Boston's Apollo: Sargent and McKeller from decendants Watch Video

⏲ Duration: 6 min 50 sec
✓ Published: 24-Jan-2020

Description:
In 1916, John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) met Thomas Eugene McKeller (1890–1962), a young Black elevator attendant, at Boston’s Hotel Vendome. McKeller posed for most of the figures—both male and female—in Sargent’s murals in the Museum of Fine Arts. The painter transformed McKeller into white gods and goddesses, creating soaring allegories of the liberal arts that celebrated the recent expansion of the city’s premier civic museum. nnSargent then gave the preparatory drawings of McK