Designed in watercolor and created with opalescent glass and brilliant colors.

Sharon Lorenzo describes the Art Treasures in the American Wing’s Charles Engelhard Court

Following up on my previous article on women and stained glass, I would like to bring your attention to not one but two brilliant stained-glass windows in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum designed for the Tiffany Studios by a gifted artist, Agnes Northrop (1857-1953). The watercolor drawings she created as the preliminary designs before the glass works were assembled are remarkable also in the Met’s collection.

Tiffany Garden Landscape, 1912.

This magnificent work was commissioned by Sarah Cochran for her home in Dawson, Pennsylvania, called Linden Hall. She was known as the “Coal Queen” as that business funded her family’s wealth. With close looking, the lucky visitor can see thousands of individual pieces of opalescent glass assembled together such that they glow with brilliant color, much like a real spring and summer garden. Sarah loved gardens, which likely motivated her choice of subject matter. Tall pine trees frame the center panel, and a marble fountain is surrounded by hydrangea, poppies, nasturtiums, foxglove, peonies, and hollyhocks in full bloom. The glass was made in Tiffany’s Corona, Queens furnaces. The work was acquired by the Met in 2023 with funds from many donors and the three-panel window is over ten feet tall at the center. This delicate watercolor drawing below shows Northrop’s plan for the final execution of the center panel.

Watercolor design drawing for Tiffany Garden Landscape.

Another treat in the Engelhard Court is a work from 1924 also made at the Tiffany studios and designed by Agnes Northrop. It is called Autumn Landscape and was gifted to the museum in 1925 by Robert W. de Forest when the original donor could not manage to fund it for his home outside of Boston. The variegated surface of the glass was made when the glass was still in a semi-liquid state. It measures 132 x 102 inches and captures the late afternoon light in the forest with a running stream descending amidst the rocky landscape. The small preparatory watercolor also shows the work of Northrop that would be translated into a grand massive puzzle of many pieces to make this glass treasure.

Autumn Landscape, 1923.

Preliminary watercolor for Autumn Landscape.

Louis Comfort Tiffany was so wise to employ women even before they received the vote in 1920 as their talents made his glass products very valuable works of art. A portrait of him was done in 1911 by the Spanish artist, Joaquin Sorolla ,when he was visiting the United States and was painted in Tiffany’s garden in Oyster Bay, Long Island . Today it is owned by the Hispanic Society located at 613 W. 155^th Street in New York City which is open to the public Thursday to Sunday from 12 to 5pm.