A new Netflix documentary This Is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist reveals the grievous but fascinating story of a 1990 art theft from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Two paintings from the collection (thankfully not stolen!) were loaned by Mrs. Gardner to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and exhibited in the Palace of Fine Arts.

Hanging in the Swedish display in Gallery 70 was Anders Zorn’s Omnibus (1892). Mrs. Gardner purchased this 49 5/8-by-34 5/8-inch oil painting from the artist at the World’s Fair in June of 1893.

About Zorn and his work, Columbian Exposition historian Hubert Bancroft writes:

To Anders L. Zorn, the Swedish commissioner of Fine Arts, is conceded a foremost rank among his brethren of the craft. His training was received almost entirely at the Swedish academy at Stockholm, though he has lived much in Paris and closely studied French methods, especially those of Monet. In the salons his works are familiar as those of a clever and versatile artist, one perfectly at home in genre, landscape, portraiture, and all other subjects to which he turns his brush, treating them with masterly touch and strong virility of style, though somewhat opaque as to coloring. While his subjects are seldom new or serious, his delineation is strikingly original, giving even to the commonplace the wealth of expression characteristic of his more ambitious themes. In his Omnibus, for instance, the crowded interior with its typical work-a-day passengers is depicted with startling realism.

Omnibus (1892) by Anders Zorn, loaned to the 1893 World’s Fair by Isabella Stewart Gardner. [Image from Wikipedia.]

As part of the Loan Collection of Foreign Works from Private Galleries in the United States and on display in Gallery 40 was Interior of Saint Denis Cathedral, showing effect of light through Stained Glass Windows (c. 1891) by Paul César Helleu. Mrs. Gardner purchased this 76 3/8-by-61-inch oil painting from the artist in 1892 and loaned it to the Exposition.

Bancroft notes that in this painting Helleu “shows a beautiful light effect in the interior of St Denis cathedral, with a recess full of dim purple shadows, in the depths of which a stained glass window sheds on wall and effigied tomb tints of variegated hue.”

Interior of Saint Denis Cathedral (c. 1891) by Paul César Helleu, loaned to the World’s Fair by Isabella Stewart Gardner. [Image from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.]

After the close of the Columbian Exposition, President Harlow Higinbotham wrote to Mrs. Gardner thanking her for her loan to the Art Palace exhibit:

“The interest excited by this loan collection was very great and the assembling of so many art treasures has done much good in the direction of the development of artistic instincts in the American public. The co-operation of those persons who contributed from their private galleries to enrich the loan collection is sincerely appreciated by the management of the World’s Columbian Exposition.”

Both of these paintings can be viewed at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The Omnibus hangs in the Blue Room, and The Interior of the Abbey Church of Saint Denis is displayed in the Chapel.

The Blue Room of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where The Omnibus is on display.

SOURCES

Bancroft, Hubert Howe The Book of the Fair. The Bancroft Company, 1893.

Letter to Isabella Stewart Gardner from Chicago.

Revised Catalogue, Department of Fine Arts. W. B. Conkey, 1893.