Sideboard

1876–80

Herter Brothers
American, 1864–1906

Founded by the German immigrant Gustave Herter in the 1850s, Herter Brothers began as a furniture manufacturing shop, but the company soon became one of America’s most notable tastemakers of the late 19th century. The firm specialized in creating the eclectic yet unified interiors popular during the Aesthetic movement. Ornamented with foliate panels, Romanesque arches, and small turned and chamfered pillars, this “modern Gothic” sideboard reinterprets the medieval past, using, for instance, the favorite Aesthetic element of the sunflower arranged in a Gothic tree-of-life motif.

Status: On View, Gallery 177
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Herter Brothers
Title: Sideboard
Place: New York City (Object made in)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: c. 1876–1880
Medium: Oak with white pine
Inscriptions: Incised stamp at back left facing the sideboard: "HERTER BROS'S"; black crayon inscription top back of projecting bay: "Rerbison"
Dimensions: 230 × 213.4 × 73.7 cm (91 1/2 × 84 × 29 in.)
Credit Line: Robert R. McCormick Charitable Trust
Reference Number: 1982.1113
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/99082/manifest.json

“Portrait of an Era to open October 14 in Philadelphia,” Antiques and The Arts Weekly (Sept. 17, 1982), 69 (ill.).
Lita Solis–Cohen, “Chicago Shows Off – Tastefully,” Maine Antiques Digest (Dec. 1988), 12B–15B (ill.).
Milo M. Naeve, Identifying American Furniture, 2nd ed., (American Association for State and Local History, 1989), 38.
Katherine S. Howe et al., Herter Brothers: Furniture and Interiors for a Gilded Age, exh. cat. (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston/Abrams, 1994), fig. 31.
Judith A. Barter, et al., American Arts at The Art Institute of Chicago: From Colonial Times to World War I (Art Institute of Chicago, 1998), 243–45, no. 117.

Philadelphia College of Art, Portrait of an Era, 1830–1930, Oct. 14–17, 1982.

Private collection, Montclair, New Jersey; Lincoln Mayflower Galleries, Orange, New Jersey, 1980; Robert Bahssin, Post Road Gallery, Larchmont, New York, from 1980 to 1982; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1982.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.