Gallery

Title
"Thistle"
Location
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA
Creator
George Maher
Creation Date
1901
Restoration Date
2007
URL
http://www.huntington.org
Description
This window originally designed as one in a group of three by Prairie School architect George Maher, was placed in the inglenook next to the fireplace in the James Patten House, Evanston, Illinois. The house’s decoration exhibited a personal design philosophy that Maher described as motif-rhythm theory This theory created a visual unity in later commissions notably with the Thistle in the Patten House in Evanston (1901), the Coral Lily at Rockledge in Homer, Minnesota, (1911), both demolished, and the Poppy in the Ernest Magerstadt House in Chicago, (1908). The demolition of the Patten House in Evanston was considered a loss to the North Shore. Of the two matching panels one is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the other is in the collection of The Boston Museum of Fine Arts.