“Quaint and Grotesque” Library Furniture from Wodenethe in the Renaissance Style

Little is left of Beacon’s Wodenethe, conceived by its owner Henry Winthrop Sargent as one of the finest American gardens and estates of the nineteenth century.

In this presentation, Steven Baltsas, Lois F. McNeil Fellow at the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, explored the meaning of carved oak seating furniture and bookcases made for the library at Wodenethe in the 1840s. Baltsas revealed the origins of this furniture in “le style Renaissance” and explored how it related to Sargent’s fascination with his Massachusetts ancestry, high culture, and landscape gardening. 

If you missed it in person, enjoy the program here: