Acknowledgments

Silver, Nathaniel

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Acknowledgments

Nathaniel Silver

Boston’s Apollo: Thomas McKeller and John Singer Sargent

~In February 2017, digging through a storage cabinet in search of a set of Whistler etchings, I came across a large portfolio. Contained inside were ten stunningly beautiful large-format works on paper signed by Gardner’s friend John Singer Sargent. The nine charcoal drawings and one collotype depicted bodies in whole and part, both women and a man. He...

Author

Nathaniel Silver

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21900

Acknowledgments

In February 2017, digging through a storage cabinet in search of a set of Whistler etchings, I came across a large portfolio. Contained inside were ten stunningly beautiful large-format works on paper signed by Gardner’s friend John Singer Sargent. The nine charcoal drawings and one collotype depicted bodies in whole and part, both women and a man. He stood out. African American, athletic and nude, his remarkable physique and thoughtful, pensive expression—when visible—practically jumped off the page. Thomas McKeller was his name, as I soon found out. I also discovered that all of the drawings—most of which had never been displayed and none of which were known even to specialists—were studies for the cycle of murals executed over nearly a decade by Sargent at the Museum of Fine Arts.

Let me be clear. I use the word “discover” only in the sense of a personal epiphany. Neither the portfolio nor the man’s name nor his role in the murals were in any sense my own discovery. All the Gardner Museum’s works on paper had been catalogued in 1968 by Rollin N. van Hadley, these among them. Over 200 other drawings distributed across the eastern seaboard in museum collections from Amherst to Washington, D.C.—many recently digitized and accessible online—further attested to the extent of this model’s participation. McKeller’s name has formed part of the art historical record since at least 1956, when David McKibbin organized the exhibition Sargent’s Boston, and that information had even made it into the press.1See for instance, Christine Temin, “Sargent Season”, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine (Boston, MA), 27 June 1999. And none of this would have been news to Sargent’s contemporaries. Not only had friends and colleagues met McKeller in the painter’s studio, but a tribute newspaper article commemorating Sargent’s death in 1925 described the model’s pivotal role in the murals, albeit anonymously.

While the sitters of many of Sargent’s portraits have been the subject of essays, articles and even entire books, comparatively little ink has been spilled on the lives of his models. No one had addressed Thomas McKeller’s life in any depth. A sitter pays for a portrait to perpetuate his or her memory for posterity and a model is paid to perform his or her job in relative anonymity but that one is as worthy of study as the other is a fact only recently acknowledged in exhibitions and accompanying scholarship.2See for example, Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today, Exh. cat. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, 2019. The second venue offered an expanded version of the exhibition: Le modèle noir. De Géricault à Matisse. Exh. cat. Musée d’Orsay 2019.

I wanted to know more about Thomas McKeller and I felt that our visitors would too. Who was this man? How long did he work with Sargent? On other projects too? Did he know Isabella Stewart Gardner? And what became of McKeller after both died? Every time I visited the Museum of Fine Arts’ murals and gazed at the MFA’s magnificent sketches for it displayed on the walls beneath Sargent’s rotunda, I was reminded of how much we did not know.

Over the next two years, I discovered how difficult it is to piece together from the archives a life simply lived. While reams of correspondence attest to Sargent’s life and work, successes and failures and even such details as his tastes in music, theater or food, McKeller is almost invisible in the historical record. All of the letters contained catalogued within these pages are previously unpublished and several people were pivotal in bringing them to light. First and foremost, Elaine Kilmurray and Richard Ormond, generously shared with me letters written by Thomas McKeller and notes from his 1948 interview by David McKibbin. Casey Riley identified in the archives of the Boston Athenaeum the only extant letter from Sargent to McKeller. Paul Fisher added to this growing trove several letters by Sargent discussing McKeller’s availability for work, an uncashed check made out to him, and new documentation from the government’s Privacy and Records Management Office added a few more. Janet Hudson and Leonid Konratiuk furnished information on his record of military service. Alejandro Nodarse meticulously combed through census and poll tax documents as well as other city, state and federal records to locate scarce surviving details of McKeller and his family. Finally, and after painstaking research, Alejandro tracked down the model’s great-niece, Deidre McKeller O’Bryant and Claire McDonald, daughter-in-law of the model’s close friend Mildred McDonald. Helga Davis brought their stories to life on film and I remain incredibly grateful for her guidance and enthusiasm throughout this project.

I am a newcomer to the rich and well-established fields of scholarship on race, gender and the body in American art as well as on John Singer Sargent. I remain profoundly grateful to Nikki Greene and to Erica Hirschler who were both guiding lights in their respective fields. Nikki generously offered her own art historical expertise, visited with her Wellesley students to look at the Gardner’s drawings and introduced me to Lorraine O’Grady. Lorraine’s willingness to share with me her own experiences growing up in Roxbury and those of her parents painted a more fulsome picture of McKeller’s Boston. Erica was a constant source of support, sharing her profound knowledge of Sargent’s career and providing key historical context for modelling practices during this period. I remain in Erica’s debt for her unstinting generosity and unqualified enthusiasm throughout the course this exhibition. I benefitted from conversations about Sargent with Trevor Fairbrother who not only came to see the drawings but also attended a round table hosted by the museum. I am grateful for the conversations there stimulated Steve Locke and Harold Steward as well as to the rest of our interlocutors whose names are mentioned above. I also benefitted from discussions with Denise Allen, Basile Baudez, Emerson Bowyer, Marietta Cambareri, Terry Carbone, Sarah Cash, Christa Clarke, Anne-Marie Eze, Amanda Gilvin, Sarah Kennel, Elaine Kilmurray, Nancy Lane, Alicia LaTorres, David Pullins, Ruth Howe, Xavier Salomon, Drew Sawyer, Sylvia Simmons, Colm Tóibín, and Kehinde Wiley. Both Max Hernandez and Alejandro Nodarse always kept the ball rolling forwards, serving as exceptional research assistants in the summers of 2017 and 2018 respectively.

We are grateful to the institutional lenders to this exhibition for entrusting us with the precious objects in their care. At the Boston Athenaeum, I would like to thank chief curator John Buchtel and special collections registrar Lily Pelekoudas. At the Museum of Fine Arts, I am, once again, grateful to Art of the Americas curator and interim head of department Erica Hirschler as well as drawings department assistant curator Patrick Murphy.

Both Lorraine O’Grady and Adam Pendleton created marvelous installations to coincide with this exhibition, extending the questions of race and class raised by Sargent’s drawings from the Gilded Age into the present day. I am thrilled that they both found inspiration at the Gardner and also thank them for participating in one of our public conversation programs.

At the Gardner Museum, I am incredibly grateful to director Peggy Fogelman for sharing my enthusiasm and championing this project from the very beginning. As always, I am indebted to our incredible in-house team who made this exhibition a reality. For management and logistics, I would like to thank Kate Herlihy, Michael Holland and Amanda Venezia as well as David Kalan and Matt Del Grosso. Lauren Budding and her office raised the funds to make this project possible and I would especially like to acknowledge Maria Antifonario for spearheading the Luce Foundation grant proposal. Michelle Grohe was an excellent thought partner for interpretation, and I’m grateful for her team’s work on community partnerships and programming, notably Rhea Vedro and Catherine Morris. Our conservation team headed by Holly Salmon led the installation of the works of art in our care. Kimberly Thompson Panay ran a successful marketing campaign and special thanks go to her staff for their hard work including: Mia Alcover, Lena Castro, Jenna Danoy, Griff McNerney, and Mo Osinubi. Stephen Saitas provided the exhibition’s magnificent design and Anita Jorgensen brought it to life with her customarily beautiful lighting.

Laura Grey designed this elegant book with care and vision. Elizabeth Reluga guided it through every stage of production with her meticulous attention to detail and peerless project management skills. Molly Phelps assisted along the way. I thank them all for their hard work.

I dedicate this book to my wife Caroline and my son Theo, for whom, I hope, that by the time he is old enough to take art classes, the story of Boston’s Apollo will be so familiar that it is a part of the required curriculum.

Nathaniel Silver
William and Lia Poorvu Curator of the Collection

1 See for instance, Christine Temin, “Sargent Season”, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine (Boston, MA), 27 June 1999. »

2 See for example, Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today, Exh. cat. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, 2019. The second venue offered an expanded version of the exhibition: Le modèle noir. De Géricault à Matisse. Exh. cat. Musée d’Orsay 2019. »

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