Benjamin F. Curtis papers
name: label: Creator
content: Curtis, Benjamin F.
label: Names
content: Curtis & Cameron, Inc
label: Names
content: United States. National Park Service
label: Names
content: Eliot, Charles William, 1834-1926
label: Names
content: Fleischner, Otto, d. 1939
label: Names
content: Gardner, Isabella Stewart, 1840-1924
label: Donor
content: Parker, John A. (John Albert)
label: Names
content: Potter, Louis McClellan, 1873-1912
label: Names
content: Sargent, John Singer, 1856-1925
topic: label: Occupation
content: Photographers -- Massachusetts -- Boston
acqinfo: label: Provenance
content: Donated 1995 by John A. Parker, Benjamin F. Curtis' son-in-law.
creator: label: Creator
content: Curtis, Benjamin F.
bioghist: label: Biographical / Historical
content: Curtis was a fine arts photographer; Boston, Mass. with the firm of Curtis& Cameron, Inc.
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 16 Items ((partially filmed on 1 microfilm reel))
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1910-1925
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives of American Art
identifier: label: Identifier
content: AAA.curtbenj
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
altformavail: label: Existence and Location of Copies
content: 35mm microfilm reel 5050, frames 932-962 available at Archives of American Art offices and through interlibrary loan.
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: Miscellaneous letters and photographs from the files of art photographer Benjamin F. Curtis of the firm of Curtis & Cameron, Inc. The items mainly relate to portrait painter John Singer Sargent.
label: Scope and Contents
content: Included are two letters to Curtis from Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard University, February 26 and March 2, 1925, regarding portraits of him by painters John Singer Sargent and Louis Potter, and a photo of each portrait, 1910 and undated, (one taken by Curtis & Cameron, Inc.). Eliot requests that Curtis' print of Sargent's portrait of him not be used in publication as it "looks to me like a picture of a complacent fop seven feet tall" and that he prefers Charles Hopkinson's portrait instead. Of the Louis Potter bust, he writes "my family say unanimously that it is a good looking man but that it is not I."
label: Scope and Contents
content: Also included are two letters, undated, from Isabella Stewart Gardner (another of Sargent's sitters) to "Dear Sir" and "Dear Mr. Sears"; an undated letter (plus typescript) to Mr. [Otto] Fleischner, Assistant Librarian of the Boston Public Library, from Sargent regarding a complaint about his murals in the library, writing that he does not want to get into an argument with a woman who considers his murals "a bewildering, crowded, rotten world of dogmas, distress and medievalism"; four photographs of Sargent, including a portrait of him at age eight, Sargent receiving an honorary doctorate at Harvard University in 1916, and one dated 1925, Montreal; a photo by Keystone View Co. of Sargent's painting "Artist Sketching," and two of portraits of Sargent by Raymond M. Crosby and an unidentifed artist.