[Gardening] [Farrand, Beatrix] Group of 4 Autochromes

Lyon: A. Lumiere & Ses Fils, ca. 1912. Group of four autochromes, depicting members of the Edgar T. Scott family. Three of which are set in American landscape architect Beatrix Farrand-designed gardens at their summer estate Chiltern, in Bar Harbor, Maine. The fourth depicts the iconic view from Jordan Pond House in Seal Harbor, Maine. Three plates in passe-partout paper-frames, by R. Dechavannes, Paris, and with Lumiere imprint at bottom; metal studs in top corners; each measuring 10 7/8 x 8 1/2 in. (276 x 216 mm); one smaller autochrome in an L.A. Dubernet No. 4 diascope viewer, measuring 4 5/8 x 5 5/8 in. (117 x 143 mm).

Chiltern was the Bar Harbor, Maine summer estate of Edgar T. Scott (1871-1918), son of Thomas A. Scott (1821-81), fourth president of the Pennsylvania Railroad and Assistant Secretary of War under President Abraham Lincoln. It was the site of the first residential garden designed by acclaimed landscape architect Beatrix Farrand in the Bar Harbor region, and was one of her earliest overall commissions. Farrand would go on to design over 50 residential gardens in the Bar Harbor region during her fifty-plus year career. As most of her early work in Maine no longer survives (Chiltern was demolished in 1946), these photographs provide a valuable record of one of her early and formative commissions.

Three slides depict members of the Scott family in Farrand's gardens: the smaller one, in the diascope viewer, likely depicts Anna Dyke Scott (later Mrs. Moorhead C. Kennedy) on the right and Susan Sturgis Scott (later Mrs. Alexander B. Wheeler) on the left in Farrand's gardens, ca. 1912. One Lumiere slides depicts a young Anna Scott on the left and Susan (Susie) Scott in the center on the lap of their mother Mary (Maisie) Howard Sturgis Scott, wife of Edgar T. Scott, ca. 1909. The second Lumiere slide depicts a view of Farrand's gardens, and the third Lumiere slide depicts the Jordan Pond House in Seal Harbor, Maine, a popular tea house during the Gilded Age, located less than ten miles from Bar Harbor, and now a popular restaurant in Acadia National Park.

Beatrix Farrand (1872-1959) was an influential American landscape architect who is celebrated for her private gardens for some of America's most prestigious families and institutions. Largely self-taught, she traveled frequently in Europe and studied the work of British horticulturalist Gertrude Jekyll. In 1895 she established her own firm in New York City, and soon became popular for her garden designs for some of America's most elite families, including John D. Rockefeller and Henry Cabot Lodge. In 1899 she was one of the 11 founding members--and the only woman--of the American Society for Landscape Architects. Some of her earliest work was done in Bar Harbor, Maine, where her family spent their summers and where she first began to garden with her mother. During the height of her career she operated three offices across the country and completed over two hundred garden commissions for private residences, college campuses, and public institutions. She is remembered for her designs on Princeton University's campus (she served as the University's landscape architect from 1912-43), Harvard University and Oberlin College, as well as the gardens on the Dumbarton Oaks estate in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., and the First Lady's Garden in the White House (now the Rose Garden), where she worked for Edith Roosevelt and Edith Wilson.