Brock Churchill Hazard

2 W hen Dr. James R. Taylor (1887–1962) began acquiring paintings and decorative objects in the first quarter of the twentieth century in Boston, it was an ideal time and place in which to embark on building a collection. The city’s vibrant art community included the Boston School artists, whose achievements in portraiture and genre depictions were unmatched by any other painters of their generation. 1 Led by Edmund Tarbell, painters of the Boston School included Joseph DeCamp, William Paxton, Frank Benson and two artists of particular interest to Dr. Taylor: Arthur Merton Hazard (1872–1930) and William Worcester Churchill (1858–1926). Dr. James Taylor was a prominent physician and native Bostonian. In 1922, at the age of thirty-five, he married Mable Sealy, a nurse and native of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. The union was a happy one, particularly for Mable, who in 1909 had suffered the loss of her first husband, John Ludeman, after just two months of marriage following a tragic railroad accident. Her brief marriage to John Ludeman produced a daughter, Cathryn Ludeman, born in 1910. Mable and Cathryn’s new life in Boston with Dr. Taylor was privileged. Their well-staffed home at 124 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston’s affluent Back Bay neighborhood contained objects and antiques found in only the finest Boston homes of the 1. “…that Boston has become a good city in which to grow is attested by the steady improvement in the quality of work of the group of painters among whom Mr. Tarbell has been a leader for two decades. It is hard to say in what city of the world any better painting is done today than in Boston.” Coburn, Frederick W. “Edmund C. Tarbell.” International Studio , Vol. 32, Sept. 1907, p. lxxvii. Quoted in: Patricia Jobe Pierce, Edmund C. Tarbell and the Boston School of Painting . Hingham, MA: Pierce Galleries Inc., 1980, p. 35. FIG. 1 William Worcester Churchill (1858–1926) Pond with Sailboats, n.d. Oil on canvas 24 x 20 inches Signed at lower left: Churchill Clements/Howcroft Photography