An Introduction to Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Gardner Museum)

Welcome to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. This building sits alongside a network of parks on land that used to be an estuary, a meeting place for saltwater and freshwater. These are the homelands of the Massachusett tribe who belong to this place and continue to regard these lands and waters as sacred. Our founder, Isabella Stewart Gardner, came to this place with bold imagination. She was known for her radically free spirit and determination, and her strong outspoken voice during a time of rigid conventions for women. She believed that art had the power to change lives, and she made it her life's mission to collect art from around the world and share it with the public. She was born in New York City on April 14, 1840, into a wealthy family. Isabella's father imported linen and other goods from Scotland and Ireland, and he further built the family fortune by investing in growing industries in the United States during the 1800s. These included banking and coal and iron mining. As a girl, Isabella was privately educated in New York, and as was typical for upper-class young ladies of the time, she was sent to Europe to round out her education. While in Paris, she met a schoolmate, Julia Gardner. Julia introduced Isabella to her brother, John Gardner Jr. He was known as Jack, and he was one of the most eligible bachelors in Boston. Jack and Isabella quickly fell in love. They married shortly before her 20th birthday in 1860. The young couple moved to Jack's hometown of Boston and settled into a house in the newly fashionable Back Bay neighborhood. This house at 152 Beacon Street was a wedding gift from her father. They began a life together that was largely made possible through family wealth. Isabella's family money was relatively new, but Jack's family had been building wealth for generations. They benefited from colonial shipping and a global economy dependent on slavery, trading peppercorns from Indonesia, opium in China, and sugar in Cuba. Jack and his father both expanded the family business, investing in real estate and large-scale industries across the United States. It was the beginning of the so-called Gilded Age, with quickly expanding economic inequality. After three years of marriage, Isabella and Jack had one son named Jackie. He sadly passed away at the age of two from pneumonia. As Isabella mourned the loss of her only child, doctors prescribed travel to help her recover from depression. Isabella was completely reinvigorated and inspired by her travels. While exploring widely throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, she kept detailed travel journals. She was documenting the art and culture that would later serve as the inspiration for her museum. Back at home, Isabella immersed herself into Boston's intellectual circles. She was a lifelong learner, and encouraged by the Harvard-based art historian Charles Elliot Norton, she joined Harvard's Dante Society. She began collecting rare printed editions and illuminated manuscripts of Dante's most celebrated text, the Divine Comedy. These early Italian books were Isabella's gateway to collecting Italian Renaissance art. Also at Harvard, Isabella befriended a young budding art scholar, Bernard Berenson. In partnership with Berenson, among other advisors, Isabella and Jack began amassing an astonishing collection. In 1891, Isabella inherited $2.75 million from her father, or about $78 million in today's dollars. It transformed the scope of her collecting. Some of her major groundbreaking acquisitions included Rembrandt's self-portrait, Age 23, Titian's Rape of Europa, and Botticelli's Story of Lucretia. With these purchases, Isabella and Jack discussed moving their artworks out of their home and building a museum to share their collection with the public. Isabella was driven by a strong sense of civic duty. She wrote, Years ago, I decided the greatest need in our country was art, so I determined to make it my life's work if I could. In 1898, Jack Gardner passed away suddenly from a stroke. Two weeks after his funeral, Isabella purchased the land for this museum. She was determined to continue with their shared dream, and she pressed forward with the architect, Willard Sears. What Isabella envisioned was a completely unique building inspired by her travels. Venice was an incredibly special place for the Gardners, who first visited together in 1884 and returned to the city every two years. The museum's design references Venetian Renaissance architecture, along with other international influences. Unlike a typical Venetian palace, however, which looks out towards the water, Isabella turned the view inwards, creating a magnificent garden courtyard filled with ancient art and making it into the heart of her museum. She managed every detail of the museum's construction and was often on site with the builders. Here she is on a ladder, ensuring that her vision was being carried out. The building was completed in 1901. She moved into a small apartment that she created on the fourth floor and devoted herself to personally arranging the works of art in the galleries on the first three floors. Isabella continued to acquire artworks and change the installations for the rest of her life. As you wander the galleries, you may notice that objects aren't grouped based on time period or art movement and that there are no wall labels. Isabella sought to fire the imagination through thoughtful and often very personal arrangements. Fenway Court, known today as the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, opened to the public in 1903. Over the next 20 years, Isabella also filled her museum with visual and performing artists. She organized concerts, lectures, and exhibitions and encouraged artists to make themselves at home in the museum. Our first artist in residence, John Singer Sargent, painted several portraits in the third floor Gothic room. We continue this tradition today with a vibrant community of artists, musicians, and performers. Isabella had a stroke in 1919, but she remained active for the next five years. John Singer Sargent painted her in 1922, frail but alert and swathed in white. She died two years later, age 84, leaving a museum, in her words, for the education and enjoyment of the public forever. Her will provided an endowment to operate the museum and stipulated that nothing in the galleries should be changed. As you explore the museum, we encourage you to immerse yourself in the environment that Isabella created. We suggest you move slowly through the galleries, look closely, and make your own connections between the art, architecture, and horticulture. We hope you enjoy what you discover and leave feeling inspired.