Sarah Choate Sears (1858–1935) was an American

art collector A private collection is a privately owned collection of works (usually artworks) or valuable items. In a museum or art gallery context, the term signifies that a certain work is not owned by that institution, but is on loan from an individua ...

, art patron, cultural entrepreneur,

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, t ...

and

photographer A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographers As in other ...

Early life

Sears, née Sarah Carlisle Choate, was born in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Greater Boston, Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most ...

on 5 May 1858, the daughter of Charles Francis and Elizabeth Carlisle Choate. Her family was one of the

Boston Brahmin The Boston Brahmins or Boston elite are members of Boston's traditional upper class. They are often associated with Harvard University; Anglicanism; and traditional Anglo-American customs and clothing. Descendants of the earliest English coloni ...

s, a very prominent class of cultural society in

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian province ...

. In 1876 she studied painting at the

Cowles Art School Cowles Art School (Cowles School of Art) was established in 1883, in a studio building located at 145 Dartmouth Street in Boston, Massachusetts. It was one of the largest Art school, art schools in the city and boasted an enrollment of several hund ...

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the capital city, state capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financ ...

and later attended courses at the Museum of Fine Arts a few blocks away. In 1877 she married real estate magnate Joshua Montgomery Sears (1854–1905), one of the wealthiest men in Boston. The combination of her own family’s wealth and that of her new husband meant that she would live a life of leisure, free to pursue whatever interested her. Sarah Choate Sears

] She continued her art studies and won prizes for her watercolors at the

World’s Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, hel ...

in Chicago (1893), the Universal Exposition in Paris (1900), the

Pan-American Exposition The Pan-American Exposition was a World's Fair held in Buffalo, New York, United States, from May 1 through November 2, 1901. The fair occupied of land on the western edge of what is now Delaware Park, extending from Delaware Avenue to Elmwood A ...

in Buffalo (1901) and the

Louisiana Purchase Exposition The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, informally known as the St. Louis World's Fair, was an international exposition held in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, from April 30 to December 1, 1904. Local, state, and federal funds totaling $15 mil ...

in Saint Louis (1904).

Photography and later life

About 1890 she began exploring photography, and soon she was participating in local salons. She joined the

Boston Camera Club The Boston Camera Club is the leading amateur photographic organization in Boston, Massachusetts and vicinity. Founded in 1881, it offers activities of interest to amateur photographers, particularly digital photography. It meets weekly from Sept ...

in 1892, and her beautiful portraits and still lifes attracted the attention of fellow Boston photographer

F. Holland Day Fred Holland Day (23 July 1864—23 November 1933), known professionally as F. Holland Day, was an American photographer and publisher. He was prominent in literary and photography circles in the late nineteenth century and was a leading Pict ...

. Soon her work was gaining international attention. At the same time she was pursuing her photography interest, she and her husband were hosting some of the most elegant cultural and artistic parties in Boston. They often featured private symphonic performances and included many international composers and performers, including

Ignacy Paderewski Ignacy Jan Paderewski (; – 29 June 1941) was a Polish pianist and composer who became a spokesman for Polish independence. In 1919, he was the new nation's Prime Minister and foreign minister during which he signed the Treaty of Versail ...

Serge Koussevitsky Sergei Alexandrovich KoussevitzkyKoussevitzky's original Russian forename is usually transliterated into English as either "Sergei" or "Sergey"; however, he himself adopted the French spelling " Serge", using it in his signature. (SeThe Koussevi ...

and Dame

Nellie Melba Dame Nellie Melba (born Helen Porter Mitchell; 19 May 186123 February 1931) was an Australian operatic dramatic coloratura soprano (three octaves). She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian era and the early 20th century ...

. In 1899 she was given a one-woman show at the Boston Camera Club, and in 1900 she had several prints in

Frances Benjamin Johnson Frances Benjamin Johnston (January 15, 1864 – May 16, 1952) was an early American photographer and photojournalist whose career lasted for almost half a century. She is most known for her portraits, images of southern architecture, and various ...

’s famous exhibition in Paris. In early 1900 she met American Impressionist

Mary Cassatt Mary Stevenson Cassatt (; May 22, 1844June 14, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh's North Side), but lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar D ...

, and the two continued to be friends for the remainder of their lives. During this same period she was elected as a member of the prestigious photographic associations: the

Linked Ring The Linked Ring (also known as "The Brotherhood of the Linked Ring") was a British photographic society created to propose and defend that photography was just as much an art as it was a science, motivated to propelling photography further into t ...

in London and Alfred Stieglitz’s

Photo-Secession The Photo-Secession was an early 20th century movement that promoted photography as a fine art in general and photographic pictorialism in particular. A group of photographers, led by Alfred Stieglitz and F. Holland Day in the early 20th centur ...

in New York. In 1904 she stopped working to care for her ailing husband, and after his death a year later she devoted herself to managing the family’s finances for a brief period. She then traveled throughout Europe with Cassatt and

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West (Pittsburgh), Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, Calif ...

, collecting more art and living a highly glamorous lifestyle among artists, musicians and writers. Added by the advice of Cassatt, she began to collect early

Impressionist Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passag ...

paintings by Edgar Degas,

Édouard Manet Édouard Manet (, ; ; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism. Bor ...

and others. Her collection included Manet’s well-known ‘�
Street Singer
��’, later donated by her to the Museum of Fine Arts. Under the guidance of Stieglitz, she also collected modernist paintings by

Maurice Prendergast Maurice Brazil Prendergast (October 10, 1858 – February 1, 1924) was an American artist who painted in oil and watercolor, and created monotypes. His delicate landscapes and scenes of modern life, characterized by mosaic-like color, are ...

, Arthur B. Davies,

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically d ...

Georges Braque Georges Braque ( , ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculpture, sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his all ...

and

Henri Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a drawing, draughtsman, printmaking, printmaker, and sculptur ...

. She took a particular interest in Prendergast, arranging for his first Boston exhibition and later paying for him to study in Europe. In 1907, two of her photographs were published in ''

Camera Work ''Camera Work'' was a quarterly photographic journal published by Alfred Stieglitz from 1903 to 1917. It presented high-quality photogravures by some of the most important photographers in the world, with the goal to establish photography as a ...

'', but by that time she had lost much of her interest in photography. She continued to paint watercolors for the rest of her life but rarely photographed again. She died in West Gouldsboro, Maine, on 25 September 1935. Her home is a stop on the

Boston Women's Heritage Trail The Boston Women's Heritage Trail is a series of walking tours in Boston, Massachusetts, leading past sites important to Boston women's history. The tours wind through several neighborhoods, including the Back Bay and Beacon Hill, commemorating w ...

References

External links

*
Erica Hirschler, ''The Fine Art of Sarah Choate Sears''

Benefactor to Maurice Brazil Prendergast
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sears, Sarah Choate American art collectors 1858 births 1935 deaths 20th-century American photographers Photographers from Massachusetts People from Cambridge, Massachusetts 20th-century American women photographers

Early life

Photography and later life

References

Further reading

External links