented by John Hays Hammond, Jr., a budding inventor, and Leslie Buswell, an itinerant English actor.

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Mrs. Gardner and fri end s a t Red Roof.

It is n ot difficult to guess why Mrs. Gardner fo und this gro up appealing. For one thing, the absence of spouses or offspring suited the childless widow, who was understandably disinclined to revel in conventional domesticity. Moreover their conversation was as decorously barbed as her own. Their comments on the " customs affair" of the summer of 1908, for example, were no t devoid of acerbity. Since Piatt Andrew was in Europe with Senator Nelson Aldrich at the time, Henry Sleeper relayed his neighbors' reactions to the fia sco in a letter to Andrew of August 20th:

ments of ' D absville' on the affair. Miss Beaux, when I told her I was going to see Y, exclaimed " Oh! now we shall hear the truth" with ironical accent. Miss Davidge remarked " Poor, dear Mrs. Gardner. I'm so sorry for her " and then in a softer voice, " Mr. Sleeper, the' thing has a very ugly look about it, don't yo u think?" Miss Sinkler made no 'dig' a nd seemed really sorry for her. I fancy it must be quite a financial blow to pay $150,000.

Sleeper's letter reached Andrew in Berlin, where he was assisting Aldrich in his efforts to conduct fact-finding interviews with foreign central bankers on behalf of the newly-created National Monetary Commission. In expressing immediate sympathy to Mrs . Gardner, Andrew circumspectly avoided telling her the gossipy source of his information on the subject:

The T ranscript tonight has a column about Mrs. Gard ner and the confiscation by Customs of her things. I went up to Green Hill for luncheon, as Y wa nted me to take a look at her garden and of course I was agog to hear abo ut the "smuggling." [Mrs. Gardner had I am awfully sorry that you have had all this long favore d the initial Y for Isabella.] She beastly row abo ut the Customs, of which I says the arrival of the goods was a complete have read a little bit in the European papers. surprise to her, that she intended lettin g Mrs. In the end it may help to call attention to our Chadbourne keep the goods another winter, abominable tariff. The Senator seems to think hoping for " tariff revision," that if she had insomething will be done before long. But meantended getting them in she would have de- while it is too mean tha t you should have all dared a value of at leas t $40,000., since any this bother and expense. It is simply hideous . expert would know they were worth at least I sh ould like to shoot somebody for you. that. Mrs. Chadbourne evidently thought she could ge t them through as household fu rnishThe duty on works of art was in fact set to zero ings and surprise Mrs . Gardner. She accoma year later by the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act of plished the surprise! I must tell you the com1909, too late to help Mrs. Gardner.

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NORTOr>". ~

TARIFF CHAMP ION ARRIVIN G IN CHICAGO FOR SPEECH AS MONETARY COMMISSION CHAIRMAN, WITH MINT DI RECTOR AN D TREASURY OFFICIAL. r P t1010 .. r1p111 by 1 it.If rhoto1:r1pbu or The DG \17 Nin.)

Th e Chicago Dail y News,

Perhaps the strongest bond linking the group at Eastern Point to Mrs . Gardner was the gift for self-dramatization which often found expression in costume parties . " I was made to wear a robe of a Roman emperor, with jewelled filet, and seated on a throne of red velvet," Piatt Andrew reported on one such occasion. " Mrs. Gardner sat opposite on a less imposing throne of purple with a large Y in gold. The air of the studio was heavy with incense and tuberoses; the table was gorgeous with old rose damask and wreathes of fruit."

Such entertainments were theatrically designed and with painstaking attention to detail.

Here is Piatt Andrew's account of the Easter festivities in 1909 at his house " Red Roof" on Eastern Point: On Saturday Harry Sleeper and I went to Boston and got Mrs. Gardner and met Miss Whitney, followed the Harvard-Columbia boat race, and got down to Gloucester just about sundown. There were six fellows and the two ladies for dinner, which was served on a foothigh table in the new library. We all sat on the floor, and in the center of the table was a little fenced-in yard with two baby rabbits and eighteen small chickens. The walls and ceiling of the room were hung with Turkey red made up like a tent, in the top of which hung two flaming Roman lamps. On the sides of the tent were tiger and bear and leopard

6

November

1910.

skins, which Harry had rented for the occasion, and other skins and skulls lay about on the stone floor. It was a dreamlike scene for us all, but especially for those who saw it for the first time when they were escorted in to dinner.

In such productions Andrew had proved an apt pupil of Mrs. Gardner herself, whose parties were also redolent with bizarrerie on occasion.

As she had written him on September 26, 1908: The Archbishop is coming to the Thanksgiving dinner, and everything will be as mediaeval as we can make it - Falernian wines and Eels! Only not the latter please! But we will have a poison ring! & wind up with a Gregorian Chant.

While Harry Sleeper soon became a close confidant of Mrs . Gardner (and eventually one of the seven trustees of the property originally cons ti tu ting the museum) , her adoration was reserved for Piatt Andrew, whose meteoric rise in the ranks of the Taft administration she followed with breathless delight. When he was appointed Director of the Mint in 1909, she wrote him: I am still thin k ing my sympathy in your work.

It is really splendid, this new position ; and so splendidly won, by your own work-, & unsought for ! As I said to Welldon this morning, I tingle with pride when I think of you.

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M ay you live long and prosper ! You i:iust always let me have a share in the glon es tha t come to you, but you can' t help yo urse lf'. fo r I w ill have a sha re in them by the bes t n ght, that of a loya l frie nd wh ich yo u know I am, for all ti me.

For Andrew, of course, it ~as a delight to be able to in trod uce his new Was hington fr iend s to Mrs. Gardner, who adorned his Red Roof fes tivities and will ingly greeted any visi tors Andre w migh t send at the Fenway Court fro nt door, a courtesy she did no t always ex tend to fello w Bosto nians. In Apri l 1911, when Sena tor Aldrich came to Bos ton to speak a t th e H o tel Somerset on beh alf of " Th e A ld rich Plan" for a central ban k, A nd rew h it upon the idea of a rranging a mee ting betwee n the Senator and H arva rd Professors T aussig and Sprag ue a t Fenway Court, and so Mrs. Gard ner found herself pres iding over a lengthy di scuss ion devoted to th e arcana of ba nking reform . Slightly more th an a year later, a fter the T aft- Roosevelt contretemp s had spli t the Republi can Par ty a t the top, And rew was for ced out of hi s pos ition as Assis tant Secretary by his superior, Treasury Secretary Fra nklin M acVeag h . Iron ically, Mrs. Gardner wa s on frie ndl y terms with M acVeagh, a Chicagoan and th ree years her sen ior. On the day afte r Andrew's depart ure was announced amid much publi c acrimony, Mrs. Ga rdner fo und herself in the company of the Secretary a t a party given by the Baya rd Thayers of Dublin, New Hampshire. She reported these events to Andrew on the evening of Jul y 4th, 1912 : I go t here yesterday P.M. just an hour befo re M acVeagh a rrived! A newspaper told me the ne ws & I was telling th e Thayers wha t I knew, when he (MacV) ca me in . Thi s ho use has been given over to reporters, & teleg rams and telephones ever since. There is a p agea nt go ing on here today . . . a t every moment we had to di scree tl y talk about the pagea nt, as MacVeagh

4

would keep coming to us. It is trying, very, for me, I can tell you.

T wo yea rs later, Andrew fou nd h imself contes ting the congressional seat Augus tus Peabody G ardner had held since 1902. In the autumn of 1913, G ardner had proclaimed his intention to relinqui sh this Six th Dis tric t seat after winning a surprise victory in the Republican gubernatorial primary. But after taki ng a pas ting from David I. W alsh in the November elections, he tho ught be tter of it, fo r the Wilson administratio n offered h im no prospect of an ambassadorship a nd Constan ce Lodge Gardner was by no mean s read y to retire to Hamilton . But Piatt Andrew, who had meanwh ile announced his ca nd idacy, was un willing to back down, and a s ti ff p rima ry fi gh t ensued. Mrs. Gardner proceeded to infuria te her in-laws by b acking Andrew again st a famil y member, but Andrew was ro undl y beaten by the incumbent that September, a defeat that left him fr ee to go off to war.

Andre w went on to fou nd the American Field Service in France, and eventually to win, and hold fo r seven terms until his death in 1936, the congress ional sea t he had vai nl y sough t in 1914.

Wh ile organizing his amb ulance service he had the copiou s and un swervi ng support of Mrs. Gardner, but unlike most of h er yo unger fri ends, she stood above the germanophobic fren zy of the time. No doubt she had a deeper perception of the hidden ra vages of the war to end wars.

She vis ited Eastern Poin t for the last time in Jul y 1922. At Andrew's behest a carillon, the first in the United States, had been installed in Gloucester's Our Lady of Good Voyage Church, and she made one of her fi nal fo rays from Fenwa y Court to hear th e bells played for the fi rst time. But the costume party days were over.

And so was the belle epoque.

Andrew Gray

Berenson and Mrs. Gardner:

The Museum Years

During his undergraduate years at Harvard Bernard Berenson was introduced to Isabella Stewart Gardner, perhap s by Charles Eliot Norton, and the resulting friendship affected both their fortun es, particularly their ambitions. From the long correspondence beginning with the letter written at th e time of his departure for Europe in 1887, one foll ows the development of the connoisseur and the collector, but more than an ything the richness of their lives. Th e first part of their corres pondence (1887 -1900) was the source of the article " Berenson and Mrs . Gardner : The Venetian Influence" (Fenway Court 1972).

On the last day of the nineteenth century, Mrs . Gardner wrote to Berenson in Florence : The year has nearly gone. It is eleven o'clock.

Before the new year comes I send you a greeting, and good wishes - and to your wife too I send them. May all happiness be yours.

At midnight the trumpets are to sound on the steps of the State House; dear Edward Everett Hale is to make a prayer. I shall go up there in half an hour. But it all makes me terribly sad . May the New Year make us, as a nation, kinder, better and more generous to those who are weaker than we. And may it make us as individuals the same.

I didn' t mean to say this when I began, only to wish you both joy and happiness .

Berenson meanwhile was writing his first letter of the year, as he would for many years to come, to Mrs. Gardner : A H appy New Year, & New Century, & may you live on & on to see its now faint crescent increased to the full.

The first letter I write in this new century, & the first as a married man is to you. The wedding passed off with les s annoyance than I dared hope. It took place in the chapel of our villa, & was over in about five minutes, altho' we did have two pries ts to officiate, both of us you see being nominal catholics. After the

5

Fenway Court, 1903.

breakfast Buonanicci played to us divinely.

H ave yo u ever h eard him ? In his own way he almost is unri valled .

Berenson, thirty-six, had embarked on a marriage that wo uld end wi th his wife's death in 1945, in the house, Villa I Tatti, in which he would live until his own death in 1959, and was about to realize the special fame and fortune which he sought. Mrs. Gardner in the midst of building Fenway Court, the museum which she and her husband had planned and in which Berenson had no small part, was soon to reach her own hour of triumph. Within twelve months the museum was incorporated, and in 1901 she moved in . On the even ing of January first 1903 Fenway Court's spectacular opening, which is n ow legendary, took place.

Since her husband's death Mrs. Gardner had been buying heavily, including a number of architectural fra gments acq uired on a trip to Europe in 1899, and these, along with certain pieces of sculpture, wo uld be incorporated in the building. As decisions were m ade during construction, and as Mrs. Gardner, wh o was often absent and frequent ly ch anged her mind, 6

had to make them, the museum soon became very costly. " But you know that after her husband died . . . she discovered that things cost money," Berenson was later quoted as saying.

Prior to Jack Gardner's death, he had managed everything including the $1,700,000 left by her father in 1891. With another $z,300,ooo from her husband she had the courage to build the museum, and add significantly to the collection but never would she acquire as much or as rapidly again.

Berenson besides acting as agent for Mrs. Gardner and occasionally for others had written constantly of his work, particularly The Drawings of the Florentin e Painters. He had hoped to finish it in 1897 but the scope of the work no less than his bouts of melancholia or real illness delayed publica tion until 1903 . He wrote in February : I could not dream of coming & turning your house into a hospital & you into a nurse. The presence of an invalid is life-diminishing. A wife or m other is in duty bound to stand by, but no friend should be asked to submit to so stern a task. The doctor says I am better.

F ot. Bu rton & C.

l Tatti , Settignano, !lorence

Villa I Tatti. Postcard from Mary Berenson, 14 December 1909.

I confess I feel scarcely any improvement. I lie on my back about 20 hours a day. Everything is done for me. Quiet, perfect attendance, & fresh air. My wife does all my writing, not only my considerable correspondence, but even book-reviews, & she does all the proofreading of my elephantine book .

In one respect I feel better than for years past.

I have got over the black depression that crushed me for years.

By May he was cured and wrote triumphantly: You will be glad to hear that my book is done at last. I confess there were times when I scarcely hoped to finish it. The task was so difficult & so interminable. And why have I spent seven of the best years of life upon it?

Few people will be able to appreciate its merits, or even to give me credit for the labour I have put into it. But one works not because one wants to, but because one must.

He and his wife arrived in Newport in 1903, and proceeded to Boston which he had not seen since graduation. Mrs . Gardner made him promise that she could take him to the Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts, both in Copley

Square. She had been asked to serve on the Building Committee for the new Museum of Fine Arts and soon was fully involved in a controversy so bitter that lifelong friendships would be broken. A treatise entitled Aims and Principles was the rallying point for Mrs. Gardner and her allies, and the document stands today as the principles under which she endeavored to present her own collection. Suspicion of her among the trustees of the Boston Museum extended to fear of her snatching away pictures up for acquisition, despite evidence then and later to the contrary. It is not surprising that along with their new reputations, she and Berenson were accumulating enemies. In a letter to Mary Berenson she wrote: M isery loves company, so I ought to be glad Berenson has enemies. But he and I, need not be worried by them . Indifference has surely come to me, for I find I care so little what people say and do about me. I fancy I do care though when they talk vilely about my friends.

Berenson replied at a later date: " Apparently Jesus Christ had his enemies, & so did St. Francis. Your enemies, are one of the things that 7

John Singer Sargent in th e Gothic Room with Mrs. Fiske Wa rr en and her daug hter Rachel, 1903. The portrai t is now in th e Mu se um of Fine Ar ts, Bos ton .

at ta ch me to you. They make me think of mine - curse them!!!"

The Berensons then went to see collections in New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Chicago. At a New York dealer's he found the Degas portrait of Madame Gaujelin, which he recommended. It wa s to be one of two important Impressioni sts tha t he found , the other Manet's portrait of his mother acquired in 1910. Eventually Mrs. Gardner was given an early Matisse, and bought a little Manet portrait and several drawings by D egas . For a small group the quality was very high, but that was the extent of 8

her interest and, for this time, Berenson's in the developments taking place in France.

Although she exercised a certain frugality now, and kept only a small staff, friends were often at hand. Prichard was long a guest in an apartment on the first floor, now the Macknight Room, Sargent set up his easel in the Gothic Room which was never opened to the public, and Loeffler frequently planned entertainment in the Music Room. If she was more selective in her friends and no longer society's hostess, she enjoyed branching out, with people as much as art, but sh e complained bitterly to Berenson that being a museum director had made her life one of fas ting and prayer, starving and housework.

During 1906-07 times were better at Fenway Court, a t leas t until the crash of 1907 hit the market. Eight paintings were added to the museum. The garage was built, and as the fa.;:ade was a copy of the main gate in the Italian town of Altamura, it was not an inexpensive undertaking. She returned to Europe and visited all the places dear to her, perhaps with the premonition that sh e would not return again.

She saw the Berensons a t I Tatti and Henry James at Lamb House. She looked at museums with the eye of a critic, and summed up the Prado in a letter to I Tatti: " The Prado has such wonders. They seem better and better, and worse and worse installed and cared for. My fingers itched to be made Director."

It was in 1906 also that Berenson became associa ted with the firm of Duveen . The prospect of continuing support from sales to Mrs. Gard ner had certainly fade d. Of the five pictures which had gone to Fenway Court in 1901 he had received $1,920 (a 5째/o commission). Two more in 1902 had brought him $3 660, but for the three pictures bought in 1903 , Sargent and Joseph Smi th had acted as agents. In the next twenty years onl y nine more paintings were Berenson recommendations, other friends and occasional gifts accounted for the more than two 1

Mrs. Gardner in 1902 with a visi tor, G. D. G herardcesca, at Green Hill, Brookline.

Bernard Berenson a t I Tatti,

1904.

dozen old masters and large number of contemporary works that were added after the museum was opened.

Berenson continued to offer her first refusal on many pictures. Regretfully rejected ("You see it is always Question d' Argent"), were a Pieta by Francia (1901) now in the National Gallery, London ; a portrait of a youth by Boltraffio (1901) and a Madonna by Perugino (1902) both in the Johnson Collection, Philadelphia ; a Saint in Glory with Two Angels by Lorenzo di Credi (1902) in the Huntington Library, San Marino; and two panels by Raffaello <lei Carli, Tobias, SS. Raphael and Catherine and SS. Stephen, Apollo nia and Genesius (1911) in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge. Greater correspondence ensued over The Adoration of the Shepherds by El Greco, but in the end it too was refused and went to the Metropolitan Museum, New York.

The one painting Mrs. Gardner craved over all others was a Madonna by Raphael. Writing in 1902 she asked, " How are you & how does my A No 1. Raphael Madonna get on?" and received a lecture in response: You ask " how does my A No. 1 Raphael Madonna get on?" No t very well I fear. A Raphael that is completely autograph & in good condition is as good as hopeless. I make no doubt very attractive pictures passing themselves off as Raphael are to be had, but nothing real. So if possible try to rest contented with the two Raphaels you have already, & turn your a ttention to something no less great if not greater.

And again five years later : Last Dec. you told me you had a sum laid away for the purchase of Raphaels, Michelangelos, etc. etc. Now Isabella I beg you to believe that there are no pictures by these masters to be had. I tell you & I know. The only real Raphael in private possession that I built hopes on, the Panshanger one is absolutely not for sale . What have I not done to get it for you, but all to no purpose.

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Portrait of a Man by Andrea de! Castagna.

National Ga llery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection.

A Woman in Green and Crimson by Piero de! Pollaiuolo. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Berenson went on to recommend that she use her savings to purchase the portrait of Elena Grimaldi by Van D yck (now in the National Gallery, Wash ington, D.C.) which she had inquired about for a " friend" in a letter of September I907. Her response was emphatic: I laugh and I laugh to think of all you say about my getting the Van Dyke. It is not even to be dreamed of for me - and I don't think any A merican will buy it now. The times are really mon strously bad . My " friend" is Frick, and he wo n't think of it for that price. And he h as got some fine things, and he is learning in every way.

Among Frick's purchases in I915 was the 5. Francis in Ecstasy by Giovanni Bellini of which both Berenson and Mary had written enthusiastically, though not expectantly, three years before. They had seen it on view at Coln aghi' s in London and Berenson felt that "the sublime Giovanni Bellini . . . is the only very great work of art that has appeared on my horizon for a long time," while Mary's praise was even more ardent.

O ccasionally Mrs . Gardner's competitive instinct was aroused as at the time of the Kann Collection sale in I907. Berenson wrote at great length after visiting Duveen Brothers urging her to buy the Portrait of a Ma n by Castagna (National Gallery, Washington, D .C.), the Miracle of 5. Zenobius by Benozzo Gozzoli (Berlin Museum) , and A W oman in Green and Crimson

by Piero de! Pollaiuolo. Mrs. Gardner immediately cabled for the Pollaiuolo but her interest in the Castagna led her into conflict with J.' Pierpont Morgan . Since, according to Berenson, Duveen was under considerable obligation to Morgan who financed Duveen's purchase of the Kann Collection, the Castagna went to him, leaving Mrs. Gardner predictably furious . " I don't care for people who sing differently, different days." By I909, however, she was temporarily reconciled with Duveen and, on Berenson's recIO

The Chinese Loggia and votive stele, 1926.

ommendation, bought a della Robbia bust of a young lady, now considered nineteenth century.

Several years later when the dealer was anxious to place a Crucifixion by Piero della Francesca, Berenson advised that " Mr. Frick or Mrs. Gardner is the person for it." In this case negotiations were carried on directly by Duveen, but with no success. (It then passed through two hands before going to the Frick Collection.)

Just prior to the First World War Berenson and Mrs. Gardner became very interested in Oriental art. Writing that if he "were young or at least well" he would " chuck everything & go to China," he proposed several objects with the note: " Now, you must promise, to save all your m oney & let me make you as fine a Chinese

collection as you have of Italian . I can do it for you I am sure, if only you will trust me, & second me ." After the purchase of a Chinese votive stele in 1914 he made it clear that no longer would he take charge of all the details of shipping: I am willing to do much to please you but one thing I can not do, put the stele in my pocket & fetch it for you in an ocean greyhound, & another thing I will not do, go to the U.S . consul to arrange about the papers. Tha t must be done by your friend Robert, & it is fo r you to give him precise & ample instructions.

In July Mrs . Gardner wrote of her wish for " more Chinese masterpieces," but by year end the war and the expense of renovations - the 11

VIiia J Tall! · .S<!lliAnono ·

~lorl'nu

Postcard from Bernard Berenson, 4 January 1915.

Spanish Cloister and Tapestry Room were created out of the Music Room - had intervened and changed her mood.

Alas, alas. We are in great financia l dumps here. Calumet and Hecla again passes its dividend . I am struggling to pay painters, carpenters, etc. for the six months work here, and I am being hounded . I reluctantly return the photograph and the elevations of the beautiful Chinese statue . It cannot be for me.

Thereafter Berenson's recommendations became accordingly infrequent.

Not surprisingly, the Berenson s had already acquired good things and in time would leave a very handsome, personal collection and library to Harvard. " [BB] tries to have only first-rate Eastern stuff [in his own collection] - to Italians, of course, we're more lenient," wrote Mary, to which Berenson added, " Dear Freer, there is a collector after my own heart. . . ." He later reflected, " Of course it is the ense mble that counts. I flatter myself that as furniture & decoration our works of art help to make a pleasant enough home for people of our tastes & pursuits ."

Over the years Mrs. Gardner's life h ad been increasingly quiet while the Berensons were traveling more than ever : to England to see Mary's family, touring with friend s around Italy to look at pictures, motoring in France with Edith Wharton and days with dealers in Paris and London . The letters come from St. Moritz, Bad Kissingen, Versailles, the A lhambra, Wady Haifa, from great hotels and splendid houses everywhere. The yea r 1908 saw them on a grand tour of the United States, entertained ceaselessly, sought after by Morgan, Widener, Archer Huntington, Altman and lesser collectors up and down 12

the East Coast. He was introduced to Theodore Roosevelt as the greates t critic of Italian Art in the world " & while I was smiling the deprecating fatuous smile that one always pins on, on such occasions the President pleasantly remarked that he knew all about Mr. Berington . . . . " In Washington, Berenson continued, " We are as elsewhere quite out of it, only a little more so. Conservative anarchists of our type do not easily find playfellows. But Henry Adams is a great resource & his circle does or does not circumscribe us also." Both at home and abroad, Berenson fou nd people indispensable and his letters are full of references to a succession of mutual friends : Henry Adams, Ralph Curtis, John Singer Sargent, Henry James, Edith Wharton, and a host of others.

We are in the midst of our "season" & as I am as weak as a feather I feel very tired . . . . I love sociability, it excites & stimulates me, & while I am it, I seem to feel no fatigue. The more dearly do I have to pay for it afterwards .

With this Mrs . Gardner wholeheartedly agreed for she too demanded stimulating company: " The people that chatter and pass are diverting, and nearly always worthwhile for a short time."

During the war years, and after Mrs. Gardner suffered a stroke and was bedridden in 1919 the correspondence was sparse. But as the Berensons prepared to visit again•in 1921 the flow of letters picked up. After returning to Europe Berenson wrote one of his most intimate letters: Isabella, I am p er forza a reformed character - none the better for that. I have become painfully aware that with almost vanishingly rare exceptions, women are time-wasters & men bores. I have to spend so much of my day just resting that I am at present in fright-

Bernard Berenson. Postcard from Mary Berenson, 17 December 1919.

ful fidgets about the few hours that I can employ. I am so jealous of them that I waste them. From this exasperated state I must recover, but I doubt whether I shall ever again cease from hearing Time's winged chariot hastening near, & be a care free loafer. My greatest joy is just looking, looking, looking until indeed I become the thing I look at. When I stop looking I want to gather information about the object I have been looking at. I have grown as greedy as a glutton for INFORMATION. I have seriously reached the years when, if ever, I must learn some few things that are so, instead of teaching so much that is not so - as you th is wont to do . " What a solemn old owl" you will say, rightly.

For you, Beloved Isabella, endless affection.

Her response was lively and sympathetic, but not unconscious of their notoriety : There's no getting away from i t - you are one of Florence's sights. I've nothing to tell you except that I've just had two fascinating Hallowe'en cards sent to me because I am one of the sights of Fenway Court; .. .

They began in 1887 on very different levels and from very different backgrounds but now addressed each other as equals. Each became a celebrity early, and in time a legend. Books, art, music and gardens they shared in common which was perhaps more a reflection of the age, an age of travel and entertainment, today only partially perceived. Behind the sophistication was a child-like quality - an ideal world which they both sought and toward which their spouses helped them struggle. Berenson in another letter of this period remarks that one can live anywhere with these three : one's friends, one's thoughts, and one's dreams. Yet the most striking parallel is their creations - where, in fact, they did live.

When Mrs. Gardner died in 1924 her will endowed Fenway Court and stipulated that the general arrangement of the collection remain the

same. The museum which she designed, built, endowed and so circumscribed, has attracted increasing numbers of visitors. Berenson left I Tatti to Harvard University and today students following in hi s footsteps use the library and photographs and work and relax surrounded by his collection. Both of their houses flourish, each imbued with the personality of the creator. But neither Mrs . Gardner nor Berenson would have succeeded to the same degree without this friendship which contributed so much to their lives and now to the lives of so many more.

Rollin van N. Hadley Frances L. Preston

13

Some Correspondence of ]\l[atfhew Stewart Prichard and Isabella Stewart Gardner

In the late 1 inter of 1q14 Isabella Stewart Gardner received a letter from Pari s which began: Some Fren h journalist ha s recent! played a trick on a number of senators who hold different political ie1 s from those advocated by the paper for 1 hich the journalist works. He invented a Fren hman, gave him the name Hegesi ppe Simon, made him a democrat and a patriot, and represented that he belonged to the constituen y of each senator to whom he addressed a letter. He told each senator that it 1 as proposed t ere t a s tatue to H 'gesippe Simon in some small town of the senator's department, and invited the senator's name as a contributor adding that no money would be e pected to be subs ribed by the senator, he would be put forward as a subscriber but need not put his hand in his pocket. Finally he invited the se nator to be present at the unveiling of the s tatue and to make an add ress.

I am told that all the senators involved fell victim s to the tri k, some e pressing their surprise that no statue had yet been set up to a man as famous as Hegesippe Simon, all agreed to deliver speeches, a few asked for some details s11ppleme11taires about Hegesippe's life but most professed omp lete acquaintance with the facts of hi s areer. My case is a little [like] that of the sena tors. If you will encourage me to the point of sendi ng me a line every now and again, that will release the spring of my correspondence whicp will produce you a letter, if you care to receive it.

This communication, written from 4, Rue de l' Abbe-de-l' Epee, Paris, on 9 February 1914, was fro m a va lued friend of a dozen years' standi ng who ea rl ier had described h imself as " M at thew Stewart Prichard, born the fourth day of January, 1865, 2 1/i miles to the eas t of Bris tol, in the

county of Somerset, Engla nd ; hour, I believe, about 6 A.M." Educated at New College, O xford , the 1 riter had become a barrister, but in 1894 he joined the household at Lewes in Su ssex of Edward Perry arren (1860-1928), an expa triated Bostonian who devoted h is life to stud y and colle ting of classica l antiquities, and s urrounded himself with like-minded frie nds. In th is band of brothers, the tall, spare, almos t ascetic Prichard kep t accou nts straight, experimented with photography and vase-cleani ng, s tudied chemistry to dis over me thods of removi ng depos its from antique marbles, and whi le shaving ta ught himself Tu rkish a nd A rabic by mea ns of wordlists stuck in the frame of his bathroom mirror.

Another of the gro up recalled him as " a kind, rather grave and studio us man ever wi th a book of some ki nd," q uite capable of wea ring a Turkish fez in the stree ts of Lewes "impervious to the jibes and jeers of the locals," salaaming on en teri ng or leaving a room, and giving " the impression that he had a priva te wo rking arrangeme n t with Allah."

Through his extrao rd inar y knowledge of the Eur opean a rt market, Edward W arren was able to obtain for the Museum of Fine A rts in Bos ton, of which h is older bro ther, Samuel Dennis Warren (1 852-1910), had been a trustee since 1882, the beginning of a great collection of classical art. Prichard, who was responsible for the details of sh ipment of these obj ects to Boston, followed them himsel f soon af ter Samuel Dennis Warren became the th ird president of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1901. Although Prichard's first post was as Secretary to the Director, he became Assis tant Director in 1903, and was closely associ ated wi th President Warren in the planning of the present build ing of the museum, begun in 1907.

The writing desk in the Macknigh t Room with a ske tch of Pri cha rd by ]. B. Potter, 1905.

I first heard of Prichard in the summer of 1968 through a letter from his friend, the late Henry Maxwell Andrews of Ibstone House, near High Wycombe, Bucks, who mentioned Prichard's friendship with Mrs. Gardner and OkakuraKakuzo, and told me something of his later life as a student of Bergson and Byzantine art. As I was then assembling material for my Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, A Centennial Histor y, published in 1970, I inquired at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and learned that some 285 letters from Prichard to Mrs . Gardner, written between 1902 and her death in 1924, were indeed preserved there. George Stout most generously put them at my disposal. They proved of remarkable assistance to me in reconstructing events at the museum in the years when Prichard was on the staff.

Matthew Prichard was not every Bostonian's cup of tea, but he and Mrs. Gardner understood each other the moment they met. From the day

in February 1902 when she showed him the still unfinished Fenway Court, a close friendship began that ended only with her death . Although they met often, Prichard wrote her more than sixty letters during the next five years, which became one of my major sources for the history of the Museum of Fine Arts in this period. I wished to quote extensively from them. The Trustees of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the owners of the letters, gave me their permission, but there still remained the question of the literary rights. Prichard had been dead for a third of a century. As he never married, it was not clear who his heirs might be. Enquiries b y letter produced no clues. Finally, being in London in the summer of 1969, I went to Somerset House to look up his will. From there I went to 7 King' s Bench Walk, Temple, in search of the solicitors who h ad filed the will. The successor to that firm referred me to another in Stafford House, around the corner in Norfolk Street. In 15

One of several photographs of Venice from Prichard, ca . 1907.

no time at all I found Mr. Arnold Rust, who knew all about the Prichard family. As a result of this perfect Lord Peter Wimsey morning, in which I discovered a " missing Heir" in the course of ninety minutes, I was soon in correspondence with Prichard's only surviving relative, a great-nephew, Charles William Stewart, Esq., of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. As Mr. Stewart generously gave me permission to publish any of his great-uncle's writings, I was able to quote freely from them in my seventh chapter, entitled " The Battle of the Casts."

In planning for the present Museum of Fine Arts in Huntington A venue, there arose a major difference of opinion about the value of plaster casts. Prichard and Mrs. Gardner loathed them, while Edward Robinson, a classical archaeologist who had become Director in 1902, loved them.

A major brouhaha broke out in 1905 when Robinson, feeling somewhat out in the cold because of the close collaboration between his President and his Assistant Director, resigned and moved on to the Metropolitan Museum in New York . In consequence Matthew Prichard was in January 1906 demoted to the unexpected position of Bursar. Six months later he left the Museum of Fine Arts entirely. Similarly in 1907 Samuel Dennis Warren declined re-election as President.

16

Prichard went to Europe after leaving the museum. Mrs. Gardner, who was making her last trip abroad in the summer of 1906, wrote from Paris on 17 Aueust to Mrs. Bernard Berenson: " The mysterious and mystic Prichard is here.

His 2 months vacation is absorbed in picture study." On returning to Boston in the autumn, Prichard became Secretary of a Committee on the Utilization of Museums of Art by Schools and Colleges, which was based at Simmons College. Through the academic year 1906-07 h e wrestled with the inconclusive and unsympathetic labors of this group. Finding this occupation intolerable, he left Boston for Europe in June 1907, never to return. Although he and Mrs . Gardner never saw each other again, they remained in constant correspondence. The more than two hundred letters that he wrote her between 1907 and 1924 are a series that I hope some day to publish in full. This article offers only the briefest sampling.

From Venice Prichard wrote on 4 August 1907: It is a month since they let off two or three rockets at sea and an American minister told blasphemies in a speech and an American artist was puerile in public, to record the memory of a great occasion, and I am here where they know what a girandola is, and where the patriarch celebrates mass with nine assistant

bishops and where Bellini makes no effort toward funniness . It takes some time to settle down to the new or old point of view, during which process silence and sleep are adjutant.

He wandered about north Italy for fifteen months until, finding it difficult to obtain the books he required, he went to Paris in the autumn of 1908, settled in a little hotel in the Quartier Latin and " assumed the role of a real student by taking the first steps toward obtaining a reader's seat in the Bibliotheque Nationale."

Having read of the death of Charles Eliot Norton, he wrote Mrs. Gardner on 11 November 1908:

He lives in Italy still and he can never be forgotten in America where his power even in inducing many to see foreign countries would be a great reward for a life's work. I hope the end was like the calm finale of some great symphony, passing into silence at a point you cannot indicate and with its last chord vibrating in the hearer's heart. You have often recited your love for him and his affection for you; but there is no reason for grief at this point, for you have not known the work until it is completed and then it is a deathless thing, the finished circle which nothing can break.

Our troubles are the banks of our river made by ourselves, as rivers make their own banks and impose thus irrevocable conditions upon themselves . But were it not for banks the rivers would be all over the plain and doing much damage, whereas now they fertilize the land and bear pleasant companies of singers to enjoy the views had from their surfaces. It seems impossible to face our difficulties, but, as you say, they get behind us in time, and possibly in the process we have helped the world along.

In Paris Prichard began reading philosophy with a French friend, tried his hand at drawing, and came to know Henri Matisse. Prichard's "shadowy graspings after truths" increasingly disenchanted him with museums, or, indeed, the

collecting or possession of objects. He wrote Mrs. Gardner on 2 August 1909: I admit that the only way to treat ancient pictures is the one you adop t, to employ them not as a collection but as ornaments, provided they happen to express your sentiments to your satisfaction. It is the only way to make them live, to allow them a continued lease of life. You rest satisfied that having done their work for you, after you have extended to them a life they would not have enjoyed in a museum, they may sink into oblivion and cease from activity. We know well enough that they will have lived far longer than their authors ever expected, and are surely entitled to rest like their creators .

Earlier, on 18 June 1 909 he had passed on "a ban mot made half by my French philosopher and half by me on the scientific arrangement of Chinese porcelains in the Louvre: - Le gardemeuble ne se rend pas. - I wonder if it will be applicable to the instalment in the new museum at Boston!"

In response to Mrs . Gardner's account of the opening of the new Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Prichard on 26 November 1909 expressed his conviction: . . . that vivification is out of the question and that it is best for it to fall into a state of dignified repose. It is nobody's fault. I am personally satisfied that the modem museum is based on a false assumption; the title museum of art - has misled people and that in the direction of thinking that museums have to do with art while their concern is learning.

The expression work of art is very crafty and deceitful. You will agree when I say, change it to work of artists and when I add that art begins where the artist disappears. The artist is the man who sees that our relations to life are unsatisfactory; he introduces rhythm into them by music here and architecture there, by designing this dress, planting that garden, painting a wall, fashioning our plates, arrang-

17

ing our ceremonies - everywhere the free current of the spirit in its form of rhythm . We are awa re of a deeper, more exalted, more glorious and joyous life. I move more easily on the bo ulevard, I think more freely before the cathedral, I h ave nobler associ ations when talking to the well dressed lady, the atmosphere of the frescoed classroom tightens up the strings of my soul, but in that golden atmosphere I am unconsciou s of the artist, my attention is more abundantly directed to the matter in hand, whatever that may be, for the artist has withdra wn and is busy else where. Now hack out that fre sco and smuggle it into a museum, room 16; pin up the dress in the textile department ; put the plate between two o thers by the same art is t and too oft an imitation, and where are you? You are no longer in life as ac tion or thought, you are no longer actuated by heightened sentiment, but you are in science seeking for identities and framin g concepts and wishing sentiment at the devil.

Then is the time to gather things under the names of artists, and classify and specify things which have been taken out of their milieu where they were not things but undefined parts of great unities. It is the same story at the concert where music has been dragged from its real service to be examined under the microscope - as if it remained art all the while ! Cut my arm off and it is no longer Prichard's arm or anything but a rejected dead thing. Thought and ac tion can be very hideous. Along comes the artist and by his operations spiritualizes them. After the artist comes the man of science who cuts it all up into morsels and thinks that each of the pieces is a part of the whole; but he forgets that the whole had a life of its own, an existence which he h as destroyed in h is operation.

The museum repeats the action of the family that cuts open the goose to see how it laid the golden eggs! It is all very interesting to the man of science though he will never learn what art is by his method. He - begins by chopping it up into what he calls 'objects of art,' - though such an entity as an 'object of 18

art' does not exist in the universe, save as an abs traction - and he guesses and guesses what is art in terms of objects of art, and he may continue to guess in that direction for ever.

Then he tries to induce the people to interest themselves in his objects, and he tries to teach children about them - I saw it was impossible and wrong after I had been ten days at Simmons College - and then he builds a great mausoleum - here in Europe people are beginning to see through the fallacy, I have seen mu seums compared to doss houses (where you pay three sous a night for a bed) and morgues and prisons - and he cannot understand why he is unhappy and discontented, wh y the people don' t fall in with his hopes but will insist on saying that they are all nak ed, and why he runs off to the circus in the evening . I can answer the last question. He feels he h as need of a pleasant evening and he seeks it where artists have reconciled it to him.

Prichard's decision to enroll at the Sorbonne was reported to Mrs. Gardner on 6 October 1 909 ; so at the age of 44 he became " a humble pupil before the great professors. " During a week in London, before actually enrolling (he wrote on 12 November) , " I stood once again in St Paul's and read Donne's epitaph where he says that he waits in his ashes 'him whose name is the orient,' and I thought, Well, I think I am by your side waiting too. Thus it is that I have begun in odd moments to look at Byzantine coins, and at the Sorbonne I hope to listen to some lectures on its history." His interest in Byzantium was further enhanced by the friendship of Mr. and Mrs . Royall Tyler, who were then living on the Quai de Bourbon. On 5 December, after a month at the Sorbonne, for the first time did he speak to any of his fellow students. " We are so many in number that the classes are very impersonal. " It was more than a year before Bergson began to lecture at the College de France. On 18 December 1910 Prichard wrote:

11

PARIS. -

La Sorbo1111e, Cv11/erence de .\f. le Pro}"ssrio Du.nos

Postcard from Prichard, ca.

PAL> .

1910.

He speaks once a week on each of two subjects, La Personnalite, that is, What are we? and on the philosophy of Spinoza. Three quarters of an hour before the lecture begins the hall is full and the doors are held by those inside to prevent the catastrophe which would be entailed were more of the public admitted; many must take their seats two hours before he begins: I find I can find a seat near a distant window where breathing is difficult but possible if I arrive an hour early. He speaks clearly, fluently and impersonally without self-assurance but in a manner which convinces you at once that you are at last face to face with reality .... He is followed breathlessly by the most critical of audiences, and you have the feeling that you are preparing in that room in company with a great teacher the future of the world.

In those Paris years Byzantium, Bergson, and Matisse became Prichard's guiding lights.

Prichard interspersed the nearly six years of his stay in Paris with various visits to London, Germany, Italy, and even Scandinavia. He was constantly striving to develop a " system" that would relate art to life. In March 1911 he attempted to organize his thoughts in the form of a twenty-four-page letter to Denman W. Ross, in the course of which he observed:

Mrs. Gardner's undertaking is real, in the sense that the disposition of her house does actually sustain and facilitate her action in life. For anyone except Mrs. Gardner personally or Mrs. Gardner's personal visitors, Fenway Court is but another museum. If Mrs. Gardner's task were to be regarded as vain, then indeed the battle of objects is lost.

Substantially that became Prichard's conclusion.

As Henry M. Andrews observed to me: "Prichard was full of valuable perception but he tended to be so extreme that he regarded the truths which he perceived as being the whole Truth. He was unselfish and very impressive.

He was in fact a prophetic personality who judged other men' s salvation in terms of their conversion to his view of reality. He became more and more exclusive so that towards the end of his life he thought of only a very few works of art indeed, including one or two Byzantine coins, as perfect expressions of art."

The death of Samuel Dennis Warren on 19 February 1910 moved Prichard deeply. In my Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, A Centennial History, I printed on pages 212-17 his letters to Mrs. Gardner on that loss. The death of Okakura-Kakuzo some three years later was another major blow . On 18 September 1913

Prichard wrote to Mrs. Gardner from Jena, during a summer trip to Germany and Scandinavia: Two mouthpieces of Life, Okakura and Sam Warren, gone . I have never arrived at understanding why Life robbed us of one and now the other is gone too. It needs a lively faith not to fall into the chasm s their loss makes, but there is faith and shall be to the last moment.

On his return to Paris later in the autumn, he was comforted to have the company of Mrs .

Samuel D . Warren. He began a letter from 4 Rue de L' Abbe-de-l'Epee on 4 November 1913: Dearest Mrs Gardner, How can I thank you enough for thinking of me at the moment when you celebrated in your Music Room the ceremonies in memory of Okakura, not of his death but of his life, for our actions should be a constant fume of incense before his intention ? Mrs Warren had received a beautiful account of the moment from Mrs Elliot which she read to me. I do not know how far you can hold together persons who were interested in his thought, to no great extent perhaps, for his point of view was always secondary to their own . I should think that his real feeling lay very close to that represented by modern French philosophy, that was very strongly my impression when he was here two years ago.

Prichard continued with an extended comment on Bergson's views, concluding the letter with a report on his other French admiration.

Matisse is very lively : I was in his studio yesterday where there were as many as twelve people. He has fini shed a great portrait of his wife and two other pictures lately ; he has done some good etchings too. Did I tell you that he is doing a bookplate too for my friends at Oxford? He has made one or two sketches for it, he thinks he will be able to express in it a feeli ng he has already found utterance for but never to the point of conveying the full measure of its intensity.

20

On 6 November Matisse made three pencil drawings of Mrs. Warren. The following day Prichard wrote her a remarkable letter, reporting his conversations with Matisse concerning the artist's task of not only registering a perception but of reading the depths of the subject's personality and making the drawing a conduit that takes hold of the current of life itself and hands it on to the observer. This extraordinary document was printed in 1974 by the Gehenna Press for Philip Hofer, with reproductions by the Meriden Gravure Company of the drawings which are now in the Museum of Fine Arts. The drawings apparently caused a flutter in Boston dovecots, for on 24 March 1914 Prichard wro te Mrs . Gardner: So they condemn Matisse's drawing of Mrs Warren, but, dear me, how ready they are with their criticisms! I would as soon criticize the Differential Calculus! Must we think that we are the equals of all our contemporaries?

That, of course, is our axiom. Who is there who does not criticize Bergson?

On 26 June 1914, at the beginning of an unfortunately-timed summer visit to Germany, Prichard wrote : Matisse made a little etching of me the other day when I happened to be in his studio and h e has now offered to put at my disposal eleven or twelve of the copies which have been made from his plate. The prints are only to be 15 in number. It is a simple drawing of very few lines. I have accep ted his kindness and have mentioned you as one of my friends to whom I intend to offer an example.

You will receive this little gift on my return to Paris - I write these lines from Strassburg, though I began the letter at Paris - which will not take place until later in the year.

From Freiburg on 12 July he wrote: I did not tell you, I think, that Matisse has just finished a wonderful portrait of a girl

Matthew Stewart Prichard, 1914 by Henri Matisse, etchi ng, 10/15; 7 15/16 x 5 15/16 in.

Short Gallery.

of whom he made a drawing which was ordered of him in consequence of the one he made of Mrs Warren. My friends have seen it in a later stage than it had reached when I left Paris, and a later stage means a completely new result. You think the picture is finished and find next time a completely new one. Nothing is the same except the feeling, composition, colour, drawing all new. While creating he works with lightning rapidity in that way, starting with something which is a like-ness and going then farther and farther from the like-ness into evocation and returning a little toward like-ness at the end. Every stage is convincing.

I am in Germany and reading the new edition of Mozart's letters, but I am not yet half-way through them . At least I have found the passage where he says that the organ is the king of instruments, a truth I satisfied myself of independently.

More than five years passed before the Matisse etching of Prichard reached Fenway Court. For many months after the outbreak of the World War, Prichard's friends had no idea what had become of him. Mrs. Royall Tyler, in a letter written to H. R. Walker from Budapest on 8 March 1938 (of which her son William Royall Tyler very kindly furnished me a copy) recalled: The outbreak of the war overtook Prichard in Germany. One night he was standing alone on a bridge [at Baden-Baden], trying to plumb the depth of the misery and horror that were about to overcome the world . In his pocket were letters from his brother, then a Colonel in the British army; from a young French friend, who was doing his military service at Langres, and another letter, from an acquaintance in Egypt. Prichard had no passport, for no one carried a passport in those days. He was apprehended as a foreigner, and the letters found on him appeared to be unusual enough to fasten a terrible suspicion upon him. He passed that first night in captivity with a 22

group of other foreigners rounded up by the military police, and in the expectation of being shot at dawn. He never cared to speak of that night's vigil; and knowing him, I think that the fear and bewilderment of his companions were what hurt him most, then, and afterwards.

Prichard was eventually transported to the Englanderlager Ruhleben, a concentration camp improvised in a trotting racecourse at Spandau, outside Berlin. His fellow-prisoners were Englishmen of diverse ages and levels of education.

Henry Maxwell Andrews, for example, was Prichard's junior by nearly thirty years, having had only one year at Oxford before he was netted into Ruhleben. Soon after the outbreak of war, Mrs. Gardner made inquiries through diplomatic channels about Prichard's whereabouts. Early in November the United States Ambassador in Berlin was in communication with him to such purpose that a long letter of Prichard's, begun on the fourth, safely reached Fen way Court. This remarkable document begins: When the veil which surrounds us is pierced it is to let through good tidings of love; we are all sustained on this stream of affection which passes from one to another and upholds all. At first we are stained, then soaked and finally flooded and preserved by this movement of Life ....

My situation is one of complete spiritual assurance and physical uncertainty, not that there is any bodily danger, far from it, we are well enough treated, but we remain prisoners for all that, and the morrow is out of our control. .. .

The experience is the greatest adventure in a life which has not been deprived of incident. I have learned how infinitely more difficult it is to live than to die, how nil nisi divinum stabile est, caetera fumus, and how necessary the trial is for my development. I have no doubt more spiritual combing out is in store for me; but more would be impossible had I not first been submitted to this. It carries on

precisely what I have studied in Paris and confirms all that I have learnt. Fear fades away in the dawning of real knowledge which points steadily to the new day which I have long since foreseen.

I am not alone, there are others here, many wonderful and growing daily, learning to look at life from within instead of from without.

You see it in their faces which instead of reflecting an outer source of light are like lampshades cheerily illumined from the heart. May they become flaming torches and burning souls!

Toward the end Prichard wrote: Will you please tell my friends of me and say to Mrs Warren particularly how noble Royall Tyler and his wife have been to me durin g all this time . It is not in their minds alone that they are distinguished, they are geniuses of the heart as well. Matisse h as sent me a message that he is trying to work; it will be one of my first actions after my liberation to send you the copy I have promised you of his etching of me.

In the nearly four years that Prichard spent as a prisoner, he was only able to send one letter directly to Mrs . Gardner (28 November 1915), but she had received earlier his letter of 14 March 1915 to Joseph C. Grew of the United States Embassy in Berlin, and a copy of the first letter (10 August 1915) that Prichard had been able to send to Royall Tyler in Paris. In the letter to Grew, Prichard wrote: It is established for me that there can be no life more entrancing than that of a monastery where the ordinary motives of selfishness are absent. Ruhleben is simply that and peopled with hundreds who were not particularly concerned with abstract problems .... it is investigation into the nature of reality, spiritual and material, which particularly excites attention here. A lecture of an hour and a half is followed with breathless attention in a room

where the escape of coal smoke makes it impossible to see from one end to another, where four hundred men are gathered together and all cold and wet. I am entirely assured of cooperative effort in thought, and convinced that the hope of many of us to work together, and that is still the intention of my French, and, I hope, may [sic] English friends as well, is the most practical scheme in life. The general tendency of the camp thought is religious and philosophical ; I have a dozen of friends here who prove that to me. . . . Tell Mrs. Gardner that. Tell her too that it is a commonplace for one to give his last crust and last money and last strength to another. A little bootblack (we have every trade at work here), stopped me one day to tell me that if I had no money, he wished me to know that he would clean my boots for nothing. Another Englishman, I speak of the English, took me aside three days ago to give me a piece of chocolate, for he had learned that I was a vegetarian - Ruhleben is Civitas Dei. I have never felt more ashamed or as ashamed of myself as here when I contemplate the nobility of my comrades . I know what there is in France too and h ave no fear for the future of life. The current life here is one of consecration.

The letter to Royall Tyler, a copy of which was promptly sent on to Mrs. Gardner at Fenway Court, begins: At last it is possible for me to send word to you and your wife and child of my well-being.

Up ti! now my correspondence was cut down to a point where I could refer to you in a paragraph with six others, but our censor, moved by the spring of love which is in his heart, wis hes yo u all to be allowed to hear more fully of me, and now gives me permission to write at length. Is he not blessed to be in the way of feeling the response from our souls?

Thanks to him. Now thanks to you for all you and Matisse have done for me and us, for the food you have sent us has been shared

23

with others at our table where in an upper room, videlicet a loft, seven of us make our picnic three times a day. What good things you have sent us from Paris, and what draughts you have made on you r heart which will not give out and on your purse which naturally will, for what demands are not being made upon it? I do not pay you with my love in return, for that you possess already; I think rather that you have helped us to build up a little focus of affection which will not be dissipated by our liberation.

One or two will certainly be able to tell you personally what your bounty has meant for u s all. We are very busy. Let your wife know that by helping others learn Italian we have reached a point where four of my pupils are to expound Dante in Italian and publicly, canto by canto, beginning next week. By chance I fell into this work which seems fairly firmly established by now.

In his one Ruhleben letter to Mrs. Gardner, Prichard wrote: Every day brings a sea of labour : I have never worked as unendingly. At present I have promised to prepare an Italian paper, to give a series of addresses on Art, each touching on some problem to be treated personally; I give six hours a week to study philosophy with friends and nearly thirty hours a week to Italian instruction, on one hand teaching the alphabe t, on the other commenting Dante in Italian. Besides this, I have committee work.

They won't release me as I am physically fit to be a soldier!

Finally in 1918, when Prichard was past his fifty-third birthday, he was released and allowed to return to London. In the first letter of his vita nuova (9 July 1918), he tells Mrs. Gardner more of the background of his Ruhleben teaching.

My choice would have been French, but we had numbers who knew the language perfectly and were professional teachers, it was thus that Italian fell naturally in my path .

The effort is going on still. They publish an Italian review, they act and sing, they comment on Dante and Carducci, they read and write in the language, though all the men who knew the language previously have left the Camp.

Who knows where it will end! I have heard already that partly thanks to the effort of one of our group they are to start an Italian Department at Manchester . . . . It surpasses all guessing and belief what can be accomplished by disinterested cooperation. I know that in a very few years if only we could start a civilized Ruhleben, a Ruhleben in liberty, we could produce great changes in life, but who is there to help?

I know it is that which I have wanted for twenty years. It is the monastic idea but without either its dogmatic outlook or its fatal isolation ; it is wonderful to live with people who are inspired by - not the same aim but - the same creative impulse. My feeling is partly that I have been expelled from that community, partly that I am its ambassador. My first desire is to be useful to prisoners and help on the realization of the Allied inspiration. Here again patience is very much needed. I am a stranger in England but many connected with prisoners have befriended me . . . . Mine is a strange experience; my French friends are all in France, my English friends all in Ruhleben or at the war, my American friends in America, and I am alone here. We shall see what will come of the situation.

Something soon did, for by the end of 1918, Prichard was working for the Government Committee on the Treatment by the Enemy of British Prisoners of War, with an office in the House of Lords wing of Westminster Palace, an activity that occupied him for several years to come.

In the post-war years Prichard's letters to Mrs. Gardner multiplied, although he had not seen her since he left Boston in 1907. Of the 285 letters preserved at Fenway Court, 132 are from the years 1918-24. The reason is obvious.

Mrs. Gardner was taken ill just after Christmas

Old W es tminster Bri dge, 1859 by James A.McNeill Whistler, etching, 2nd state, 2 15116 x 7 7/ 8 in. Short Gallery.

1919 and never fully recovered her strength.

From 8 letters in 1919, Prichard increased the flow to 16 in 1920, 24 in 1921, 31 in 1922, 30 in 1923, and 20 in the first half of 1924. These are

full of reports on every subject that might cheer and amuse a lonely invalid. In February 1 920 Prichard was able to send Mrs. Gardner by means of Thomas Whittemore " the little outline which Matisse made of me just before plunging into the German cauldron." On 10 April 1920 he wrote: It was very gratifying to know that you found something in the little Matisse etching. It was made in June 1914, what a time it has taken to reach the shelter which it desired during those years! As it stayed in Paris it must have heard many explosions of bombs and shell bursts from German guns . There can be no doubt in my mind that the way of the artist is to approach his problems from within, I mean from the movement of life itself and not from without. His method must correspond to an integral vision, an intuition, and not be the result of partial and analysed perception. Matisse is an artist and proceeds in the right way. As he remains unique, for artists must be very rare - as rare, of course, as great musicians or architects - his work merits attention. One day there will be greater artists, but there are many things to be changed first.

Back in the great world once more, Prichard became increasingly convinced that art and music thrived, not in the confinement of museums and concert halls, but as an integral part of daily life. A characteristic letter of 16 July

1920 evokes the beauty of London on a summer

evening and the delight of stumbling into a performance of Purcell in the open air.

Dearest Mrs Gardner, It is the most perfect evening imaginable, brilliant and cool, and the river is flo wing placidly between Lambeth Palace and the Terrace of the Houses of Parliament toward Somerset House and the magic steeples built

by Gibbs, as I lay down the papers on which I have been engaged for many days wondering how people can be either as foolish or cruel as they are. Fighting is inevitable but it is the weak, essentially weak who think, as most weak people think, that they are strong who start the madness. The strong people, those who have the only strength which counts, have no need of fighting, for their strength avails them in other ways than by means of physical force .

It was on an evening like this one that I lighted on the performance of an opera Purcell's Dido and A eneas - not long ago in Hyde Park. I paid a penny for a seat in the third row and heard for the second time in my life that most extraordinary composition.

Purcell who died in the seventeenth century was as great as Bach, and from the artistic point of view, as I understand it, greater, for h e felt deeply and did not hesitate to make us share his experience. I do not believe particularly in opera, any more than in any other isolated artistic work, but I learnt what force music, especially the human voice, can exert in the open air. The flight of starlings overhead, then of ducks, an aeroplane, late homing pigeons seemed the natural accompani-

ment of the tragedy, and you are much less distracted in natural light than in the artificial surroundings of the stage by the people around you or the doings of the other spectators .

London is wonderfully pleasant. The Park has gradually grown into a forest, the trees in the gardens of the squares are now large enough to impress you with the sense of the country ; it is only the rapid traffic which reminds you, sometimes just in time, that you must not let your thoughts wander. Curiously enough during the last week I have been spoken to by two of m y acquaintances each of whom explained to me quite independently of the other how they had just escaped running over me. I admit that I have had some extraordinary escapes ; it's all over one way or the other in a moment of time, and as far as it goes is rather exhilirating [s ic].

Remember that I am always thinking of your dear self.

Your ever affectionate, M. S. Prichard He wrote on

17

February

1921 :

They h ave spoken of museums of art as prisons of art: I think it is best to regard them as the l nvalides or Chelsea Hospital of art, where aged pensioners are put with whom some people are pleased to pass their time and chatter, but the real knowledge of war cannot be learned in such company; you must go out into the field for that.

St. l ames S treet by Ja mes A . McNeill W hi stler, etching, 4th sta te, 11 x 6 1116 in. Short Gall ery .

26

Prichard' s next venture " into the field" is described in his letter of 21 March 1921.

A week or two back I read a paper on Greek and Byzantine A rt under the following circumstances. Dame Una Pope-Hennessy to whom I had read one of my statements wanted me to repeat it for one of her friends . The one of her friends demanded that I should explain the difference to my mind of Greek & Byzantine expression before her and a few other friends, her reason being that I had given

her a small Byzantine coin. The one or two friend s turned out to be about forty and the place a large Mayfair room full of works of art. As among the audience were officials from the British Museum, the National Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum together with critics and collectors, the moment was rather a test one. Every one of them was by the nature of his position hostile to the thesis which I nailed up before them.

The discussion was opened by Lord Crawford, who "was followed by an old fashioned curator of the British Museum, frankly indignant at any new truth ." A neurologist spoke from the physiological point of view, but without touching the subject of the paper. " The women caught on naturally more readily than the men ; but all wanted to hear the paper read again, for they enjoyed something new, and loved the ensuing fight. " Prichard summarized his argument in the following paragraph: The scheme was to show that Classical ar t, whether Greek or Renaissance, cannot be art at all, for it is impossible to base art on beauty, which in spite of Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas can't be a divine principle.

On the contrary, it is quite a low form of experience and being opposed to the impulse of creation is opposed also to the will of life.

Then I showed how Byzantine Art, which was real art, was founded on the power of the affective appeal of architecture, music & ceremony which operate on us when we are inattentive, and after a shot or two at Italian painting and sculpture, ended by hinting at the imminence of a new religion, which would not be an individualist, intellectualist and really materialist religion as is institutional Christianity but a spiritual, group and creative one.

The Mayfair afternoon had its repercussions in high quarters, for Her Highness Princess Marie Louise, a first cousin of King George V, " hearing of the thing determined that she wished

to see me again, and a dinner was arranged to this end." On Christmas Eve 1921 Prichard reported that on the 19th " I gave a Byzantine coin to my friend, Princess Marie Louise, who is very Stewart, and, of course, understood in an instant." The gift was appreciated, for on 16 March 1922 Prichard wrote that " My Princess has sent me a message, that except in her bath she wears her Byzantine coin always - a most satisfactory announcement, . .. " I regret that limits of space forbid the quotation of the long and moving account of the burial of the Unknown Soldier in Prichard's letter of 4 December 1920, or many of the other remarkable things contained in these post-war letters. Reading them in their entirety provides, as no extracts can do, a picture of a man who inspired his friends to propose alternative inscriptions for his tomb : ONE BONNET BUT INNUMERABLE BEES

CI GIT M.S. P.

QUI VIT. QUELLE VIE!

I hope that some day the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum will publish the entire correspondence as a record of one of Mrs. Gardner's friendships .

Although there are 285 letters of Prichard's at Fenway Court, only one of Mrs. Gardner's letters to him has come into my hands and that by chance . When Mrs. Gardner became curious about the Velazquez portrait of the Infanta Maria Theresa, " de-accessioned" by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in January 1921, that was given to the Museum of Fine Arts the following December by Mrs. Edwin Farnham Greene, Prichard promised to ask Royall Tyler's opinion. On 29 April 1922 Prichard forwarded her two letters he had just received from Tyler.

Her acknowledgment from Fenway Court of 11 May 1922, Prichard sent to Tyler, who kept it among his papers at Antigny-le-Chateau in

105

Chenmc.n of walrus ivory round in 1831 nt Ul11r in t ho Is le of Lcwi1.

Pos tcard from Prichard,

11

April 1924.

Burgundy. I owe a copy of this letter, like many other things, to his son, William Royall Tyler.

This letter was, I suspect, dictated to Morris Carter; the handwriting is not hers, and although the signature bears some resemblance, it is followed by an initial " C" . It reads: Dearest Prichard, One of the most wonderful letters I ever read! I think you are the most forgiving and devoted of friends . If you could only be here to sit with me now in the spring blossoms that are bursting, and let me see you, even if nothing more ever came of it.

Your enclosures are to me of thrilling interest. There is a great deal of talk naturally about any purchase made by the museum, but the consensus seems to be that it is a good purchase for the museum.

I am very much delighted with the Royall Tyler letters and wish when you write to him, you would particularly remember me to him and tell him how much I should like to see him. How very interesting the description of the religious ceremonies at Lyons is. I had never heard of the two crosses or of the dalmatic being different.

Many thanks to you, dear friend, for telling me those things. My affectionate love to you, I. S. Gardner c.

To the day of Mrs. Gardner's death on 17 July 1924, a steady flow of letters from Matthew Prichard arrived at Fenway Court. With the letter of 11 April 1924 he enclosed a British Museum postcard of the twelfth century ivory 28

12th cen t ury,

chessmen from the Isle of Lewis, with the whimsical note " As stolid as trustees - aren't they?

They might be by Matisse ." This recalled Prichard' s outburst of 24 April 1910 from Paris when, after reading the resolution on the death of Samuel D . Warren in the April 1910 Bulletin of the Boston Museum, he had written: My dear Mrs. Gardner, I have read the Bulletin note on dear Sam Warren, and have found a use for the Trustees .

They can all go to Hell - and sit as a committee to assist Rhadamanthus and company in judging the souls of the righteous! Their very hearts must be made of compressed broadcloth. There is no sign, in deed, that salvation shall spring from their loins.

Only two months before Mrs. Gardner's death, Prichard on 10 May 1924 thus summed up their twenty-two-year friendship, which had survived seventeen years of separation: Massed choirs of fruit blossom and grouped orchestras of green lawns carry my mind back to you and Brookline in days when my attention was concentrated on the impossible effort of making something out of something.

Now I have learnt that it has to be made out of nothing, or, at least, the external is never more than a means. It is easier, because it is possible, and, more, it is the will of life. How bored you must have been and how patient you were! You knew that like any other toy balloon the bubble would burst; all ideals end in explosions - and I knew it too in my inmost heart. But you ever encouraged me to continue. There are no short cuts. I have yet to

Mrs. Gardner on the lawn at Green Hill, 1902.

find the rest of the body of which we we re always engaged in adding the fini shing touches ! Many things have to be ch a nged before anythin g of the nature desired then could be realised . I am still trying.

Matthew Prichard sur vived Mrs. Gardner b y a dozen years, d ying on 15 October 1936, at Parslow's Hillock, Great Hampden, Buckinghamshire, the home of his brother Brigadier General Charles Stewart Prichard . The Ti mes of 17 October 1936 reported that " he had an influence ou t of all proportion to his public fame," and quoted an anonymou s correspondent who wrote:

" That fame, indeed, can scarcely be said to have exis ted at all, for essen tial to h is philosophy was the cult of anonymity and impersonality. He carried this cult to such perfection that his handwriting, for example, became as regular and 'charac terless' as print. For the same reason he always refused to publish any book, though his notebooks were volumi nous and most carefull y composed. In phiiosophy he took his point of departure from Bergson, but the system which he latte rly evolved was very much his own, compreh ensive and esoteric. Its most interesting applica tion was in the field of aesthe tics, where he had man y disciples in this country, in America, and in France, who sh ared his enthusiasm for Byza ntine art and for the painting of Henri Matisse. Even h ere the principle of anonymity triumphed, and led him to regard such spectacles as the bull-fight and the military tattoo as the highest forms of art achieved by m ankind . H e h ad a flair for architecture, and used to argue that there were no monuments in the world more perfect than St. Martin-in-the-Fields and Ri chm ond Bridge."

Another T imes correspondent, in the 19 October 1936 issue, spoke of the gusto with which Prichard would undertake " to demonstra te how shaky are the found ations on which our aesthetic theories are built," and of " the extraordinary success of his highly individual m ethod" of teaching languages at Ruhleben, concluding: " He was a natural ascetic, would have been quite at ease in a garment of camel' s h air, and preferred a dish of raw vegetables to the most delicate fare. Sprung from a long line of West Country Squires, he had none of h is ances tors' respect for conventions and deep-rooted local attachments ; one felt in his company that h e was a stranger and a pilgrim on the earth ." If this stranger and pilgrim had anything that could qualify as a " deep-roo ted local attachment," it was to Fenway Court and its creator.

Walter Muir Whitehill

29

Charles M artin Loeffler: Composer at Court

Charles Mart111 Loeffler by John Singer Sargent, oil on canvas. Yellow Room . In scri bed at the top : To Sirs . Card11cr, con b11011e festel from her friend John 5 . Sargent Painted at fenway ourt on Good Friday, 10

-o

April

1903.

Without question the most important musician in Isabella Stewart Gardner's life was harlcs Martin Loeffler, and she was hi s most important patron. By a fortunate se t of circumstances both sides of their correspondence are, in large part, prese rved and the letters give a vivid sense of their relation ship. The n6 I tters of Loeffler in the museum seem to have escaped the " editing' to which Mrs. Gardner subjected some of her correspondence in 1920. Her letters are fewer 26 in all - but they help fill out the story in more than one place. They are among the Loeffler papers at the Library of ongress, which has kindly supplied the museum with copies.

Loeffler's letters are ri h in remarks about his travels, about music - from d' lndy to jazz, and of ourse about hi s own works. In fact, certain pa ssages in the letters helped in the identification of a s ore in the museum as a y le of his for voice, viola and piano which contain s some pte es not otherwise known. This manuscript will be de scribed in an inventory of the museum's music collection currently being prepared for publication.

The letters also reveal the problems that seem to be inevitable in an artist-patron association.

Fortunately, Loeffler wrote to her more often than any other mu sician and was usually more frank. Even in hi s Reminiscences of a Musician (1929) the composer and pianist Jayton Johns is disappointingly discreet about Boston's most talked-about lady. Apparently Loeffler was one of the few friends who spoke his mind when he felt offended or exploited. In the words of a biographer, " never did he call her 'dear lady' [Clayton John s' favorite phrase] and drop everything to run to her side when she summoned him" (Tharp, Mrs. Jack, 1965, p. 115). But the stubbornl y independent Mrs . Gardner seems to have respected that same spint in Loeffler and, espe 1ally in her later years, learned to value his fnendship above the empty flattery of other .

Hi s s tated principle of " La bonne franchise avant

tout" (Candor above all) allowed him to remain her friend, when Johns, P. A . Tirindelli and Amherst Webber were nothing more than handsome signatures in her old, fading guest books .

The son of itinerant German parents, Charles Martin Loeffler (1861-1935) was born in Alsace and spent his childhood in Russia and Hungary.

He studied violin and composition in Berlin and Paris and, at the age of twenty, joined the migration of European musicians to America who were taking positions in the newly-founded symphony orchestra s. He served fir st for a year in New York under Leopold D amrosch and Theodore Thomas, and in 1882 was selected personally by Henry Lee Higginson to join his year-old Boston Symphony Orchestra . Loeffler quickly established himself as one of the best violinists in the city . From 1885 until he resigned in 1903 to devo te himself full-time to composition, he shared the first violin desk with concertmaster Franz Kneisel. During those nineteen seasons he frequently performed with the orchestra as soloist in works of Bruch, Lalo and Benjamin Godard, as well as in his own compositions.

Mrs. Gardner met Loeffler sometime in the 188o' s, perhaps through her friends Higginson or Wilhelm Gericke, the conductor of the Symphony. She was in London when she wrote him her first surviving letter dated 28 September 1890. She sent him greetings from Gericke, who had resigned the year before and returned to Austria. " . . . tell him I am now very well," Gericke had written, " & in a very good humour & able to be very nice in rehearsals. It is too bad I cannot play with him." Mrs. Gardner was less enthusiastic about the current conductor of the Symphony: " The consolation that I have for not being present at the 1st concert [of the season] is that I am not sure I should like [Arthur] Nikisch' s 'Eroica' - but perhap s he has changed." She concluded on a personal note,

Loeffler as a young man, ca . 1882 .

which suggests that Loeffler was already a friend: D on' t b e so busy when I get back that you cannot come out to Brookline & see me . . . .

I have just been taking tea wi th Whistler, who is most amusing. He may come to Am erica this winter & bring his Sarasa te portrait with him. I hope so. This is the sort of portrait I wanted Bunker to paint of you!

At first Mrs. Gardner knew Loeffler as a violinist and only slowly became aware that his compositions were to be taken seriously, al-

"---:;') ).

- I/ /

I .1},,.,1.

'

;

Divertimento in A Minor for violin and orchestra.

(Above) the opening violin solo. (Below) the title page, containing the dedication to Mrs. Gardner.

Yellow Room.

though she was a good deal quicker about this than most other Boston ian s. He frequently played the violin at her house. In 1888 and 1889 he was a member of the small orchestra which played two light concerts under Gericke at the Gardners' Beacon Street home. In 1 890 Loeffler graciou sly declined payment for playing for Mrs. Gardner and Sargent, and by 1891 he had become a regular member of her musical circle, playing trios with Johns and Adamowski at the Gardners' s ummer place in Brookline. Gericke wrote her on 10 July 1891, " I really envy those three fellows which are going to Green Hill without me, in order to play for you. . .. I would like to fight wi th them and to kill one after each other!"

Around 1894 the Gardners bought a Stradivarius in Paris and lent it to Loeffler to play the premiere of his Divertimento in A Minor with the Boston Symphony. This in strument immediately became a focal point of their friendship, his attitude toward her reflected in his remarks about her violin . It appears that he was angling for its use and the position of unofficia l court violinist to the Gardner household.

Returning the violi n after the D ivertimento performa nces, he pointed out that the last person to use it had left it " in a very unclean condition. . .. I hope also that yo u have noticed in what flawless condition the violin always is since you lent it to me ... " (16 January 1895). The next day he named hi s rival : Tymoteusz Adamowski, Symphony violi nist and conductor of the summer Pops concerts and, acco rding to Town Topics, " society's favorite musician." Loeffler could not resist beginning with a joke or two on Adamowski' s national origin : Tim Adams informed me some time ago with a curiously unfriendly polish(ed) glistening in his eye that: Mrs. Gardner was lending me the violin only for the year coming, on which remark I had to inform h im tha t that was indeed much longer than I expected to have it.

I hope however that unless you have already differently disposed of your violin you will let me play your piece on it in N .Y. next winter. " Her" piece was the Divertimento he had just played and wished to dedicate to her. (The unpublished manuscript of the work is on exhibit in the museum.) This dedication marks a development in their relationship for he was no longer just a violinist to her but had begun to be a composer as well. In 1893 he consulted her on the literary subjects of his works and by 1898 he was discussing his progress and giving her small gifts . On August 10 of that year he had clearly edged out Adamowski for the Stradivarius, for he wrote of his plans to repair the violin. At the same time he appealed for her continued interest in his compositions. For the first time, nevertheless, a note of tension was apparent: Is there any hope of your wanting to hear those Rapsodies later [Trois Rapsodies for baritone, clarinet, viola and piano, two of which became the Deux Rapsodies for oboe, viola and piano]? You know I write for the few, almost " en une de quelqu' un." I do not know why, but it is so . Therefore naturally I always hope for your interest in my doings.

And I consider myself lucky to have you on my side. I know, you often wish me different on many points, dear Mrs. Gardner, but as to you, I would not have you changed an atom.

Loeffler undoubtedly was now asking her to consider him primarily as a creative artist.

In 1899 Mrs. Gardner began to show an increased desire to help Loeffler professionally. He sent her the score of " her" Divertimento so that she could show it to the French publishers Durand and Hamelle (30 June 1899) . She may have taken the initiative of interesting her friend Gustave Schirmer in Loeffler, for Schirmer later published nearly all of his music. She also saw him socially and invited him to join her at the yacht races . The greatest testimony to Mrs . Gard-

ner's devotion to Loeffler, though, came with an all-Loeffler concert which she held in the Music Room of Fenway Court to celebrate her first birthday in her new home. The concert featured an early version, for two pianos and three trumpets, of his Pagan Poem. In gratitude he made her a gift that day of a viola d' amore, now in a case in the Yellow Room.

In 1904 that " viole d'amour," as Loeffler often referred to it, became the subject of a disagreement between composer and patron . He agreed to give a recital at Fenway Court at which he would play the instrument, and Mrs . Gardner suggested that he perform on it Martini's beloved " Plaisir d' amour." She may have wanted him to play the piece because of the happy combination of the word " plaisir" from her own motto, " C'est mon plaisir," and the word " amour" from " viole d'amour." Loeffler had in fact played that very piece on the instrument in a recital at Green Hill on 10 May 1900. But the suggestion that he perform such an insubstantial piece before an audience which included musicians clearly embarrassed him, although he tried to soften his reproach with a wordplay on uamore."

. . . I loathe the silly old tune of Plaisir d'amore-more-more-more than any musician in the world. . . . En petite comite I would do it once more and then forever swear to never do it again! but before brother musicians : NO! There was more to his opposition, though, for in this letter he continued bitterly: Also I should like to call your attention to the fa ct that Bostonians on the whole do not care to hear me play or to acknowledge my musicianship [a reference, in part, to the lack of interest in his compositions.] Several have been singularly rude and independant about telling me all about it. My independance therefore shall be just the same for justice' s sake and never on any occasion or under any con33

sideration would I ever play in such individuals presen e again ... . I also have feelings! and ' La bonne franchise avant tout. " This flare-up in relations passed quickly as the invitations to lun h and theater continued. rs . ardner made one of her several In 1Q07 gifts t the hurch near Loeffler's house in rural edfield, but for seve ral yea rs Uttle corresponden e of significance survives .

In 19 9 the tension about playing for Mrs. Gardner' guests re urred . Loeffler thanked a ) his patron for the use of the Stradiarius but ontinued : I tru t that I ma , have often the opportunity and honor of playing to ou en famiile, but I am hardly n ugh in trim to be " trotted out" on lu k to r.ew c mers who care principally, on uch an asi n, to ize me up.

/.

month later he 1 as ca lled to Frankfort by his mother' death a nd "r te a tartlingly apologetic letter (12 June 1Qo9) 1 hich indicates that the light tensi ns which appear occasionally in his I tter in fa t lo med far larger in his own mind.

He thank. d r . Gardner for her letter of sympathy and ontin ued in t rtured fashion :

~--- r• .. /. (

'

I

,

I'

•.• ,,

'/, J

~.

Loe ff I r with his two Air dales .rnd an inscribed note: bcl1cvc me! ever fa1tlrf11//y yours. Cir 1\I. Loeffler.

If I hav - in injusti e to you - for years now no I nger believ d in our friendly regard for me, I tru t that you 1 ill forgive me as the Lord shall have to forgi e me more than that.

I may have m1sunder t od, misinterpreted man • things, and 1f I have in unspeakable pnde f II wed the d1 tum of " ultus justitiae silentium," 1t has n ve rtheless brought " Peace" to me. ome friends - Benedictins - have help d me by leading me to meditate " de humilitate." I ught to have learned it earlier in life . t my age one is s unelasti .

Up n his return to Bos ton the respect and affe hon between the two resumed. She presented him with gold wallpaper for his new music studio nell.t to his house in Medfield and, around the sa me time, she also gave him a canoe. In ovember 1910 he felt confident enough to ask

34

Concert program for 10 May 1900 - one of six programs handwritten by Mrs. Gardner on individual Japanese prints for this concert.

her support for the young but foundering Boston Opera Company and Mrs. Gardner replied with great feeling:

to her desire to show him off as a kind of inhouse virtuoso, it is clear that there must have been many unspoken tensions between them.

What to say, what to do? ... It is despairing to have a city of these pretentions on the verge of such a disgrace. If I h ad not already yoked my chosen h eavy load to m y sh oulders, it would be a joyful thing to be the one to carry this one. I fear everything worth while must be done by one person. I do wish to see you, to hear yo ur sugges tion s, & to talk it over.

One of the pleasures in pla ying the beautiful Stradivarius was, that it belonged to you and that you intru sted it to m e. Many little incidents within the last year or so - incidents connected directly or indirectly with the war and personal en emies of mine - made me fe el and fear, tha t I had lost your on ce so friendly regard . I hardly know n ow, how to express to you how deeply I am moved in rereading your kind letter.

Of course I will speak; (if I only had the tongue of St Chrysostom) , as we will, all of us, & m ay our wo rds not fall on stony places.

In 1914 the Stradivarius reappeared in a letter from Loeffler. He declined to play for Mrs. Gardner's guests, claiming he was out of practice, and offered to return the instrument to her.

He must have felt awkwa rd about refusing her requests while he was benefiting from the private use of her violin. What a relief it must have been for him, then, to find out four years later that sh e was presenting h im with the Stradivarius. Although the incidents he referred to in his letter of 17 November 1918 are not related

Mrs. Gardner's response (19 November 1918) is revealing in its brevity. Aware of his highly sensitive nature, she reassured h im wi thout encouraging furth er confession s: "Your precious letter has given me so much pleasure! My true & deep affection for you h as always been, & always will be. No enemy of yours or mine can ever change it."

Loeffler took this gift with joy as a sign of respect and, probably, as a mark of his liberation from obligation to his patron . Now he would be on an equal footing with her. The remaining

35

letters, covering the six final years of her life, are uniformly relaxed and affectionate.

Since the elimination of the Music Room at Fenway Court in 1914, Mrs . Gardner had largely given up the practice of public recitals, and this became especially true after her stroke late in 1919. But she still enjoyed hearing music. Loeffler filled h is letters with offers to come play for her with his friend, the pianist Heinrich Gebhard. These were not offers of sympathy, for they began before her attack, but they did arrive much more frequently afterwards: there were thirteen such offers in the first seven months of 1920.

Toward the end of 1920 she had regained some of her strength and she again tried to interest a publisher in Loeffler's music. On several occasions the composer expressed his gratitude : " To have yo ur interest in me and my work so inalterable is a great tower to me and very encouraging." (9 February 1921) But the quiet, trusting quality of their friendship during these years is perhaps best expressed in the short notes they exchanged regarding Loeffler's desire to play for her. " You must of course be a little indulgent with your old frien d on h is fiddle," he wro te on 19 November 191 9. And again on 20 February 1920 : " Please let us play to you some Bach, a little Franck and d'Indy or Brahms, as little or as much as your heart desires and your indulgence can stand." His thoughts turned to her again a few months later when he learned that his Boston apartment was being possessed by the city and that he would have to pack up and move out : When this unenviable job is done, I shall take my fiddle and go to one of the best friends that ever was and ask the privilege of playing to her.

How gratifying it must have been for Loeffler to receive the fo llowing answer from his ailing

Loeffler at the piano.

friend knowing that she wanted him to play for her own pleasure and not for the dubious benefit of some unappreciative acquaintances. Her note, dictated to Morris Carter on 20 April 1920 reads : I will be in the music-room [the Tapestry Room] on Thursday a little before half past eleven, and n eed not say how anxious to hear you and Gebhard. As it will be my first ball, I do not suppose I shall be allowed to listen more than half or three quarters of an hour probably half an hour is wiser. But what a joy for me! Au revoir Thursday morning. f

f

f

Much had changed since the days when Loeffler chafed under the pressure to impress Mrs. Gardner' s guests with his talents and suffered insults and indignities, real or imagined. In Mrs .

Gardner's last years she seems to have appreciated fully the solid personal qualities of Loeffler which had been, one imagines, an occasional frustration before. What she received in return was the affection and devotion of one of the finest musicians in Boston. Loeffler also, in the course of time, had learned to recognize the

Charles Martin Loeffler In those golden legendary years when Boston

was the musical Athens of Americe.-when Franz Kneisel and Tim Adamowski played their witching fiddles in Henry Higginsonâ&#x20AC;˘s new orchestra under the vigilant eye of Oer!cke or the poetizing wand of Nikisch, and Phillp Hale ahd William Foster Apthorp waged Homeric critical battles in the columns of their respective journals-in those enchanted days, a young musician from Alsace shared with Kneisel the first desk among the violins. He attracted the audiences' attention by his grave, patrician profile, his virtuoso skill as a soloist, and later by the striking imaginative powen and orig!n&llty of those compositions from his pen which began to appear on the orchestra's programs. The young Alsatian wa.o Charles Martin Loeflier, who had come to America from France in the i;arly '80s and had Joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Its second season.

That was more than hal! a century ago. They are almost all gone now, the virtuosi and the maestri and the tone-poets of that glamorous past, the wits and scholars of the pres.s and the St. Botolph Club, the patrons and great ladies -Kneisel and Henschel and Oericke and N!ldsch, Hale and Apthorp. Major Higginson and Mrs. Gardner. And now Loe!ller has Joined them, almost the last of the great figures of Boston's musical golden age. But long before his passing,

sen sitive woman unseen by many but known to her true friends .

The closeness of Isabella Stewart Gardner and Charles Martin Loeffler from 1918 until her de.a th in 1924 must have been a source of great joy for both of them. Certainly this far exceeded what one is accustomed to expect in the way of relations between a musician and his patron.

Ralph P. Locke

Loe!ller had dropped his bow and fiddle. had retired to the seclusion of his farm at Medfield, and had become the most distinguished creative mind l:n AmerJcan music.

He ls dead in his seventy-fifth year. There will not be another like him. The spiritual seed ls gone. Loe!ller's mu.sic was perhaps the final e!llorescence of a creative epoch when composers had not yet become ashamed of being poets engrossed in immemorial things-in the magic and mystery of the world, In sorrow and destiny, death and faith, In man's long dream of beauty and felicity and peace: in all those convictions and experiences that issue from regions deeper than the mJnd. Loe!ller knew the old and secret way to those sources of imaginative Incantation and power and intellectual probity which gave his music !ts singular distinction of tone and mood and fiber. No one In America has approached him for individuality of style, perfection of craftsmanship, beauty of utterance, loftiness and subtlety of thought. In his later years his music had become Increasingly radiant, assuaged, serene, speaking with noble poise and exaltation the conviction of a mJnd which had never failed to realize that the ultimate refuge of the spirit is the worship o! that immortal loveliness which ls man's retort to the chaos and savarery of life.

New York Hera ld Trib une, 21May1935 .

Portraits in 73lack and White

The photograph and Isabella Stewart Gardner were born only one year apart. Daguerre' s invention was demonstrated before the Academy of Science in 1 8 39; Isabella Stewart was born in New Yo rk the fo llowing April. Within twenty yea rs the photog raph was widely acclaimed. The acceptance of Isabella Stewart took somewhat longer, although those same twenty years saw her established in Boston as the young Mrs. Jack.

Mrs. Gardner was never immune to the fever of collecting, and photography was an area where sh e matched the enthusiasm of the time.

N ot only one's own image, but the portraits of kings, presidents, actors and musicians, a face to match every n ame, could be obtained . She would have been unusual if she h ad not accumula ted s tacks of photos . Scenes from her travels (purch ased or shot with her Kodak) , views of her own homes and gardens as well as those she admired, and n otebooks fu ll of reproductions of art obj ects; these images chronicled her life and sharpened her eye. But her greatest treasures we re like nesses of fri ends, relations and celebrities. It is here that Mrs. Gardner was exceptional.

Instead of tuck ing them away in albums she displayed her minia ture portrait gallery in cases in the muse um .

Professional photography studios sprang up rapidl y in the United States, responding to the demand fo r portraits. By 1850 every major ci ty had a num ber of dague rreotypi sts. So eager was the public fo r pictures to exchange that the dis38

comforts of the early process were all but ignored. Clients were often strapped into chairs that looked like torture devices . This kept them still during the lengthy exposure time. Five minutes (on a sunny day at noon in summer) was considered short, and fifty minutes was not unheard of. John Lowell Gardner sat for a daguerreotype as a youth. The fragile silver image that resulted is the only example in Mrs. Gardner's collection of the wonderful, magical invention that Oliver Wendell Holmes called the " mirror with a memory."

The technical advances of the early photograph coincided with Mrs. Gardner's coming of age. In 1 851 the collodion or wet plate process gave photography the power of reproduction. By the time Mrs. Gardner was fourteen the daguerreotype began to be replaced by the carte de viste. The Duke of Parma's ingenuity supplied the name for a small paper print mounted on a card. He directed his photographer to make full-length portraits of himself to be attached to his calling cards. When the Duke left his card a tiny k eepsake remained as well. The fashion spread quickl y and by 1860 Americans were imitating the style. Lightweight, inexpensive and easily slipped into an envelope to accompany a letter to a friend, the little cards were justifiably popular. James McNeil! Whistler's carte is displayed among his letters to Mrs. Gardner.

Although undated, it is after 1865 when the bust portrait replaced the full-length miniature.

(Left) Modern Actors Case, Long Gallery.

(Right) Daguerreotype of John L. Gardner.

(Below) Carte de visite of James A. McNeill Whistler, back and front (actual size).

QI

110 & 10 8 , RE.CENT S T~E.ET

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Nf.OATlVU Alt( PlllCSUWt.D SOMC YE.AAS • A 11.tCISTDl or NAMCS ... UT . 'MH.H ~Ct lU l'4 C ru"THC" cor1 cs rt.LAS[ STAlt. A•OUT WIU.T OA.n: TlfC ,O&HlAJT WAI T4klN .

39

\I hi stler "as alwa s interested in the latest turn of fashion and must ha enJO ed sending caries de vrsitc to hi fri nds and admirers.

But if \ h1 st ler, ' h ' as onsider d somewhat theatri al by his rih , t k pleasure in the ph t graph think how pr fessional actors and a tresses reacted. The opportunity to be ome internationally knO\ n was 1rres1s tible. \ hen the abinet photograph was introduced in 1866 it won immediate su cess. Its larger size demanded

grea ter ski ll on the part of the photog rapher, but gave g reater visibility to the sitter. T o be recogni zed was hig hly desi rable . T he Pa risia n photographer adar made hi s reputatio n wi th famous ubJ ts; his elaborately decora ted studio became a meeting place for elebrities. A critic reviewin adar' portraits ' rote: All the artisti , dramati , politica l galaxy in a ' rd the intelligentsia - has passed

abin t photogr.lph of ar.lh Bernhardt .

...

/

through his studio .. . . Daumier meditates on his epic Robert Macaire . . .. Corot smiles as someone asks why he doesn' t finis h his landscapes. These photographs are widely seen . . . . The photographer has a right to be called an artist. (Beaumont Newhall, T he Hi story of Photography, p. 51) Nadar' s Sarah Bernhardt is characteristic of his best work. It is a strong image, uncluttered by props or background. Mrs. Gardner collected eight photos of the divine Sarah. Some are unsigned, with a stationer's stamp on the back, purchased before Mrs. Gardner knew the actress.

Others are signed, probably given after they began a correspondence. Bernhardt cancelled a visit to Fenway Court because she had spent the day at the photographer' s; her excuse was " Ca me Tue!" Exposure times were getting shorter, but still depended on the sun and were by no means the work of a frozen moment.

Ellen Terry, who was among the first visitors to Fenway Court, was photographed by Napolean Sarony in New York. He was a colorful, flamboyant figure who considered himself director and prop manager. He left the actual shutterclicking to his camera man. Sarony said of his work : Think what I must suffer .. .. All day long I must pose and arrange for those eternal photographs . They w ill have me. Nobody but me will do; while I burn, I ache, I die for something that is truly art. (Newhall, p. 57) Sarony had the knack of recreating the dramatic moment; theater fans collected his photos eagerly. Mrs . Gardner may have been reminded of an enjoyable evening at the theater by her picture of actor Max Alvary. His lionskin looks slightly hilarious today, but as G. B. Shaw said, " there is a terrible truthfulness about photography which sometimes makes a thing ridiculous ."

(Robert Taft, Photography and the American Scene, p. 319)

O ver size ca binet pho tograph. In sc ribed : Mrs Gardner in kind remembrance of Max A/vary Achenbach/ Bos ton A pril 89.

41

Photo graphs of musician s di splaye d in the parlor a t

42

152

Beacon Street.

Oversize cabinet photograph . a Madam e Gardn er avec taus les remerciements pour un e m emorable soiree! 7 7 Paderewski .

~.Musicians were not immune to the benefits of publicity. Performers at Beacon Street and Fenway Court often gave Mrs. Gardner photographs inscribed to her. J. J. Paderewski thanked her for a delightful soiree with two likenesses of himself in the same pose. These were prominently displayed, and shared a place of honor with those from Charles Martin Loeffler, Johannes Brahms, Anna Pavlova and Anton Rubinstein. Nellie Melba was a special friend. Her photo of 1899 serves as a token of their friendship as well as a record of the latest Parisian fashion.

.

_,

Cabinet photograph of Nellie Melba.

43

For Mrs Gardner from her friends / With cordial regards and affection/ John Hays H ammond. With warm regards/ Wm H . Taft .

Photograph by Robert L. Dunn, New York.

Photograph by Arthur Hewitt, New York.

-"'---"J ,...._.,-, ~ ~<7-,_p

44

/

,<,,

"'/'째

c" ,,-- ,,,-.rc- --e c/-

The photographs in Mrs. Gardner's collection conjure up an exhilarating image of life in the nineteenth century. Not everyone received autographed remembrances from their heroes, but for the first time the majority could recognize those who affec ted their lives. Public figures began to be indebted to the photograph. Lincoln gave credit for his Presidency to photographer Matthew Brady and the Cooper Union speech (Taft, p. 195). He was the first President whose face was well-known to those who voted for him.

Mrs. Gardner' s photographs of William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt each carry personal messages. She had met Taft at a dinner party, and attended Alice Roosevelt's wedding at the White House.

There seems to be no history associated with Mrs. Gardner's photograph of Walt Whitman

by George C. Cox, copyrighted 1887. It is a wonderful possession, however it came to her.

There is a wa rmth and sensitivity in Whitman's face, a twinkle in his eyes, that conveys kindness. It is the face of a person one would like to have known. This is the added dimension the portrait photograph gives to the image of a person known for his writing, music, or theatrical ability. It sa tisfies a desire to see and save the faces of famous people. Photographs remain precious keepsakes that endow names with personalities .

Pam Matthias Peterson

45

Report of the President

There are two events of particular significance which call for special comment beyond those operations of the museum thoroughly covered by the director in his report.

First - the death of Arthur Pope who was the last survivor of the original Trustees named under Mrs. Gardner's will. He remained one until ill health forced him to resign in 1967. He was then elected Trustee Emeritus.

Professor Pope was one of a group of young men who were closely associated with Mrs. Gardner. After graduation from Harvard in 1901 he taught and lectured there for nearly fifty years, and was director of the Fogg Art Museum from 1946 to 1948. Although an exceptionally modest man, he was internationally known and respected for his years of teaching and his many publications.

What perhaps may surprise many who think of him as the soft spoken professor of Fine Arts was that he was well known in other than scholarly circles. He was an admired and beloved member of The Country Club in Brookline where over the years he won many golf tournaments and was probably the Club's outstanding curler.

His charming painting of Nasturtiums at Fenway Court, which he gave to Mrs. Gardner in 1919 and is now a part of the collection, will be a lasting memorial to him.

Second - the publication of Sir Philip Hendy's catalogue European and American Paintings in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is a work of art in itself and something of which we can well be proud. We are grateful to Sir Philip and to all who had a hand in the publication, especially the director, Rollin van N. Hadley.

G. Peabody Gardner

47

Report of the Director

At the end of 1974, a year of more than visitors, of unusually fine music, flower s, restoration and research, the Trustees published Sir Philip Hendy's catalogue of paintings . Each of the 282 paintings in the collection is illustrated in black and white with 38 also in color. It is notable in a special way. The author was the compiler of the first catalogue of paintings published by the Trustees in 1931, one which has always been considered a landmark in its field.

Why a second catalogue for a collection to which nothing may be added? In his preface, Sir Philip wrote: 200,000

Between the two catalogues of paintings more than four decades have intervened, and in these perhaps as much has been written about the history of art as in the four centuries preceding. Research has re-assembled the oeuvre of many artists whose very names had in some cases been forgotten and has defined and dated more clearly that of those who have always remained known.

The happy circumstance that brought the original author back to Boston after 40 years was indeed fortunate for the museum. The result is a book of lasting value.

Two more catalogues are expected in the coming year. A small book on Oriental and Islamic art is being printed in England . The catalogue of sculpture, a more ambitious undertaking, will follow that. Other subjects are in the planning stage in the hope that the entire collection may some day be available in print to scholars and interested visitors .

Work on the paintings, some chosen so that the catalogue description and illustrations could be as accurate as possible, was carried out by conservator Gabrielle Kopelman . The panel of Christ Bearing the Cross, now attributed to a follower of Giovanni Bellini, but often given to Giorgione, was first among these. The Concert

by Vermeer was cleaned and restored, perhaps for the first time in this century. Work was

begun on the Bellini Madonna and Child after the catalogue had gone to press. New varnish was given to four paintings by Sargent and to the one by Courbet. At the end of the year work was completed on the Rembrandt landscape.

Other important pictures have been selected for treatment during the next two years, budget permitting .

The Visiting Specialist grant from the National Endowment for the A rts ended in September 1974. This grant made it possible for Carolyn Horton to advise the conservation laboratory on the preservation of paper, particularly the letters and books of Mrs. Gardner. The work will continue indefinitely but much has been done : 1,066 letters were dry cleaned, de-acidified, and mended ; 287 books were dry cleaned, mended, and leather bindings oiled.

A tapestry may require more attention than any other single object. Th e Story of Jehu and Jezebel, and the Sons of Ahab, woven at Tournai in the fifteenth century, has been in repair for over two years, covering every inch of its more than 180 square feet. The staff also found time to recover or repair furniture on all three floors, 36 in number. Lace and other delicate table covers were treated and exhibition cases received new material where needed.

The photographs in the collection were catalogued, providing an opportunity to check their condition. A short talk on chemistry and conservation was given to chemistry majors from Simmons College and to students from Roxbury Latin School. Two members of the conservation staff attended the American Institute of Conservation's annual meeting in Cooperstown, New York in May 1974.

Generous grants from the Music Performance Trust and the Goethe Institute of Boston, as well as other private trust funds continue to support the museum's efforts to offer the public fine music. Of the 130 programs a great number were presented by young musicians, some mak49

ing their Boston debuts. Others found the museum a suitable setting to try seldom-heard music. One such series of concerts this year was entitled " Music of Mrs. Gardner's Time" and included works by Mrs. H. H. A. Beech, Arthur Foote, Charles Martin Loeffler, John Knowles Paine, Charles Griffes, Horatio Parker and James Hill. A musical on the life of one of America's first composers, William Billings, was performed in November in anticipation of the bicentennial.

Several groups of Asian dancers added a special flavor to the schedule.

For Mrs . Gardner's birthday a presentation of Handel's opera Acis and Galatea was given in the Court by the New England Regional Opera under the direction of Richard Marshall.

Special Visits for more than 100 persons were: 13 February

Massachusetts Department of Commerce and Development, Division of Tourism (250) 6 April Armenian Relief Society (200) 19 April Holy Cross Club of Boston (400) 21 April Boston Chapter of Hadassah, (200) Youth Aliyah Committee National Center of Afro14 June American Artists (150) 12 December Executive Office, Commonwealth of Massachusetts (200) 13 December American Institute of Interior Designers, New England (270) District Chapter 15 December Harvard Business School, Program for Management DeveJopment (250)

A large group of orchids came to the greenhouse in March, a gift from Dr. William P. Beetham.

They have proved to be excellent pl~nts and have added significantly to the display in the Court.

Mrs. Stephen Wheatland presented the museum with an acacia tree, the tallest potted plant in the

Gilded bronze lock (7 1/ 4 x 7 1/4 in.) , French, School of Fontainebleau, ca. 1500-1550.

Cleaned during 1974. Early Italian Room.

collection. For entries in the Annual Camellia Show in January (class divisions: individual blooms and three blooms) the gardeners won a second and ten first certificates. At the Spring Flower Show of the New England Horticultural Society, an azalea garden with jasmine was worthy of a first prize and a gold medal. A few garden clubs and school groups visited and enjoyed the new greenhouses which have produced such excellent results all year long.

The Yellow Room walls were recovered in material similar in color and pattern to the old damask. Less apparent was the conversion from water to oil of the hydraulic elevator. The original car remains.

The Sales Desk offered several additions, among them the color reproductions from the paintings catalogue. Sales of stock, restricted to subjects drawn from this collection, have increased annually for five years :

51

Books Guides and Information Folders Cards Color Transparencies Miscellaneous Total

1974 $ 4,653.82

1973 $ 4,137.44

6,550.60 7,594.20 1,760 .05 2a62.87

4,468 .11 5,668.62 1,356.25 3,786.58

$22,921.54

$19,417.00

Attendance on Sunday has now reached a level where s teps mu st be taken fo r the enjoyment of the visitor as well as the protection of the collection . Sunday figures are based on ten months. Should a door cha rge be instituted the museum will remain open on Sundays in July and Aug ust.

Weekdays Sundays Special Visits during closed hours Total

1974 124,387 74,405

1973 115,896 70,088

2,05 7

1,484

200,849

186,468

Four letters written by Bernard Berenson during his undergraduate days at Harvard were offered to the museum and eventually placed where they belong, at Villa I Tatti. Efforts to trace Mrs. Gardner's letters have turned up a small correspondence with C. M . Loeffler and other musicians in the Libra ry of Congress from which copies h ave come for the museum's archives.

The director spoke at museums in New York, Portland, Me., St. Louis, San Antonio and Corpus Christi, at the first three using the Berenson correspondence as an introduction to Mrs. Gardner's collecting and to the museum. In New York he was privileged to speak at the Frick Collection, a museum close to this one in conception and operation. Recently this museum has made common cause with the Frick Collection and other private operating foundations to seek release from the burdensome tax imposed by 52

the Federal Government in 1969. In this connection the director appeared before the Senate SubCommittee on Foundation s in May as did the director of the American Association of Museums. D espite our efforts there is no relief in sight.

The museum was represented at the sessions of the College Ar t Association, the American Association of M useum s and the Association of Art Museum Directors .

At the service in memory of Isabella Stewart Gardner on Sunday, 14 April the celebrant was the Reverend Father Paul Wessinger, S.S.J.E. Eight of the staff h ave resigned : Stanley Bentley, guard, 5 August; M elanie Gifford, conservation tech nician, 30 August ; James W . Howard, Jr., chief conservator and curator, 1 April; Michael Kennedy, maintenance technician, 7 March ; George Peck, m aintenance technician, 7 June; John Pelechowicz, day watchman, 30 March ; John Specker, con servation technician, 15 February ; Susan Weiss, con servation technician, 30 August.

Four have been engaged fo r regular duties: Kevin Brien, nigh t wa tchman, 2 June ; Michael Hurley, guard, 20 August ; John J. King, guard, 26 April; Christop her M cMahan, m aintenance technician, 30 Sep tember.

Employed for shorter periods were : Fred Creager, Edward H inckley, Lana Shettles, Norman Stone, Todd Trevorrow.

Martha Mon ah an and Laura Juzazack, two college students on work-s tudy grants, were of special help to the staff.

* * * * This is my fifth report to the Trustees. In these years the museum has moved for ward in many ways and to these Trustees and staff have contributed far more than my brief reports have covered. Real progress, no less than our modest gains, is their doing.

Rollin van N . Hadley

53

Note on the Organization of the Museum

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Incorporated (Museum Corporation), a Ma ssachusetts charitable corporation, is the sole trustee under the will of Isabella Stewart Gardner.

Upon her death in 1924, Mrs. Gardner left to seven individual trustees the property which now constitutes the Museum - Fenway Court and the works of art she had collected there, some of which were owned by her directly and some by a corporation of which she owned all the capital stock, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the Fen way, Incorporated (Fen way Corporation).

She also gave her trustees an endowment fund for the support of the Museum.

In 1936 the individual trustees under Mrs .

Gardner's will organized the Museum Corporation and resigned as trustees under the will. The Museum Corporation was appointed by the Probate Court to be successor trustee in their stead and now holds all the trust property, consisting of the real estate, the collection (owned either directly or through Fenway Corporation) , and the endowment.

Under the By-laws of the Museum Corporation it is managed by a board of seven trustees who have the power to fi ll vacancies in their own number. The officers, elected an nually by the trustees, are a President, Vice-President, Treasurer and Secretary. A Finance Committee of at least two members appointed by the trustees is responsible for the Museum's investments.

Under the terms of Mrs. Gardner's will full authority over the Museum, the collection, and the staff is vested in the Director, who is appointed and subject to removal by her trustees (now the Museum Corporation).

55

Publications

EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN PAINTINGS IN THE ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM, b y Ph ilip Hendy 1974 A descriptive catalogue, with biographies of the artists and reproductions of all the paintings; 282 black and white illustrations, 38 color plates.

Cloth bound $30.00 Postage and $ 2.00 (domestic) packing $ 2.25 (foreign) DRAWINGS / ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM, edited by Rollin van N. Hadley A small group of notable drawings ranging in date from the late fifteenth to the early twentieth century; 38 illustrations, frontispiece in color.

Paper bound $ 1.25 Postage and $ -40 (domestic) packing $ -45 (foreign) ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER AND FENWAY COURT, by Morris Carter A biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner and a history of the formation of her collection by the first director of the museum; foreword by G. Peabody Gardner, President, Board of Trustees; illustrated ; third edition.

Cloth bound $ 6.oo Postage and $ .50 (domestic) pa cking $ .60 (foreign) MUSEUM GUIDE For the use of visitors; illustrated ; 98 pp.

Paper bound $ .95 Postage and $ -40 (domestic) packing $ .45 (foreign)

GENERAL CATALOGUE, by Gilbert W. Longstreet An itinerary catalogue of the collection with brief desc riptions of all the objects; 1.4 illustrations; 301. pp.

Paper bound $ 1..50 $ -40 (domestic) Postage and $ .45 (foreign) packing TITIAN'S RAPE OF EUROPA , by Arthur Pope A s tudy of the composition and the mode of representation of this and related paintings; 26 illustrations; 62 pp .

Paper bound $ .95 $ .40 (domestic) Postage a nd packing $ .45 (foreign) Cloth bound Pos tage a nd packing

$ 1..95 $ .50 (domestic) $ .55 (foreign)

TREASURES FROM THE IS ABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM, by George L. Stout (Crown Publishers, New York) A his tory of the museum a nd its collection by the second d irec tor ; 1.30 illustrations, 5 color plates ; 21.8 pp .

Cloth bound $ 5. 00 $ .5 5 (domestic) Postage and $ .75 (foreign) packing A CHECKLIST OF THE CORRESPONDENCE OF ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER AT THE GARDNER MUSEUM A lis t of person s who wrote to Isabella Stewart Gardner, with a guide to locations of letters in the museum ; 1.2 pp .

Paper bound $ 1..oo Postage and $ .1.5 (domestic) packing $ .25 (foreign)

RIENTAL AND ISLAM! ART IN THE ISAARD ER MUSEUM, by BELLA STEWART Yasuko Horiokn. Marylin Rhie and Walter 8.

Denny 1.975 A fully illustrated cata logue; this small collection includes s ulpture, paintings, ceramics, lacquer ware, miniatures and carvings.

Paper bound $ 3.50 Postage and $ .50 (domestic) packing S .60 (foreign) FE WAY COURT nnual Reports for 1070, 1972 and 1973 are available. Reports of the president and director, illustrations and articles on the collection.

Paper bound S 2.00 (1970: $1.50) Postage and $ .30 (domestic) pa king $ .35 (foreign) FENWAY COURT 1.966-1.970 A small illustrated journal, each issue on one subject. A list of 22 subjects will be sent on request. 1.0 cents per issue.

(Library discount offered only on set of 22 issues.)

Mail orders will be shipped by 4th class, book rate (domestic) or surface rates (foreign). Please make check or money order payable to the lsabelln Stewart Gardner Museum.

Libraries and other educational institutions are offered a 40% discount.

A list of slides and color reproductions is available on request.

57

Trustees

Staff*

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Incorporated, Sole Trustee under the will of Isa bella Stewart Gardner

Director Emeritus George L. Stout

President G. Peabody Gardner Vice-Presid ent and Secretary Malcolm D. Perkins Treasurer John Lowell Gardner Elliot Forbes Mason H ammond Francis W. Hatch, Jr. Jam es Lawrence, Jr.

ADM IN JSTRA TION

Director Rollin van N. Hadley Assistant Director Linda V. H ewitt Curatorial Assis tant Frances L. Preston Administrative Assistant Joyce L. Haynes R esearch Associate Ma ureen I. Cunningham Publications Editot Paula M. Kozol Ph otograp her Joseph B. Pratt Director of Music Johanna Giwosky Docents Marie L. Diamond Judith E. Hanhisalo Clara S. Monroe Sales Clerks Loren L. Ben son Susan M . Sinclair COL LECTION

Conservator of Textiles Yvonne A. A. Cox Conservator Leo V. Klos, Jr. Paper Conservator Pam M. Peterson Conservation Technicians Marjorie R. Bullock Ana Wertelecki Lawrence R. Williams

SECURIT Y AND MAINTENANCE

Sup ervisor of Buildings John F. Niland Security Foreman Patrick J. Naughton Maintenance Foreman Alfred J. Smith Shop T ech nician Michael Finnerty MAINTENANCE AND WATCH

Robert Anderson Elizabeth Bing Kevin Brien Patrick Burns Exi bee Coleman Stephen F. Duffe William Evans Robert French Thomas Little Yvonne Mercer Pa trick T. Niland Thomas J. Sisco Alfonso Walker GUA RDS

Walter A. Benson Kenwood M . Cappers Jeremiah J. Clifford John J. Coffey Edward F. Conley James J. Culhane Bernard Doherty Benj amin J. Donahue Alfred J. Donnell Edward P . Downs Frederick C. Doyle Dennis Fitzgerald John W . Fleming Anthony Flynn Franci s R. Gillis Albert B. Gordon Edward Gray John H. Holland Michael Hurley Patrick Hurley

*on regular duty 31 Dece mber 1974

Neil E. Jamieson Thomas J. Jennings John J. Kennedy John J. King Erving L. Kinney Daniel J. McGuire Charles A. McStravick Daniel O 'Connell Edwin J. Olson John Pantano Charles R. Parsons Joseph Rajunas John C. Ribner Martin J. Roper Patrick H. Slevin David A. Twomey GARDEN ING

Head Gardener Rob ert M. MacKenzie Gardeners Martin Davis Charles P. Healy, Jr. Joseph F. Kiarsis Stanley Kozak John A. Madden

Report of the Treasurer STATEMENT OF NET ASSETS DECEMBER 31, 1974 AND 1973

NET ASSETS

1974

1973

INVESTMENTS (Note 1) : Bonds (quoted market price at December 31, 1974 - $3,091,486)

$ 3,305,829

$ 2,351,101

7,638,259

9,344,653

$10,944,088

$u,695,754

Stocks (quoted market price at December 31, 1974 - $4,896,019) Total investments, at cost Allowance for unrealized depreciation

(2,956,583)

Commercial paper, at cost which approximates market

$ 7,987,505 1,211,051

$11,695,754

$ 9,198,556

$13,507,080

231,139

18,628

141,887

93,152

(28,946)

(42,486)

RECEIVABLES, primarily dividends and interest ACCRUED EXPENSES

1,811,326

$ 9,542,636

$13,576,374

$

$

MusEUM PROPERTY (Note 1): Museum building and underlying land Contents of Museum building

366'400

4,015,000

4,015,000

560,507

585,426

$ 4,941,907

$ 4,966,826

$14-484,543

$18,543,200

$

$

Greenhouse and underlying land

Net Assets

366,400

FUND BALANCES OPERATING (Note 3) GENERAL PENSION (Note 2) MAINTENANCE AND DEPRECIATION (Note 1)

75,000

359,790

12-403,691

16,445,680

1,163,701

1,055,169

842,151

682,561

$14,484,543

$18,543,200

The accompanying notes are an integral part of these financial statements.

STATEMENT OF OPERATIONS FOR THE YEARS ENDED DECEMBER 31, 1974 AND 1973

1973

1974 INVESTMENT INCOME: Interest Dividends

$

415,757 355,355

$ 304,924 453,065

$

771,112

$ 757,989

$

242,135 195,175 77,845 47,611 38,821 76,256 48,300 33,771 29,000 (13,000) 13,702 4,860 2,190 (29,425) (5,800)

$ 229,554 182,338 56,543 48,484 42,572 2,519 42,760 32,917 16,000 13,000 8,529 4,780 3,282 1,384 (22,566) (11,292)

$

761,441

$ 650,804

$

9,671

$ 107,185

OPERATING EXPENSES: Museum operating expenses Maintenance and security Administration Care of collections and paintings Gardening and grounds Music Cataloging expense Pensions (Note 2) Professional services Federal income taxes (Note 1) Real estate taxes (Note 1) Insurance Compensation of managing trustees Landscaping Repairs and maintenance Sale of publications and other items at the Museum* Grants and contributions

INCOME FROM OPERATIONS NON-OPERATING EXPENSES:

(26,184) (9a64)

(26,339)

Renovations to Museum building Loss on sale of old greenhouse

(16,668)

INCOME (Loss) BEFORE GAIN (Loss) ON INVESTMENTS

$

REALIZED GAIN (Loss) FROM SALES OF INVESTMENTS

$(1,085,406)

71,637

$1,216,489

(2,956,583)

PROVISION FOR UNREALIZED DEPRECIATION OF INVESTMENTS (Note 1)

Net income (loss)

$

$(4,041,989)

$1,216,489

$(4,058,657)

$1,288,126

$

57,971 (4,041,989) (48,300) (26,339)

$ 149,945 1,216,489 (42,760) (35,548)

$(4,058,657)

$1,288,126

ALLOCATED TO FUNDS AS FOLLOWS: Operating General Pension Maintenance and depreciation

*Sales Desk: 1974 -

$22,921

1973 -

$19,417

The accompanying notes are an integral part of these financial statements.

STATEMENT OF FUND BALANCES FOR THE YEARS ENDED DECEMBER 31, 1974 AND 1973

Operating

BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1972, as previously reported $115,545 Cumulative effect of change to accrual basis of accounting (Note 1) BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1972, as restated

General

Pension

Maintenance & Depreciation

$15,229,191

$1,097,929

$718,109

94,300 $15,229,191

Net income

71,637

1,216,{89

Fund transfers

78,308

Net loss Fund transfers BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1974

$17,160,774

94,300 $209,845

BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1973

Total

$718,109

$16,{45,680

(16,668)

(4,041,989)

(268,122) $12,{03,691

$17,255,074 1,288,126

(42,760)

$359,790

$ 75,000

$1,097,929

(35,548)

$1,055,169

$682,561

108,532

159,590

$1,163,701

$842,151

$18,543,200 (4,058,657)

$14,{84,543

STATEMENT OF CHANGES IN NET ASSETS FOR THE YEARS ENDED DECEMBER 31, 1974 AND 1973

1974

1973

NET ASSETS WERE RECEIVED FROM: Income from operations

$

9,671

$

9,671

$ 107,185

Realized gain from sales of investments

1,216,489 $1,323,674

NET ASSETS WERE USED FOR: Provision for unrealized depreciation of investments Realized loss from sales of investments Renovations to Museum building

$ 2,956,583

$

1,085,{06 26,184

26,339

Loss on sale of old greenhouse

RESULTING IN AN INCREASE (DECREASE) IN NET AssETS OF

9,364 $ 4,068,328

$

$(4,058,657)

$1,288,126

$(4,308,524)

$1,340,{72

35,548

THE INCREASE (DECREASE) IN NET ASSETS WAS REPRESENTED BY CHANGES IN: Investments Cash

212,511

(27,854)

Receivables Museum property

48,735 (24,919)

(35,811)

Accrued expenses

13,540 $(4,058,657)

The accompanying notes are an integral part of these financial statements.

(1,148) 12,{67 ----$1,288,126

NOTES TO FINANCIAL STATEMENTS DECEMBER 31, 1974

Summary of Accounting Policies The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Incorporated (Museum Corporation), the sole t~ustee under the will of Isabella Stewart Gardner, 1s the owner of the property which now constitutes the Museum - Fen way Court and the works of art collected there by Mrs. Gardner. The Museum Corporation's accounting policies include the following: 1.

A. Basis of Accounting- During 1974, the Museum Corporation changed from a modified cash basis to the accrual basis of accounting.

Under this method, dividends are recorded on the ex-dividend date, interest income is accrued daily and expenses are recorded when incurred rather than when paid. The cumulative effect of this change to December 31, 1972 ($94,300) has been reflected as an adjustment of the operating ft:nd as of that date. This change resulted in an increase of $25,585 in income from operations in 1974; the effect in 1973 was not material.

B. Investments - Investment securities are stated at cost. Because of current conditions in the securities markets, an allowance has been provided in 1974 to recognize the decline in the market value of the Museum's investment portfolio as of December 31, 1974. Any future recoveries in market values will result in a reversal of all or a portion of this allowance.

C. Museum Property - Museum property is stated at appraised values established on December 24, 1936, the date of incorporation. Additions made subsequently are stated at cost. The Museum Corporation has consistently followed the practice of charging renovations to expense rather than providing for depreciation of Museum property. Allocations to the maintenance and depreciation fund are credited thereto when authorized by the Trustees.

D. Federal Income Taxes - Under the Internal Revenue Code, the Museum Corporation is classified as a private operating foundation, and accordingly is required to pay a tax of 4 % of "net investment income," as defined.

E. Real Estate Taxes - During 1974, the municipal authorities exempted the new greenhouse from real estate taxes and refunded approximately $38,ooo to the Museum Corporation. Of this total, approximately $25,000, which had been included in the cost of the new greenhouse, was credited to the property account, and $13,000 was credited to income.

Pension Fund The Museum Corporation has no formal arrangements with its employees. However, the Trustees have authorized discretionary payments to certain retired employees from a pension fund which is replenished from time to time by vote of the Trustees.

2.

3. Restriction on Operating Surplus The Trustees are directed under the Will of Isabella Stewart Gardner to pay to certain designated hospitals any surplus of income which, in the opinions of the Director and Trustees, will not be needed for the proper and reasonable maintenance of the Museum. These amounts, if any, are payable every five years. At December 31, 1974, the end of the most recent such period, the Trustees voted to defer any such payment for the next five years.

REPORT OF INDEPENDENT PUBLIC ACCOUNTANTS To the Trustees, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Incorporated, Trustee Under the Will of Isabella Stewart Gardner: We have examined the statement of net assets of THE ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM, INCORPORATED (a Massachusetts corporation, not for profit), TRUSTEE UNDER THE WILL OF ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER as of December 31, 1974 and 1973, and the related statements of operations, fund balances and changes in net assets for the two years then ended. Our examination was made in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards, and accordingly included such tests of the accounting records and such other auditing procedures as we considered necessary in the circumstances, including confirmation of securities owned at December 31, 1974 and 1973 by correspondence with the custodian.

In our opinion, the accompanying financial statements present fairly the financial position of The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Incorporated, Trustee Under the Will of Isabella Stewart Gardner as of December 31, 1974 and 1973, and the results of its operations and changes in its net assets for the two years then ended, in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles applied on a consistent basis during the years after giving retroactive effect to the change (with which we concur) from the cash to accrual basis of accounting referred to in Note 1.

ARTHUR ANDERSEN & Co. Boston, Massachusetts, January 17, 1975