Chasing beauty : the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner / Natalie Dykstra.
Material type: TextPublisher: New York : Mariner Books, [2024]Edition: First editionDescription: 495 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9781328515759
- 1328515753
Item type | Home library | Collection | Shelving location | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book | Dr. James Carlson Library | Biography | New | GARDNER I. D996 | Available | 33111011113491 | ||||
Adult Book | Main Library | Biography | New | GARDNER I. D996 | Available | 33111011237969 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
The vivid and masterful story of an American original--creator of one of America's most stunning museums--whose own life was remade by art
Isabella Stewart Gardner's museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from Boston's Fens at the turn of the twentieth century. Its treasures encompassed not only masterwork paintings but tapestries, rare books, prints, porcelains, and fine furniture--all in evocative, intimately personal arrangements.
An extraordinary achievement of storytelling and scholarship, Chasing Beauty provides compelling insight into the multilayered self-portrait encoded in the museum's objects and rooms--and delivers the absorbing story of a life every bit as dazzling and haunting.
Born in 1840 to a privileged New York family, Isabella Stewart married Boston Brahmin Jack Gardner as she turned twenty. She was misunderstood by Boston's insular society and suffered the death of her only child, a beloved boy, not yet two years old.
But in time came friendships, glittering and bohemian; awe-inspiring world travels; and collecting beautiful things with a keen eye and competitive pace--all these were balm for loss. Henry James and John Singer Sargent--whose portrait of Isabella was a masterpiece and a scandal--came to recognize her originality. Bernard Berenson, leading connoisseur of the Italian Renaissance, was her art dealer.
From award-winning author Natalie Dykstra, Chasing Beauty is the story of the complex and singular woman behind one of the most fascinating museums in the nation and the world--a tale of beauty and loss, grit and American self-invention.
Chronicles the life of the creator of one of America's most stunning museums-an American original whose own life was remade by art; includes archival photos of her world, museum and the art she collected.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 409-478) and index.
Prologue: Notes on a museum -- Part 1: Becoming belle. New York girl -- 'A far-famed city' -- Mr. and Mrs. Jack -- 'Remaining dear ones' -- Part II: Around the world. A return -- 'Mrs. Gardner's album' -- 'Zodiacal light' -- 'Millionaire bohemienne' -- The cosmopolitan -- Part III: Motion and light. The way of the traveler -- 'A whirlwind of suggestion' -- 'The fiddling place' -- Love and power -- Seeing wonder -- Part IV: Fancy things and ordinary objects. 'Dazzling' -- In the middle of things -- The concert -- To remake the world -- 'The age of Mrs. Jack' -- A poem -- 'List of things for the museum' -- 'I always knew where to find him' -- Part V: One-woman museum. Fenway court -- God is in the details -- Unfathomable heart -- 'Lonesome cloud' -- 'The whole interesting world of Paris' -- 'Undying beauty and light' -- Part VI: A dream of youth. Seeing and hearing modernism -- The dancer -- 'Blood and thunder' -- 'Very much alive' -- Spring -- Epilogue: Lacrimae rerum, or the tears of things -- Acknowledgments -- A note on sources -- List of illustrations -- Notes -- Selected bibliography -- Index.