Explore the Background of this artwork.
Margaret Gretchen Osgood Warren was born in 1871 to an affluent family in the historic neighborhood of Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts. Because of her family's wealth, she could easily pursue music and drama. She attended the Paris Conservatory, studying under Gabriel Fauré as a mezzo-soprano.She married into another affluent Beacon Hill family when she became the wife of paper manufacturer Fiske Warren on 14 May 1891.In April 1903, Fiske Warren commissioned the famous American portraitist John Singer Sargent to paint Gretchen and their daughter. The sitting was done in Fenway Court, then the home of Boston philanthropist and American art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner, whose immense collection would become the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum that same year.
Boston Gabriel Fauré John Singer Sargent Gretchen Osgood Warren Beacon Hill, Boston Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Isabella Stewart Gardner Fiske Warren