Watercolors from Louis Comfort Tiffany’s “Little Arcadia”

Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933) employed many designers, but only a handful of these individuals were selected to work in the enamel department, which Tiffany Studios employees somewhat enviously referred to as “little Arcadia.” Alice Carmen Gouvy (1863­–1924) and Lillian A. Palmié (1873–1944) were two of those designers selected. At Tiffany’s idyllic workshop, Gouvy, Palmié, and others were able to freely pursue their creativity without the stresses of Tiffany’s more commercially driven shops. Watercolor studies, examining plant species in detail, lined the enamel workshop’s walls. The designs served as guides and inspiration for many Tiffany enamels, and later ceramics. This exhibition includes a dozen watercolors including one, a colorful and sensitive study of a skunk cabbage executed and signed by Gouvy, recently acquired by the Morse. The watercolor depicts two distinct views of the cabbage, giving the viewer a completely whole, three-dimensional sense of the plant.