A10: Massachusetts Dining Room, 1795
c. 1940
Medium
Miniature room, mixed media
Dimensions
Scale 1 inch = 1 foot: 30 × 60 × 47.5 cm (11 13/16 × 23 5/8 × 18 3/4 in.); Interior, Scale 1 inch = 1 foot: 30.5 × 61 × 48.3 cm (12 × 24 × 19 in.)
Classification
miniature
Department
Applied Arts of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
45342
Art Historical Context
Step into the elegant world of 18th-century New England with *A10 Massachusetts Dining Room, 1795*, a exquisite miniature room crafted by Narcissa Niblack Thorne around 1940. This mixed-media masterpiece, housed in the Art Institute of's Department of Applied Arts of Europe, recreates a Federal-style dining space at a precise 1-inch-to-1-foot scale (exterior: 30 × 60 × 47.5 cm; interior: 30.5 × 61 × 48.3 cm). Thorne, a pioneering miniaturist, drew inspiration from historic homes to capture the refined domestic life of post-Revolutionary Massachusetts. The room evokes the neoclassical sophisti...
About the Artist
Narcissa Niblack Thorne · 1882–1966
Narcissa Niblack Thorne (1882–1966) was born on May 2 in Vincennes, Indiana, the eldest child of William Niblack and Frances Caldwell Niblack. Her family relocated to Chicago during her childhood, where she received a patchwork education: homeschooled by a governess, public schooling from age eleven, private classes, and finishing at the elite Kenwood Institute in Hyde Park. Extensive family trave...