THEIR OBJECTS, THEIR STORIES The Nichols Women as Collectors, 1870-1960 June 8—October 13, 2018 Nichols House Museum THEIR OBJECTS, THEIR STORIES The Nichols Women as Collectors, 1870-1960 Laura Cunningham and Rosemary Foy “The importance of our environment and its influence on our lives can hardly be overestimated” wrote Rose Standish Nichols in her January 1911 article for The House Beautiful, “How to Simplify Interior Decoration.” With this exhibition, the Nichols House Museum explores two generations of art collecting at 55 Mount Vernon Street and the treasured objects which tell stories both familiar and unique. Founded on new research, Their Objects, Their Stories celebrates Elizabeth and Rose Nichols for their autonomy and individualism in what they chose to collect, and how their respective collecting practices were in-step with the aspirations of the Gilded Age and the women’s rights movement of the early twentieth century. From a sixteenth-century Flemish tapestry to twentieth-century bronzeworks by sculptor Paul Manship, this exhibition spans nearly 400 years of art across three continents. Letters, account books, and other ephemera shed light on this mother-daughter relationship and their individual careers as Boston’s lesser known tastemakers. _______________________________________________________________________________ THE CULTURE OF COLLECTORSHIP women were rarely afforded roles in managing museums, and their access to institutional power was The widespread changes that took place after limited [3]. Although there were noteworthy exceptions the Civil War ushered in a new era of American like Gardner, women on every level of society tended consumerism in which art collecting represented both to collect for the home and family rather than financial and intellectual wealth. America’s “merchant museums. princes,” which included John Pierpont Morgan (1837- 1913), Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919) and Andrew There were also regional differences in art Mellon (1855-1937), as well as wealthy society women collecting. Bostonians, with their lingering Puritan like Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924) and Louisine views, were perhaps more discretionary than New Havemeyer (1855-1929), amassed grand collections Yorkers. Although not part of Boston’s elite Brahmin with their grand fortunes. Bernard Berenson (1865- class, both Arthur Nichols (1840-1922) and Elizabeth 1959), a connoisseur of the Italian Renaissance, Nichols (1844-1929) could boast a Boston pedigree referred to this cast as “America’s squillionaires,” and dating back to the seventeenth century, which— according to the twentieth-century art historian, Remy especially on Beacon Hill—served as a different kind of Saisselin, they “needed art only as a nineteenth century currency. Indeed, a central aspect of this exhibition is bourgeois could need it—as only a glutton can require the fact that the Nichols family collected art on a far food—quantitatively” [1]. These men and women more modest scale. The carefully preserved period brought art to America in the interest of its new rooms at the Nichols House Museum exist as a foil to cultural institutions, such as the Metropolitan Museum the grand collections and interiors observed elsewhere. of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, both Their Objects, Their Stories aims to temper the founded in 1870. Unhappy with the “robber baron” predominant impression that each and every resident of image, art collecting also provided the ultra-wealthy Beacon Hill in the late nineteenth century lived with an opportunity to develop more philanthropic extravagantly. reputations [2]. THE TASTEMAKERS Lavish spending on fine art collections à la “I do wish you and Rose were going to be here to help us out with Isabella Stewart Gardner’s motto, “C’est mon plaisir,” or, “it is my pleasure,” subverted the strict rules your practical and her ornamental and artistic suggestions” —Marian Nichols to Elizabeth Nichols, 1897 [4]. Victorian society had imposed on women. However, In the late nineteenth century, women often Mr. Vonnoh is painting a group, Mrs. Wilson walked a tightrope between appealing to traditional and her three daughters. Mrs. Wilson is sitting values and seizing upon the new possibilities that came at a small table pouring tea and one daughter, with society's changing gender roles. Elizabeth Nichols the oldest, is sitting, the others standing. and other women of her generation parlayed their Through a large window is seen the pool and nurturing roles into civic engagement and their white columns around it making an attractive responsibilities as housekeepers into purchasing art for background. I think the color scheme is the home. harmonious and I like the scale which is quite small. As to the merits of the painting, I don’t In addition to helping her husband collect rent understand enough to judge…[5] on the various properties they owned in the neighboring town of Roxbury, Elizabeth Nichols Today, this painting hangs in the collection of the oversaw purchases made for her family’s home, President Woodrow Wilson House in Washington, DC. especially its furnishings. In 1869, the first year of her The furniture pieces that Elizabeth purchased marriage, Elizabeth was already attending auctions to were often contemporary, fashionable objects designed bid on furniture. Her sister, Augusta (Homer) Saint- for the thriving middle class. An example is the Rococo Gaudens (1848-1926), wife of the American Revival card table (Figure 2) listed in an 1870 inventory Renaissance sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848- of the Nichols’ Roxbury home and which is now on 1907), was also exceptionally business savvy, managing view in the Nichols House Museum library. Where her husband’s career even after his death. Elizabeth took a sensible, uncomplicated approach in As businesslike as she was, Elizabeth was a collecting art and buying furnishings for the home, her woman of the Victorian period. As such, she often daughter Rose was more intrepid. deferred to her husband, Arthur, before establishing an Representative of the New Woman that came opinion. In 1913, Elizabeth wrote to Arthur from with the turn-of-the-century, Rose Nichols (1872-1960) Mastlands, the family’s summer home in Cornish, New forwent marriage in favor of a career in landscape Hampshire, to describe a painting of First Lady Ellen design. Rose possessed a strong personality with which Axson Wilson and her three daughters by the she ruled on social issues and art alike. An Impressionist artist Robert Vonnoh (1858-1933) accomplished writer on interior design concepts, Rose (Figure 1). Elizabeth writes: Figure 1. Robert Vonnoh (American, 1858-1933), Mrs. Wilson and Figure 2. Rococo Revival style card table, American, ca. 1850- Her Three Daughters, 1913. President Woodrow Wilson House 1865. Walnut, 30 x 32 x 18 in. Nichols House Museum Collection, Collection. Photo: Google Arts & Culture. 1961.77. valued her own opinion above all others and kowtowed the card table owned by her mother, a second card to none. For example, after attending a performance at table in the Nichols House Museum collection (Figure the Havemeyer’s New York mansion in 1896, Rose 3), designed by the important Boston cabinetmaker of reported back to her sister Marian, writing, “The house the Federal Period, Thomas Seymour, represents Rose’s was very splendid and magnificent but rather over- primary interests in collecting. decorated by Tiffany. I thought there is a wonderful collection of Rembrandts” [6]. Like Louisine RENAISSANCE OR BUST Havemeyer, Rose Nichols was on the front lines of “We have seen larger picture galleries, but no paintings as women’s suffrage and hosted meetings in her family’s beautiful as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and those of parlor prior to the passage of the nineteenth Raphael, called his Stanze...”—Rose Nichols to Arthur amendment [7]. However, it was perhaps the apolitical Nichols, November 1891 [9]. Gardner who inspired Nichols to found a museum in her own self-image, a uniquely feminist act, whereas By the 1890s, the Italian Renaissance had Havemeyer eventually donated her collection to the become extremely popular in the United States, Metropolitan Museum in her deceased husband’s name. ushering in a buying craze among wealthy collectors. To be sure, there are a number of parallels to be drawn The trend reached its zenith in 1897 when Isabella between Rose Nichols’ Beacon Hill townhouse and Stewart Gardner became the first American to acquire a Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Fenway Court. Raphael, the most sought-after Renaissance artist during this period of collecting. Rose Nichols was part of a younger generation of collectors who regarded American antiques as being Given their relatively modest budget for buying morally and aesthetically superior to the machine-made art, the Nichols women were not able to collect Old contemporary furnishings that had become the norm. Master paintings. Instead, they brought home American antiques also became status symbols, Renaissance-adjacent works from their European especially for Bostonians who, like Nichols, could trace travels. Abroad in France in 1900, Elizabeth Nichols their ancestry back to the Puritans [8]. Over the course purchased the sixteenth-century Flemish tapestry that of her lifetime, Nichols amassed an impressive now hangs in Nichols House Museum parlor, where it collection of American decorative arts that is much admired by visitors (Figure 4). Writing from demonstrated the “good taste” outlined in Charles Paris, Elizabeth described the tapestry as “gothic and Locke Eastlake’s enormously influential 1872 very interesting” and when met with discouragement publication, Hints on Household Taste. In contrast with from Arthur, she replied: ...it will not take long to pay for this from a new source of income of my own, which should not add to the drain upon yours; not that I mean to disseminate between the two [10]. The new source of income Elizabeth referred to was the sale of her mother’s estate. Even heiress collectors like Isabella Stewart Gardner and Louisine Havemeyer were beholden to the financial interests of their husbands and could not acquire art with the same ease their male counterparts enjoyed.