Boston's Apollo : Thomas McKeller and John Singer Sargent /
In 1916, John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) met Thomas Eugene McKeller (1890-1962), a young Black elevator attendant, at Boston's Hotel Vendome. McKeller posed for most of the figures, both male and female, in Sargent's murals in the Museum of Fine Arts. The painter transformed McKeller into...
| Other Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Boston : New Haven, Connecticut :
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum ; Distributed by Yale University Press,
[2020]
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| Subjects: |
| Summary: | In 1916, John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) met Thomas Eugene McKeller (1890-1962), a young Black elevator attendant, at Boston's Hotel Vendome. McKeller posed for most of the figures, both male and female, in Sargent's murals in the Museum of Fine Arts. The painter transformed McKeller into white gods and goddesses, creating soaring allegories of the liberal arts that celebrated the recent expansion of the city's premier civic museum. Sargent then gave the preparatory drawings of McKeller to Isabella Stewart Gardner, ensuring their preservation in perpetuity. Displayed together for the first time, the drawings provide a window into the metamorphoses of race, gender and identity, and attest to a relationship between two men, artist and model, at a time of intense social upheaval. This exhibition brings together Sargent's drawings and related historical materials to tell the story of McKeller's life. His central importance in Sargent's major artistic commissions in the Boston area considers critical questions of race, class and sexuality, as relevant today as they were in Gilded Age Boston. |
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| Item Description: | Published to accompany an exhibition held at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, February 13-May 17, 2020. |
| Physical Description: | 256 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 29 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 248-253) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780300249866 0300249861 |