Artist and art collector Sarah Choate Sears (1858-1935) and her husband Joshua Montgomery Sears lived in this Boston mansion in the first decades of the twentieth century. A graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Sarah Sears painted portraits and still lifes and later took up photography. A supporter of local artists, Sears was the only woman incorporator of the Society of Arts and Crafts. She also was active in the work of the Copley Society. Sears was a patron of post impressionist painter Maurice Prendergast, and collected paintings by the early moderns and impressionists. Among them was her acquaintance, American-born Mary Cassatt (1845-1926), whose paintings are treasured by museums worldwide.
