The Hudson - Fulton exhibition and H. Eugene Bolles - New York Metropolitan Museum, American Wing

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 2000 by Frances Gruber Safford

Bolles had chased down this material in eastern Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, and Connecticut, occasionally buying from individuals, sometimes from other collectors, but most often from dealers and at auction. In 1894 he and his cousin and fellow collector George S. Palmer (1855-1934) acquired the entire furniture collection of Walter Hosmer of Hartford. Palmer, whose taste ran to richly carved mahogany opted for the later pieces, and Bolles kept primarily, but not exclusively the earlier ones. Bolles also made purchases during his travels abroad, and on one trip he sent a friend a postcard of the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey in London, facetiously claiming to have acquired it. [6]

Bolles was born in 1853 on Bolles Hill, north of New London, Connecticut, the fourth child and third son of William Bolles (1800-1883), a publisher and bookseller, and Cornelia Palmer He apparently kept his first name a secret, using only the initial. He was named Hezekiah for his paternal grandfather, although the "H" has incorrectly been said to stand for Horace. [7] In 1882 Bolles was married to Elizabeth Clapp Howe (1853-c. 1920) of Dorchester, Massachusetts, and about four years later they acquired the house at 401 Quincy Street, Dorchester, which they more than filled with their collection and where they entertained many friends. [8] In later years there could not have been much room left for guests. A 1909 inventory shows that the parlor, for example, contained nine case pieces, four tables, ten chairs, nine mirrors, and a plethora of smaller objects. In the attic were more than one hundred pieces of furniture, and in a storeroom at another location there was at least an equal number. [9]

With the sale of his collection Bolles's house must have seemed very empty. On the day the last of the furniture was shipped to the museum Bolles made light of the loss, writing to Kent:

We hope...that before long we shall have the pleasure of another pleasant visit from you. If we have no chairs for you to sit in, you will understand the reason why, and I am sure under the circumstances will not object to sitting on the front stairs. [10]

An incurable collector, Bolles would have had the house fully furnished again in short order had it not been for his untimely death in October 1910.

Kent's plan to display all the Bolles furniture in eight galleries never materialized, but pieces were almost immediately put on view in a new wing for Western decorative arts that opened early in 1910. (It is now the Morgan Wing, currently housing the arms and armor and the musical instruments collections.) There, in three or four rooms on the west side of the upper floor, selections of American furniture and other decorative arts were displayed from 1910 until the early 1920s in various arrangements (see Fig. 6). A larger group of furniture from the Bolles collection was made available in a study room in the basement (see Fig. 5).

The Bolles furniture, augmented by rococo examples purchased from George Palmer in 1918, formed the nucleus of the museums American furniture collection. While not all of the Bolles pieces have withstood the test of time, the collection provided a good core of representative pieces as well as prized objects from every period. Among the choice early colonial furniture are a richly carved chest from Ipswich, Massachusetts (see Pl. III and Fig. 5, center foreground), a small cabinet (Pl. II), and one of several painted chests from the early eighteenth century (Pl. IV). On view in 1913 were fine late colonial objects, such as a walnut high chest with carved and gilded shells and a japanned high chest and matching dressing table, all three from Boston (see Fig. 6), and, nearby a Newport bureau table (Pl. V). In the Federal style Bolles had a predilection for handsome furniture with light-colored veneers set against mahogany, be it case pieces or chairs (see Pl. I).