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Ellen Peabody Endicott 1833–1927
This striking portrait represents the prominent political hostess Ellen Peabody Endicott, who held court for many years in diplomatic and government circles in Boston and Washington, D.C. She was a seventy-year-old widow when Sargent made this drawing in 1903, but her keen intelligence and shrewd judgment appear undimmed as she looks out appraisingly from hooded eyes, her head held interrogatively to one side.
Endicott sat for Sargent while she was working on an ambitious project to embellish Glen Magna Farms in Massachusetts, a family property she inherited in 1892. In addition to renovating the original farmhouse in Colonial Revival style, she moved an eighteenth-century summer house to the property and restored the "Old Fashioned Garden." Working with landscape architects, she oversaw the development of new gardens and plantings. In recognition of her efforts, Endicott received the Hunnewell Gold Medal from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.
Charcoal on paper, 1903
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts; gift of Mrs. William Hartley Carnegie
This is the National Portrait Gallery sign in the exhibit. |