George McCulloch

Artist

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925)

Date

1901

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

27 1/2 x 21 1/2 in. (69.9 x 54.6 cm)

Description

This portrait of the entrepreneur and art collector George McCulloch (1848–1907) is one of two painted portraits by Sargent in the Boston Athenæum’s collection. McCulloch, a native of Edinburgh, Scotland, amassed a huge fortune in the silver ore trade in Australia. He then retired to London where he focused his energies on collecting contemporary art including paintings by James McNeill Whistler, Frits Thalow, and Jules Bastien-Lepage. Sargent painted this portrait of his friend McCulloch while the two were on a fishing trip in the SundalValley on the coast of Norway.

Inscription

Inscribed lower left: to Mr. McCulloch / John S. Sargent

Credit Line

Gift of Dame Peggy McCulloch through the estate of her husband, George Jacobsen, 1996

Object Number

UR284

Annie Adams Fields

Artist

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925)

Date

1890

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

30 1/16 x 24 7/8 in. (76.3 x 63.2 cm)

Description

Following their marriage in 1854, Bostonian Annie Adams (1834–1915) and her husband, the publisher James Thomas Fields, established a literary and artistic salon in their Beacon Hill home. Among their friends were Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Sarah Orne Jewett. (Annie Fields’s especially close relationship with Jewett may have been one of the inspirations for Henry James’s The Bostonians.) Mrs. Fields was an accomplished author. Her publications include several volumes of poetry and biographies of Whittier (1893) and Harriet Beecher Stowe (1897).

Inscription

Inscribed on upper left: JOHN S. SARGENT; on upper right: TO MRS. FIELDS

Credit Line

Gift of Elizabeth Sturgis Beal Hinds in memory of her father, Boylston Adams Beal, 1973

Object Number

UR13