Boston's Apollo
WARNING
You are viewing an older version of the Yalebooks website. Please visit out new website with more updated information and a better user experience: https://www.yalebooks.com
Thomas McKeller and John Singer Sargent
Edited by Nathaniel Silver; With contributions by Trevor Fairbrother, Paul Fisher, Nikki A. Greene, Erica E. Hirshler, Lorraine O’Grady, Casey Riley, Nathaniel Silver, and Colm Tóibín
Read this book online via the A&AePortal, our art and architectural history eBook platform. To learn more about how to access this book, please contact us.
In 1916, John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) met Thomas Eugene McKeller (1890–1962), a young African American elevator attendant, at Boston’s Hotel Vendome. McKeller became the principal model for Sargent’s murals in the new wing of the city’s Museum of Fine Arts, among the painter’s most ambitious works. Sargent’s nude studies and sketches from this project attest to a close collaboration between the two men that unfolded over nearly ten years. Featuring drawings given by Sargent to Isabella Stewart Gardner and published in full for the first time, a portrait of McKeller, and archival materials reconstructing his life and relationship with Sargent, this book opens new avenues into artist-model relationships and transforms our understanding of Sargent’s iconic American paintings. Essays offer the first biography of McKeller and a window onto African American life in early-20th-century Boston. They also address the artist’s sexuality, his models, and questions of race and identity.
Distributed for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Exhibition Schedule:
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
(February 13–October 12, 2020)
Nathaniel Silver is William and Lia Poorvu Curator of the Collection at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
EXHIBITION SCHEDULE
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
(February 13–October 12, 2020)
Publication Date: February 18, 2020
Publishing Partner: Distributed for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
115 color illus.