CHASING BEAUTY

The life of a preeminent art collector.

Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924), designer and founder of a Boston museum filled with her collections, was born into money and married into more. When she wed Jack Gardner in 1859, she joined one of the wealthiest, most powerful families in America. As Dykstra, author of Clover Adams, portrays her in a thoroughly researched, sympathetic biography, Gardner resisted the role of socialite to become a discerning patron of the arts. She was “a woman who saw what was expected of her as a Boston matron and decided to be something else. She made sense of her long life through far-reaching travel, avid collecting, and an all-consuming pursuit of beauty.” Dykstra reports those extensive trips in detail, making much of the biography read like a travelogue of places and famous people, including Henry James, John Singer Sargent, James Whistler, and Henry Adams. Along the way, Gardener shopped—for clothing, silks, pearls, and art. She could afford whatever appealed to her: Vermeer, Botticelli, Rembrandt, Tintoretto, Titian, among many more. Bernard Berenson, at the start of his career as a prominent connoisseur and art dealer, counted Gardner as his most important client. Her comings and goings, “musical occasions” and parties, were noted in the press. “Mrs. Jack Gardner is one of the seven wonders of Boston,” a reporter exulted in 1875. “There is nobody like her in any city in this country. She is a millionaire Bohemienne. She is eccentric, and she has the courage of eccentricity.” Dykstra deals with Gardner’s reticence—her diaries do not reveal her innermost feelings—with intelligent conjectures. “It is said that no more self-contained woman ever lived,” the Boston Journal noted in a profile. Ultimately, the author captures the sweep and energy of her life, and the book includes photographs and artwork.

A richly detailed biographical portrait.