The Boits of Jamaica Plain and Paris, France

The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, by John Singer Sargent (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). Click to enlarge.


Above, we have one of the treasures of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. John Singer Sargent painted the four daughters of Edward D. Boit in Paris in 1882. The girls didn't live in Jamaica Plain, but their father did. Before I knew of this painting, I knew minimal details of the Boits' connection to Jamaica Plain, but the remarkable family portrait above begs attention. To tell the story, I'll go back in time, start at the beginning, and return to the girls and the painting later.

The first Boit to come to America was John, born in England in 1733 and arriving in Boston between 1755 and 1760. John Boit became a merchant, dealing in East and West Indian goods, and becoming one of Boston's leading citizens. John Boit's oldest daughter was Hannah, born in 1765. Hannah married Crowell Hatch, whose name will come up in another entry.

After a second marriage, John Boit had more children, including a son John in 1774. At sixteen, this importer's son went to sea aboard a ship owned by Crowell Hatch. The Columbia was to sail around the Horn to the Northwest coast, trade for furs, and sail on to China. He came home after four years, only to return to sea as captain of many voyages.

The second John Boit married Eleanor Jones of Newport Rhode Island in 1799, and had seven children, including five daughters and two sons. Caroline, the second child, was born in Newport and moved to Boston at an early age with the family. In time, she would move to Jamaica Plain, where she lived out her life as a widow. Daughter Harriet and her husband moved to Jamaica Plain as well, living on Centre street near Boylston street. Of particular interest to us will be Edward Darley Boit, the fifth child and second son.

Edward D. Boit was born in 1813, and spent some of his childhood living on Eliot street in Jamaica Plain. His parents bought 2 1/4 acres of land on the east side of Eliot street, just North of today's Brewer street. By this time, John Boit had retired to the merchant life, and he would die in 1829.

The following story comes from the Chronicles of the Boit Family:

"as a little boy, he (Edward D.Boit) learned to navigate Jamaica Pond on a big log, with a soap box atop of it, and with a long pole to drive it. It was his canoe and he an Indian in search of adventures that never failed him. Woods were all about the pond in those days, with only one open place on each side of it in Brookline and Jamaica Plain, where the road for a rod or two ran down into the water, giving horses a chance to drink. He was always as careful as possible to avoid these openings for fear of being seen, but one day as he was poling by the spot where the road touched the pond in Jamaica Plain, the family doctor drove down to water his horse and recognized him on his log. When he reached home that night he got a sound drubbing."

In time, Edward was sent to Charles Greene's school at Centre and Pond streets. Later, he attended Boston Latin school and Harvard College. After a trip to India as supercargo on a ship, he studied law, passed the bar, and in 1839, married Jane Parkinson Hubbard. In time, they had four children: Edward "Ned" Darley, Robert, Jeanie and John.


In 1847, the family bought a house on a 7 acre lot at the corner of Curtis and Scarborough streets (later Forest Hills and Morton streets. See the property marked with the red star on the later map at right). They called their estate Ingleside, and remained there until 1853. The property was later among those annexed for the West Roxbury Park (later Franklin Park), and sat approximately where the Forest Hills entrance to Franklin Park was placed.




After a short time in Boston, in 1854 the family returned to Jamaica Plain, this time moving to Eliot street (photo).Edward Boit left the practice of law, becoming a businessman. The house on Eliot street was sold in 1859, and the family moved again, this time to Glen road. In time the Boits moved south to Georgia, where Edward entered the cotton business. By 1874, the firm followed cotton prices into collapse, and Edward Darley Boit was ruined. Edward and wife Jane would spend their final years living in Newport, Rhode Island, with the support of their son, Edward Jr. Both died in 1890.

Finally, we get to Edward Jr., the Edward Darley Boit of the Sargent painting. He was born in 1840. He would have been seven years old when his parents bought their first home in Jamaica Plain. The next mention I find of him is his graduation from Harvard in 1863. The story has left Jamaica Plain here, and moves us - finally - towards the famous painting that attracted my attention in the first place. A year after graduating from Harvard, Edward married Mary Louisa Cushing, daughter of John Perkins Cushing. Cushing was nephew of the Perkins brothers, James (who built Pinebank at Jamaica Pond) and Thomas. While in business in the China trade with his uncles, Cushing became an extremely wealthy man, later building Belmont, the estate that was so large it gave the Massachusetts town its name. It is said that once when the town tax collectors came to see him, he asked what the total of the years' tax requirement for the town would be, and wrote a check for the full amount.

Edward did enter the bar, but did not practice for long, if it all. He and Mary Louisa, known as Iza, travelled to Europe, and spent much of the rest of their married lives there. During stays in Italy and France, Edward took painting lessons and became a painter. While travelling between Rome, Paris and Boston, the Boits had four daughters: Florence, 1868, Jane, 1870, Mary Louisa, 1874, and Julia, 1878. Edward Darley Boit is now considered more an art patron than an artist. It was his association with John Singer Sargent, who painted both his daughters and his wife, that keeps his name alive for posterity. The Boits met Sargent at a Paris art exhibit, and commissioned him to paint a portrait of their daughters. The painting now sits in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, together with the same two oversize vases that are seen in the painting.

I am not an art critic, nor even particularly interested in painting as an art, but this work is a treasure of the MFA collection for a reason. If it is a portrait, it is a strange one. It seems like a psychological study, but of the group rather than of the girls as individuals. I think the word unsettling is appropriate for the effect it gives.

The story of the four girls is well known - at least as far as it is known. None of these four wealthy girls ever married, and the two oldest are described as hovering somewhere between eccentric and emotionally or mentally disturbed. As a final note on Edward: three years after the death of his wife in 1894, he remarried. Did the constant travelling of their childhood and the loss of their mother affect the psyche of the girls? Or does their extraordinary portrait make us imagine things about them that were only on the canvas?

While the famous Boit daughters never lived in Jamaica Plain, their families did, in multiple homes over multiple generations. From sea captain to lawyer and businessman to future expatriot artist and patron, the Boits certainly deserve mention when exploring Jamaica Plain's notable residents. The famous painting, a jewel of the Museum of Fine Art's collection, just makes the story all the more interesting.



There is much more to the story of the Boit family. Here is a start for online information:


Chronicles of the Boit Family - download the PDF version to read.

Museum of Fine Arts

Edward Darley Boit

The Harvard Graduates' Magazine

The Washington Historical Quarterly - John Boit's log of his voyage on the ship Columbia. When men were men.

Norfolk Registry of Deeds:

68:45 - 9/30/1822 David Greenough to John Boit, Eliot st.

155:26,27,28,29 - Boit heirs to Anson Dexter, Eliot st.

174:85 - 7/9/1847 John Parkinson to Edward D. Boit, Walnut ave. and Scarboro st.

179:137 - 4/11/1848 G. Winthrop Coffin to Edward D. Boit, Glen rd.

232:6 - 12/6/1854 Elisha James to Edward D. Boit, Eliot st.

255:24 - 5/1/1857 Edward D. Boit to George T. Curtis, Walnut ave and Scarboro st.

276:211 - 5/19/1859 Edward D. Boit to Anne L. Balch, Eliot st.

Bela Lyon Pratt - Sculptor

Bela Lyon Pratt was born in 1867 in Norwich Connecticut. After studying art at Yale, he moved to New York, where he was a student of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Saint-Gaudens encouraged him to travel to Paris, where he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1892 he returned to the United States and began a prolific career as a sculptor. He settled in Boston, and in 1893 began a career as a teacher at the School at the Museum of Fine Arts. During his time teaching, he remained very active as a sculptor. His work can be found at Harvard University, the Boston Public Library, the United States Naval Academy, the Massachusetts State House, the Boston Public Garden, and many other institutions and communities. His Nathaniel Hawthorne is in Salem Massachusetts, and his Nathan Hale is at Fort Nathan Hale in New Haven, Connecticut.

Pratt also engraved two gold coins minted in 1908, a $5 and a $2.50. The coins were innovative at the time, being incuse relief of an Indian and a Bald Eagle. Rather than being raised from the surface and protected by an outer ring, the images and lettering were sunken into the surface of the coin. While the earlier "Indian" head penny had used the designers' son in a feather headdress as a model, the Pratt coin was modeled on an actual Indian.

A contemporary Boston Globe article places Pratt at 30 Lakeville place, Jamaica Plain when the coins were released in 1908. The Boston Directory of 1905 lists him at the same address. A look at the Fire Insurance maps that are available online show that he wasn't at the address (a house opposite the Lakeville Terrace apartments) in 1899, but shows up in the 1905 and 1914 maps. He died in 1917 at the age of 49. Not a born and bred JP guy, but a big deal in his own time. I've seen his work many times and I didn't know it until now.


Wikipedia page

Pratt biography and discussion of his coins

Listing of statues and links

Flickr Bela Pratt photo pool

Sophia G. Hayden, Architect.

Woman's Building of the Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893


I do believe I've unearthed a Jamaica Plain woman of note who is as yet unrecognized. Miss Sophia G. Hayden entered a contest to design the Woman's Building at the great Columbian Exposition of 1893, and damned if she didn't win! Miss Hayden was a Boston girl, and living on Forest Hills street in Jamaica Plain at the time of the competition. I can't trace her to any other address in Boston, and she disappears from any online record with this accomplishment, but given the nature of her success - and her job at the Eliot School - I think that it is reasonable to include her in the JP Hall of Remembrance.

To read about the Woman's Building and its exhibits, go here and here.



The Daily Inter Ocean March 27, 1891


Two Boston Girls.

They Take First and Second Prize for Designs for the Woman's Fair Building.

Boston, Mass., March 26. --- Special Telegram.


Much interest was aroused in Boston this morning when the announcement was made that two Boston girls had won the first and second prizes for architectural designs for the woman's building at the World's Fair. Both are young, both are industrious, and both are Technology girls. Miss Sophia G. Hayden, who took the first prize, is a girl in her early twenties, who came from the Roxbury High School to the Institute of Technology and took the complete four years's course, graduating with the class of 1800. Her home is Forest Hills street, Jamaica Plain, and she is teacher of mechanical drawing in the Eliot School. She is a quite reserved young woman, gifted with tremendous perseverance and fondness for her work. She made her designs at home, working in her own room in hours before and after her work of teaching drawing. When the telegram announcing her success came this morning, she was almost as much surprised as if she had not been in the competition, so little had the hope of the first prize been in her thoughts. She had certainly hoped to do fairly will, but the thousand dollar prize --- well, almost any girl would find her breath taken away by that. Miss Hayden, and also Miss Howe, (who took a two years special course at the institute) are among the few women who have studied architecture. Miss Rockfellow, a graduate of the class of 1888 is the only one before Miss Hayden to take the complete course in this department. French and German, mathematics and physics are required besides the solid work in architectural history, construction, heating, and sanitary science required for the work. Miss Louise Howe, who took the second prize, is a well-liked Cambridge girl. Her home is on Appleton street. She is a draughtswoman, now in the office of Allen & Kenway. Her work on her design was done at the institute. Before going for her two years special study in architecture she had been for four years at the museum of fine arts.




June 28, 1893


Modest Miss Hayden.

Honored by Her Sisters at the World's Fair.


Chicago, June 27 -- The reception tendered today by the board of lady managers to Miss Sophia G. Hayden of Boston, the architect of the woman's building at the World's fair, brought out a large number of friends of that talented and modest little woman.

Miss Hayden did not enter the assembly room until a large number of lady managers had been shown their seats, and when she did come she was escorted, evidently much against her will, to a seat of honor on the stage.

In all 200 women were present, a very large proportion of them being members of the board of lady managers. Miss Hayden was a young graduate of the school of technology in Boston, and this was her maiden effort.

Miss Hayden was introduced and gave a short address.

The Madonna Of Jamaica Plain

Here we have an appropriate subject for a Christmas season posting. My online investigation suggests that the painting was owned by Quincy Shaw, who lived on Perkins street along Jamaica pond on the Brookline side. I have not been able to find an image of the painting online, which makes me wonder whether its claim to be a Raphael held up over time. Where's an art history major when you need one?


Boston Daily Globe September 29, 1912


A Raphael That Was Discovered In Jamaica Plain


The picture in Boston which is attracting most attention among art lovers these days is the painting by Raphael - a Madonna and Child - which was discovered among the attic possessions of an old family in Jamaica Plain and which has been until recently locked up in the vaults of the Old Colony Trust Company. In fact, it is locked up in these vaults most of the time now with the exception of a portion of one day each week when it is privately exhibited in the little gallery of Duffle & Ryan on Boylston st.

On the days the gallery is crowded with distinguished people who have heard of the picture and who are anxious to see it. Somehow the fame of the picture ran through the North Shore this Summer, and from there it spread through all the Summer resorts along the coast, with the result that many of these people - art collectors themselves - have been clamoring to see this painting by Raphael. The Austrian Ambassador, a great admirer of Raphael, after having seen this Madonna and Child, was so enthusiastic about the picture that his enthusiasm has much to do with this popularity.

And curiously enough those who were most incredulous about the painting before they saw it have been among its most enthusiastic admirers after having seen it. It was not strange that they should be skeptical, for paintings of Raphael are pretty scarce in America. In fact there are very few in the United States and some of these are of doubtful authenticity.

The wonder about this painting is that it should be so well preserved and that it should be found in Boston. But this is no more strange than that one of the finest collection of drawings by old masters in the world should be found up in Brunswick, Me, in the Walker Memorial in Bowdoin College. That collection was purchased by one of the Bowdoin family in Europe in the early years of the last century for less than $100 and Harvard University has recently offered $30,000 for it. It came in a folio as a gift to Bowdoin and was not thought very much of until recent years, when its value dawned on somebody.

The painting by Raphael came to this country in much the same way that the collection in Bowdoin College came. It was purchased in Europe after the Napoleonic invasions, when the young conqueror brought the art treasures of Italy and other countries to Paris, and it was one of those treasures which was not returned after the Allies entered Paris and demanded the return of the Napoleonic "loot" to its rightful owners. A rather poor mezzotint of the painting was made at that time in Paris.

The chances are that the American purchaser of this painting did not realize either its artistic or intrinsic value and when it arrived on these shores it was not treated with any too much hospitality, for the prejudice against Madonnas was stronger than any artistic appreciation that existed in the community, and both the name and fame of Raphael were little known in the country. So it was treated in much the same way that the pottery and carvings and other bric-a-brac from the Orient were treated when the shipmasters brought them to this country in the early part of the last century.

Such things were regarded as curiosities and eventually found their way into the attics or cellars of the old houses.

It was fortunate that this painting went into an attic, and a dry attic, for that was the only thing that saved it from destruction. As it is, the painting is beautifully fresh, time simply having given the colors an added depth and richness.

Seen in proper light in a gallery the picture looks very much more impressive than when seen in the vaults of the Old Colony Trust Company some months ago. It is one of the few Madonna paintings by Raphael in which the Christ Child is draped, a fact which, for obvious reasons, probably made it all the more acceptable to the American purchaser.

But the expression on the Christ Child's face is an artistic achievement of which only a Raphael is capable, and the same is true of the expression on the face of the Mother Mary. The painting of these faces challenges attention even today when the [?] think they have made new discoveries in the relations and juxtapositions of pigments. There is a refinement and delicacy in the drawing and in the flesh coloring which gives the painting That distinctiveness of charm that characterizes the works of all masters. And the color harmony of the whole picture is exquisitely rich.

The three colors which Raphael most loved in his draperies - blue, olive, green and orange red - are seen in this picture in fine contrast with the flesh tints and the background. The light is from above and the highest light falls on the upper part of the face of the Madonna when the [nt] of transparent veil cloth shimmers against the dark hair. It is said that several wealthy American collectors have offered fabulous sums for this painting.