The Fine Art Of Sarah Choate Sears

During the time Sarah Sears spent in Paris, she maintained her commitment to the arts in a different way, establishing herself as a significant collector Her taste was liberal and her holdings were among the most progressive in Boston. Sears had always been interested in contemporary art, and she had frequently acquired the newest and most experimental canvases by the artists she knew. These included Wild Asters of 1889 by Dennis Bunker (private collection), the most complete articulation of impressionism the young painter ever attempted, and Edmund Tarbell's Three Sisters--A Study in June Sunlight of 1890 (Milwaukee Art Museum), in which Tarbell reconciled the sun-drenched light effects of impressionism with his talent for rendering the human form. When Sargent turned his attention to landscape painting in the first decades of the twentieth century Sears bought one of his most innovative works, a bold and vertiginous slice of the rocky Simplon Pass of about 1911 (Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachuset ts).

Sears also became close to the painter Mary Cassatt, whom she met in Paris in 1892, probably through their mutual friend Louisine Havemeyer (1855-1929). Cassatt was a frequent adviser to American collectors, and it is likely that she led Sears toward several major acquisitions. One of them was Edouard Manet's magnificent Street Singer (Pl. II) that the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922) had offered to the Havemeyers in February 1899 and which they refused, remarking that the way the model's face was obscured by her hand was a "great drawback." [17]

Sears continued to favor unconventional art. In addition to works by the impressionists Claude Monet (1841-1926) and Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Sears owned a number of paintings by Cassatt. Among the finest was Mother and Child (P1. IV), a relatively early example of the maternal images that came to dominate Cassatt's art. Infinitely tender, the image would have resonated with other works in the Sears collection, including Thayer's Virgin Enthroned of about 1891 (National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.) and Mother and Child of 1892 by George de Forest Brush (1855- 1941) (Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts). Cassatt's modern Madonna breathed new life into the old formula with its vigorous, sketchy brushwork and its intimate details of contemporary life.

In 1908, Sears took Cassatt to visit Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), the expatriate American collector of some of the most unconventional art in Paris. Cassatt reportedly announced that she "had never in my life seen so many dreadful paintings in one place...[or] so many dreadful people gathered together," and requested to be taken home "at once." Sears expected her friend's reaction and had asked her driver to remain at the door. [13]

The two women did agree on one artist who provided a link between the old and the new: Paul Cezanne (1839-1906). Cassatt had met Cezanne in Giverny in 1894, and within a few years had purchased one of his tabletop still lifes from the dealer Ambroise Vollard (c. 1867-1939) (Still Life with Rum Bottle of about 1890, private collection, Japan). By 1910, when prices for Cezanne's paintings had risen dramatically Cassatt (always a shrewd investor) sold her still life to Sears, noting to a friend that she had been "one of the first to see merit in his pictures." [19] Sears lent another Cezanne still life in her collection, Flowers in a Vase of 1879 to 1882 (private collection) to the 1913 International Exhibition of Modem Art (Armory Show) in New York City.