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Open Content Program
The Birmingham Museum of art makes available digital images of works in the Museum’s collection believed to be in the public domain. Images are available free of charge for any use, commercial or non-commercial. Users do not need to contact the Museum for authorization to use these images. They are available through the Online Collection at artsbma.org/collection. See detailed instructions for specific work types below.
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- Titles Detail of Two Figures from 'The Regentesses of the Old Men's Almshouse, Haarlem,' after Frans Hals (Proper)@Two Figures After Frans Hals: Regentesses of the Old Men's Almshouse (Former title)@Two Figures of the Administrators of the Old Men's Hospital in Haarlem, after Frans Hals (Alternate)@Two figures from Administrators of the Old Women's [sic] Hospital at Haarlem (Alternate)
- Artist John Singer Sargent, American, 1856 - 1925
- Medium oil on canvas
- Dimensions 50 11/16 × 23 in. (128.7 × 58.4 cm) frame: 59 1/4 × 31 3/4 × 3 in. (150.5 × 80.6 × 7.6 cm)
- Credit Line Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Newhouse, 1962.62
- Work Type painting
- Classification Paintings
- Signature Unsigned
- Provenance John Singer Sargent, 1880-1925; descended to his estate (1925); with Christie, Manson and Woods, London (July 27, 1925, lot 225); by purchase to Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, on behalf of Governor Alvan Tufts Fuller (1878 - 1958), Boston, MA; Fuller Foundation, Boston, MA (1958 - 1961); with Christie's, London (Fuller Foundation Sale, December 1, 1961, lot 40); by purchase to a Mr. Leadbeater; with Schweitzer Gallery, New York, NY; by purchase to Caroline H. (1910 - 2003) and Theodore Newhouse (1903 - 1998), New York, NY; gift to the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL (August 1962)
Notes: According to published "price list" of the December 1, 1961 sale at Christie's, lot 40 (as well as lot 42, another Sargent) were purchased by "Leadbeater." This is almost certainly Ridley Cromwell Leadbeater (1906 - 1995), who in the late 1950s and early 1960s managed the Front Counter at Christie's, London, and was probably designated by Christie's to bid on behalf of absentee bidders.
Seymour Slive is responsible for the erroneous information that the picture was in the collection of Mary Fuller (Mrs. Robert L.) Henderson of Chestnut Hill, MA. In his 1974 volume on Frans Hals (London: Phaidon, 1974), he includes two Sargent copies after Hals (figs. 20 and 21), writing, "Sargent's copies as well as one he made of two figures in Hals' late regentess piece ... were in the collection of Alvan T. Fuller, Boston, Massachusetts, and are now in the collection of Mrs. Robert L. Henderson, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts." (31, cat. no. 46). While at least two of Sargent's copies after Hals descended to Fuller's daughter, the picture presently at the BMA was sold by the Fuller Foundation on December 1, 1961, and was given to the museum the following year. It is possible that Mrs. Henderson—as a trustee of the Fuller Foundation—did display the painting in her home during the three-year period between her father's death and the the sale of the painting at auction, and that Slive remembered seeing it then.