View full screen - View 1 of Lot 309. The Stillman Memorial Window.

Property from The Ann and Robert Fromer Collection

Tiffany Studios

The Stillman Memorial Window

Live auction begins on:

June 12, 02:00 PM GMT

Estimate

1,500,000 - 2,500,000 USD

Bid

1,300,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property from The Ann and Robert Fromer Collection

Tiffany Studios

The Stillman Memorial Window


executed in 1903

design attributed to Agnes Northrop

commissioned circa 1902 by Jessie Stillman Taylor, Helen Stillman Armstrong, Mary Emma Stillman, and Charlotte Rogers Stillman, in honor of their mother Elizabeth Greenman Stillman, for The Brooklyn Home for Aged Men and Couples, Brooklyn, New York

leaded Favrile glass, lead came, copper foil, wood frame

118 ½ x 59 ⅞ x 2 in. (301 x 152.1 x 5.1), framed

The Brooklyn Home for Aged Men and Couples, Brooklyn, NY, 1903

Lillian Nassau, New York, acquired from the above, 1969

Private Collection

Christie's New York, June 12, 1993, lot 419

Acquired from the above by the present owner

"The Stillman Memorial," Brooklyn Life, May 30, 1903, pp. 18-19 (for a discussion of the Stillman Memorial Windows)

“Society,” Brooklyn Life, May 9, 1903, p. 22 (for a discussion of the Stillman Memorial Windows)

“Stillman Wing Dedicated,” New York Tribune, May 20, 1903, p. 6 (for a discussion of the Stillman Memorial Windows)

Jacob Baal-Teshuva, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Cologne, 2006, pp. 109 and 313 (for the present lot illustrated)

“Years ago, I came to see these wondrous woods that I might live with the trees. I wanted to bring them into my house––the very fireside.” Louis Comfort Tiffany, 1917


Louis Comfort Tiffany’s primary artistic tenet, that all “true” art was based on Nature, has been well documented. Practically every object of his outstanding decorative production, in an astounding variety of mediums, articulates his devotion to that overriding aesthetic principle. Tiffany additionally firmly believed that an appreciation of Nature was critical to a person’s psychological, spiritual and physical well-being:


"…the most beautiful thing I can think of is to show people that beauty is everywhere, wherever we go, that it is uplifting, that it is health giving, universal in its appeal and, while we may not be able to select any one class of scenes or objects that completely satisfy, the search for beauty is in itself the most wholesome of all quests."


He endeavored to create designs and objects for one’s home that were inspired by, but did not blindly imitate, Nature and which could be enjoyed and appreciated throughout the year, regardless of the climate. This decorative approach was first exhibited in Tiffany’s rooms at the Bella Apartments located at 48 East 26th Street in New York City. He and his young family moved into the penthouse in June 1878, and it represented Tiffany’s first efforts at interior design. He was especially proud at his ability to connect the interior decoration with the external view:


"…We are to have a flower garden. See how I have anticipated it by painting, on the side of the window casing, vines and leaves, carrying them to the top of the window in this conventional manner. Thus the contrast between flowers and window casing will not be so abrupt and startling."


In time, this concept was translated not by means of painted walls but with Tiffany’s trademarked Favrile glass. The extraordinary Stillman Memorial Window is perhaps one of his most successful efforts in flawlessly linking the indoors with the outside environment.


The vast majority of Tiffany’s leaded glass windows were commissioned for ecclesiastical purposes and consisted entirely of opalescent or translucent Favrile glass. There were, however, a very limited number of windows created for residences where the motif was set within a background of largely transparent glass. In this way, an actual garden could be viewed and appreciated from inside during temperate seasons, but the botanical arrangements in glass could be enjoyed the entire year, even in the height of winter.


Tiffany was so captivated by the concept that he had arrays of this type of window made for two of his own residences. A group of five panels depicting flowering magnolias were installed in the living room of his 72nd Street mansion in New York City, while a set of seven windows showing cascading wisteria in full bloom were situated in the dining room of Laurelton Hall, his mansion in Oyster Bay, New York. A stunning leaded glass window of “autumn vines” was also fabricated for the real estate mogul August Hekscher around 1905. All three of these commissions are now in the permanent collection of the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art. Another significant example that employed blooming wisteria entwined on a trellis against a transparent background was made in 1912 for Edgar P. Sawyer’s mansion in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, forming an arched glass wall between his office and the Sun Room.


The gorgeous window offered here can be favorably compared with those mentioned above. It was one of a set of four windows executed in 1903 to honor Charlotte Elizabeth Greenman Stillman (1844-1901). They were commissioned by Mrs. Stillman’s four daughters and placed in the library of the newly constructed Stillman Wing of the Brooklyn Home for Aged Men and Couples on Classon Avenue. The room, facing Park Place, was “a spacious apartment finished and furnished in oak, with the walls and rich velvet upholstery in a warm shade of red.”


However, the gardens in the back of the building were not visible from the library and the dark room, looking south, did not receive much natural light. Tiffany’s brilliant solution was to conceive a set of “uncommonly beautiful” windows that “by means of transparent glass in the lower part, they give the old couples at the Home an opportunity of looking out, while the upper parts contain striking effects in the reproduction of the various spring flowers of which Mrs. Stillman was very fond.”


Set into the double-arched window is a teal blue trellis with a pebbled texture that adds an attractive architectural framework to the overall composition. The lower portion of the window is decorated with a multitude of opalescent apricot, amber, golden-yellow and cream tulips in various stages of growth. All of the magnificent flowers are comprised of drapery glass, which gives an exceptional sculptural and tangible quality to the petals. These blossoms are placed among lush blue and yellow-tinted green leaves and dark olive stems against a lightly textured green and pink-tinged transparent ground.


Above this lower field of tulips is a clear background that gradually transitions to rich transparent greens and blues in the upper arch. This section is replete with slender meandering leaded vines with pendant delicate, pink-centered clematis, in varying hues of lavender, violet, cobalt and white, among olive and green foliage. The varying perspectives and positioning of all the blossoms gives the distinct impression of the flowers being rustled by a gentle breeze. This astonishing quality of motion imbued in the scene should not be surprising, as Tiffany was able to regularly observe the large swaths of clematis and tulips that he had planted at his Laurelton Hall estate.


The Brooklyn Home for Aged Men and Couples was sold in 1969. Fortunately, the organization had the foresight to offer these four windows and the four additional Tiffany windows in the facility to the highest bidder. Beatrice Weiss and the legendary Lillian Nassau, two of the finest dealers of Tiffany objects, Warner LeRoy, owner of famed Central Park restaurant Tavern on the

Green, Bruce Randall, the owner of Laurelton Hall at the time, J & R Lamb Studios, the Brooklyn Museum and Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, where Hugh McKean was exhibiting some of his Laurelton Hall treasures, were all given the opportunity to make a proposal. Rollins College made a strong bid, but the windows were ultimately purchased by Lillian Nassau for $35,100. Two of the windows are currently in the permanent collection of The Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass (Queens, New York) and the location of five of the other windows is unknown.


The window presents a rare occasion to examine and admire one of Tiffany Studios’ most exemplary works that has managed to survive for nearly 125 years. The composition’s transformative quality of seamlessly creating a symbiotic integration between itself and the exterior landscape creates a lasting connection and impression with the observer. And the bond between the viewer and Nature is everchanging, as the window’s appearance gently shifts with each passing hour, day and season.


Louis Comfort Tiffany wrote shortly after the Stillman Memorial Window was created: “‘Dame Nature,’ who will freely give to those who seek lessons in all the wonders of color combination that can exist on the earth, for it is from her that every real artist has drawn his inspiration and taught the eye to feed the soul.” Just as it motivated and rewarded him, Tiffany wanted Nature to nourish the souls of his patrons through all manner of the decorative arts. This magnificent window represents one of his finest efforts in achieving that mission and its reappearance presents a unique and exciting opportunity for an individual to serve as its next honored steward.


– PAUL DOROS