Becoming Tiffany: From Hudson Valley Painter to Gilded Age Tastemaker

A groundbreaking new exhibition of works by legendary artist Louis Comfort Tiffany will fill the Lyndhurst Mansion and gallery this summer. Charting the development of Tiffany’s career from the 1870s through the early 1900s, the display features more than 50 pieces, focusing primarily on early and rarely-exhibited works. The exhibit includes glass and mosaics from the Haworth Collection in Accrington, England, the hometown of Tiffany’s glass foreman, rare textiles from the Mark Twain House, rarely seen early paintings from the Brooklyn and Nassau County Museums and furniture and decorative arts from the Driehaus and other notable private collections.

Based on new research, the exhibition conjures little known and unexpected dimensions of Tiffany’s career. Works in the exhibition reveal his radical exploration of racial inequality in the North, his work with the Jewish community on synagogues in Albany and Buffalo when such intermingling was not common, his pictorial documentation of rampant industrialization along the Hudson River, his adoption of Orientalist subjects, as well as his close but often difficult relationships with women patrons, collaborators, and designers. In particular, the exhibition re-establishes the reputation of Helen Gould, eldest daughter of railroad baron Jay Gould, as a significant Tiffany patron.