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Chasing beauty : the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner / Natalie Dykstra.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Mariner Books, [2024]Edition: First editionDescription: 495 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781328515759
  • 1328515753
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
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.
Summary: 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.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Shelving location Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Dr. James Carlson Library Biography New GARDNER I. D996 Available 33111011113491
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library Biography New GARDNER I. D996 Available 33111011237969
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The vivid and masterful story of Isabella Stewart Gardner--creator of one of America's most stunning museums--an American original whose own life was remade by art. Includes archival photos of Isabella's world, museum, and the art she collected.

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.

An extraordinary achievement of storytelling and scholarship, Chasing Beauty illuminates the fascinating ways the museum and its holdings can be seen as a kind of memoir, dazzling and haunting, created with objects instead of words and displayed per Isabella's wishes in the exact placements she initially curated.

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.

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