Object details
Object number
ARC.007460
Creator(s)
Title
Isabella Stewart Gardner at a Medieval Banquet at Cecilia Beaux's Studio, Gloucester, Massachusetts
Date
30 July 1908
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Language
English
Dimensions
8.4 x 10.5 cm (3 5/16 x 4 1/8 in.)
Signatures, inscriptions, and markings
Inscribed in pencil (upper): removed from v.1.b / 4.26 / 1918 / #44 [Guest Book, Volume XV]
Inscribed in pencil in former archivist Susan Sinclair's handwriting (upper): ISG in Y chair / at Red Roof / Medieval banquet [erroneously identified as being at A. Piatt Andrew's home Red Roof; the dinner party took place at Cecilia Beaux's studio]
Marked in pencil (upper right): v.b 426 / vol xv / 1918 / #44
Provenance
Entered Isabella Stewart Gardner’s collection between 1908 and 1919.
Commentary
After the economic panic of 1907, the Rhode Island senator Nelson W. Aldrich, asked economist A. Piatt Andrew to go to Europe to study their monetary systems. This photograph shows the farewell costume party hosted by the painter Cecilia Beaux, his neighbor on Gloucester's Eastern Point. Andrew, attended dressed as a Roman emperor and sat on a red throne. Isabella also sat on a throne, albeit a smaller one than the guest of honor, draped with purple velvet emblazoned with a gold initial 'Y' for "Ysabella"--her royal alter ego.
Bibliography
Joseph E. Garland. Eastern Point: A Nautical, Rustical and More or Less Sociable Chronicle of Gloucester’s Outer Shield and inner Sanctum, 1606-1990 (Beverly, 1999), p. 305.
Tripp Evans. “Be My Guests,” Historic New England magazine, vol. 20, no. 3, (Winter 2020) p. 13.
Gallery
Vatichino
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