Agnes F. Northrop
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
Strengthening representations of women and sharing “broader stories of early 20th-century culture,” is the newest acquisition to the Metropolitan Museum of Art—a monumental three-part glass window titled Garden Landscape, designed by Agnes F. Northrop (1857-1953). The window measures over 10-feet wide and approximately 7-feet tall, and was created in the studios of the renowned glass artist and jewelry designer, Louis Comfort Tiffany.
“This extraordinary evocation of a garden landscape is Northrop’s masterpiece,” says Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Anthony W. and Lulu C.wang curator of American decorative arts.“made during the height of Louis Tiffany’s career, it was conceived, commissioned and crafted by women. Featuring flowers in bloom from spring through summer, seen in the enigmatic light of approaching twilight, the window presents a luxuriant garden perennially in bloom.”
Museum representatives also note that Northrop was one of the most important designers in Tiffany’s employ and his preeminent woman designer. “In a field dominated by men, Northrop established herself as one of the leading designers of windows, and was recognized for her work by winning a prestigious award at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900,” the museum shares.“she helps shed light on the critical and often unrecognized role played by women in the art of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Northrop and Tiffany pioneered new landscape and garden subject matter for stained glass, and the window reveals Northrop’s careful observations of nature and her gift for translating it into glass.”
The window was commissioned by Sarah Cochran, a Pittsburgh businesswoman and philanthropist for Linden Hall, the grand Tudor-revival estate she had built in 1912 in Dawson, Pennsylvania. “She personally requested the subject of the window, which represents a lush landscape and garden suggestive of her own at the estate,” reads the museum press release. “Northrop exploited the varied textures, lush colors and light effects that were only possible with Tiffany’s special Favrile glass made at his furnaces in Corona, Queens, utilizing especially innovative and unusual techniques, some unique in a stained-glass window.”tiffany himself was so taken with the window that he placed it in his New York showroom before delivering it to Cochran.
As part of the Met’s American Wing 100th anniversary, the window will be installed in the Charles Engelhard Court beginning November 2024.The window will be dramatically framed by the columns from Laurelton Hall, Tiffany’s Long Island country estate.