Boston : 2025-07

Another trip took me to Boston. This time, however, I arrived mid afternoon so I was limited as to where I could go (business hours), so I just walked around an saw what I could see. Here are some things that caught my eye...

Near the hotel was the Christian Science Plaza which has a nice reflecting pool and pretty cool buildings so I walked down there. Above left is a shot of the plaza. The center pic shows the reflecting pool and the Mother Church of Christian Science. Most things were closed so I walked the other way - toward that silver building - to see the Trinity Church (Boston), above right. The original was burned in the Great Boston Fire of 1872. The church was also closed, but it sits just across the street from the Boston Public Library. This was a bit of a hidden gem. Aside from beautiful rooms open to the public, there were several murals.

I walked upstairs and the top floor had murals by John Singer Sargent and I've mentioned I'm a fan of his work. The full cycle is called Triumph of Religion. They had these nice laminated cards that talked about the artist and the individual sections of the mural. He worked on these over 20 years in London and shipped them to America. Here's an article by Schliefke, Sargent's sketches for the work, and a new interpretation of the works. One of the murals, Synagogue, gets a lot of attention and got Sargent a lot of bad attention. Above left is the card you can read while you're there. In the center is a picture of a rather intimidating Mary in a Pietà you probably won't see elsewhere. I'm not particularly a fan of the upper right picture but it was one of the best lit areas.

Above left is above the stairwell from the ground entrance up to the library and galleries. The murals surrounding this entrance/foyer are by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. I wasn't really drawn to these murals, but he was known for murals and was sometimes called "the painter for France". The left picture above is the layout of the murals with brief descriptions. Sargent's card had that too, but it was so worn out I didn't take a photo.

The last room I saw was the Abbey Room and its murals. Above is the card, but a very readable PDF is here. The works of Edwin Austin Abbey are titled The Quest and Achievement of the Holy Grail.

On the left, Sir Galahad the Arthurian Round Table and the Siege Perilous - he survived. I thought the figure in the white robe was superb. Above right, Sir Galahad crosses the seas to Sarras. I thought the angel was very well done and the grail is glowing under its cover.

This is the same picture with a zoom in on the monk giving Galahad the key to the Castle of Maidens. A detail of Abbey's mural is on the Wiki page for the Castle of Maidens. Similar to the figure in the white robe a few pictures earlier, I thought the monk and his robes were terrific. I hope to be able to paint fabric like that some day.

Two statues facing each other in front of the library. One is holding a sphere and the other a brush and palette. There are names listed which correspond to those two regimes - science and art. I would also call these two statues "The Names We Choose" because there are only eight names per side. I'll give my two cents...

The science side: Newton, Darwin, Franklin, Morse, Pasteur, Cuvier, Helmholtz, Humboldt. All I can say is, you get eight names and you have to include Darwin?

The art side: Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Phidias, Praxiteles, Michelangelo, Donatello. That is a tough list to make with only eight slots.

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