Acknowledgments
I am immensely grateful to the late Patricia Curtis for this work which would never have been written without her encouragement and her generosity in letting me use unpublished family papers. To her memory this book is dedicated.
I am immensely grateful to Richard Ormond, co-editor of the catalogue raisonné of Sargent’s works, for having replied, over a number of years, to myriad questions and for having cleared many of my doubts and uncertainties, together with Leonée Ormond. I would also like to thank Elaine Kilmurray, co-editor of the Sargent volumes with R. Ormond.
I would also like to express my gratitude to the Todorow family, who allowed me long since, and now, to use the material regarding Mrs. Bronson in their archives.
I would like to express my gratitude to Anne Hawley, director emerita of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum di Boston, for her help over the years and for reading my text, giving me very useful advice; I am also very grateful to Katherine Manthorne, professor of Art History at CUNY, for reading my text and advising me about it, and to William Hennessey, former Director of the Chrysler Museum at Norfolk for reading the final version.
Several colleagues from my University, Ca’ Foscari, and from other universities, have helped me in various ways: Stefano Beggiora, professor of Hindi, Simone Francescato, professor of American Studies; Gianfranca Balestra, professor of American Studies at the University of Siena and Sophie Geoffroy, of the University of La Réunion. I am grateful to Werner Sollors and to Ted Wilmer, both formerly professors at Harvard, for replying to my questions on Harvard at the time of Curtis.
I would like to thank the present director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Peggy Fogelman, Norma Jean Calderwood Director of the Museum, and a number of people working in the museum: Pieranna Cavalchini, Tom and Lisa Blumenthal Curator of Contemporary Art; Christina Nielsen, William and Lia Poorvu Curator of the Collection and Exhibition Program; Elizabeth Reluga, Head of Collection’s Access; Shana McKenna, Archivist, and Christopher Richards, Curatorial Collections Cataloguer, all of whom always received me in their wonderful museum with generosity, to read Ralph Curtis’s letters to Isabella Stewart Gardner, but also providing me with scans of the letters.
I am grateful to Russell Steinert, for sending me the drawings by Lisette Colt DeWolf Curtis, his great-grandmother; to Eric W. Baumgartner, Senior Vice-President of Hirschl & Adler, for helping me to trace paintings by Curtis and sharing with me the Gallery’s portfolio on Curtis; to Greg Zacharias, one of the editors of the Complete Letters of Henry James, for supplying me with copies of James’s unpublished letters; to Eric Denker for providing information on the Boston exhibitions.
I would like to thank Susanne Boller, of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau in Munich, for helping me with the materials regarding the Glaspalast exhibitions; Anna Pojer, of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, for providing me with data on Curtis’s exhibitions in London; Stephen Bury, Director of the Frick Library, for sending me scans of very useful works; Hannah Swan, Reference Assistant, the Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum, for helping me to identify the trips of Edward Silsbee; Meredith Mann, librarian at the New York Public Library; Ellen Doon, Head of the Manuscript Unit, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library; Lauren Amundson, Lowell Observatory Archives, Flagstaff, Arizona; Audrey Hood, Lilly Library, Indiana University, for their help.
I would also like to thank Ilaria della Monica, archivist at the Villa I Tatti—The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies—for helping me with the Berenson correspondence.
I am grateful to Stefano Campagnolo, Director of the the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, for his help, and to Anna Maria Zanotto, formerly of the same Library, for having introduced me, many years ago, to the unpublished diaries which proved to be mainly by Daniel Sargent Curtis, where my interest for the Palazzo Barbaro, for Henry James and Ralph Curtis started; at the Marciana I am grateful to the librarians of the rare book room, who received me also in the difficult times of the pandemic.
I would like to thank Monica Viero, Director of the Correr Museum Library, and Claudio Serena of the Correr Museum Library; Anna Benedetti and Caterina Chiosi, librarians in my Department at the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari, for their constant and kind availability.
Several American friends have helped me in various ways, not the least with their hospitality, during my research periods in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Washington, DC: I am particularly grateful to Lia and Bill Poorvu for their generous hospitality in a house not far from the wonderful Houghton Library of Harvard, where Marie-Anne Eze, Director of Scholarly & Public Programs, and Susan Halpert, librarian, have helped me in various ways.
I am also grateful to Kathy and Fred Lawrence, for their active hospitality in Washington, where my research work at the Smithsonian Institution was essential, but also for Kathy’s academic advice.
Finally I would like to thank Save Venice, which, through their Venice director Melissa Conn, forwarded to, and obtained from, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation the grant requested by the Venice Committee of the Società Dante Alighieri. This grant allowed us to carry out a photographic campaign of Curtis’s paintings in American museums and in Venice and to finance a data-base collecting information on Ralph Curtis’s uncatalogued sketchbooks. This data-base, made by Sofia Pellegrini Curtis, is available to scholars at the Venice Committee of the Società Dante Alighieri.
I would also like to thank James S. Grubb, trustee of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, for supporting our request, as George Labalme did in the past: George, who passed away in 2016, was a dear friend of Venice and a dear friend of myself and my family, and we think of him with unchanged affection.
The photographic campaign of the works in Venice was carried out by professional art photographer Claudio Franzini, whom I thank for his courtesy and availability.
Rosella Mamoli Zorzi