March 31, 2023

Isabella Stewart Gardner: The Museum

 This week's Musings from Main is the second in a trilogy focusing on Isabella Stewart Gardner, the person, the museum and the heist.

The second program offered in our Spring Series all about Isabella Stewart Gardner is “What Isabella Wanted” Children’s Storytime and Art Workshop with Art Teacher, Natalie O’Brien of South Windsor’s Orchard Hill School this Sunday, April 2, 2023 from 2-4 pm.

Isabella Stewart Gardner
Her Collection

According to Christina Nielsen, a former curator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (2014-2018), the first really serious piece of art Isabella acquired was The Concert by Johannes Vermeer. As an art buyer and collector, Isabella again defied convention as she had for most of her life. She was an anomaly, a woman among the men of her day such as Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919), J. P. Morgan (1837–1913) and William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951), who were also obsessive collecting art at the time.

Nielsen relates the story of that 1891 Paris auction house purchase as such,"She has a man bid on her behalf. She sits in the back of the room, and she’s got a handkerchief over her face. Her main competitors were the National Gallery in London and the Louvre that day, and they realized they were bidding against each other — so they did a sort of gentlemanly bowing out. Meanwhile her agent swooped in and bought the picture and suddenly Isabella Stewart Gardner was a well-known name in the art world overnight." (Shea) 

Dutch masters were all in vogue at the time, and Isabella with her husband Jack, used the money she inherited from her family to purchase their next major score; a self-portrait by Rembrandt.

Isabella and Jack did not just follow the trends though, they set them too.  Isabella was the first collector to bring works by Botticelli (Tragedy of Lucretia) and Crivelli (Saint George Slaying the Dragon) to America.

It wasn't just paintings that Isabella collected. She bought all kinds of art; sculptures, mosaics, and tapestries, medieval tables and Renaissance chairs.  She loved it all!  Now she needed a place to showcase it.

Isabella Stewart Gardner
Her Museum

Isabella began building her museum in 1899.  Although it was a dream she shared with her husband, Isabella had to construct it alone as Jack died suddenly of a stroke in December 1898. Isabella purchased a plot of land on the edge of the newly built Back Bay Fens, part of Frederick Law Olmsted’s 1,100-acre chain of parks known as the Emerald Necklace. At the time, there were almost no other buildings in the area. Isabella and Jack had previously selected local architect Willard T. Sears to draw up plans for the museum and in June 1899 construction began.

Isabella took a very hands on approach to the project going so far as to personally take an ax to some ceiling beams she though looked to smooth. As she said in a letter, “I still go daily, dinner pail in hand to my Fenway Court work.” She continually made changes insisting that the workmen redo their work until she had the results she wanted.

“The masons commenced setting the col. [columns] around the court this morning Mrs. Gardner superintending the removal of every col. from the shed, and directing the setting of each col.”-Excerpt form the diary of Willard Shears

Isabella on a ladder supervising workers, Snapshots of the Museum During Construction, 1900-1901, image courtesy of Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

"You said to me… that if ever you inherited any money that it was yours to dispose of, you would have a house… filled with beautiful pictures and objects of art, for people to come and enjoy. And you have carried out the dream of your youth."

— Isabella's friend, Ida Agassiz Higginson, 1923

Isabella Stewart Gardner
Her Enjoyment

Construction was completed in late 1901 and Isabella moved into her fourth floor private residence. She spent the next year arranging her art collection in exactly the way she wanted. She would continue to personally arrange and rearrange her collection as she acquired new objects for the rest of her life. 

On January 1, 1903, at 9pm, she welcomed a select group of friends and acquaintances she had invited to a lavish party, and unveiled her new museum "Fenway Court". She served champagne and donuts to her guests, and members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra performed a special concert in the music room for the occasion. 

"As I think of the care, the time, the study not to mention the expense that such a collection of historic and valuable articles have cost you personally, I cannot help writing that I am proud that a woman has been permitted to do this—the result of years of research and study."

— Lola Greene, a school teacher from Lynn, Massachusetts to Isabella Stewart Gardner, 28 March (after 1903)

Isabella Stewart Gardner
Her Legacy

She opened the museum to the general public for three days the following month, February 1903. In the early years the museum was only opened to the public for a couple of weeks at a time, once in the spring, and again in the fall. Visitors found the open times listed in local newspapers and the one dollar admission tickets usually sold out as only 200 people were allowed in each day.

Just as she had done during its construction Isabella continued to be personally involved in every detail of Fenway Court. She was always present and interacting with the public during open hours. She’d take tickets and walk around answering visitors questions. Even after having a stroke in 1919, she’d come down from her private fourth floor apartment and greet visitors.

Over the next 20 years until her death in 1924, Isabella enjoyed being a patron of the arts. She organized concerts, lectures, and exhibitions, and encouraged artists to paint, dance and sing in the museum.

Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1888,
courtesy of Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

To this day she continues to support artists and the arts as her will called for her art collection to be permanently exhibited "for the education and enjoyment of the public forever."  She provided an endowment to operate the museum, with the caveat that nothing in the galleries should be changed, and no items be acquired or sold from her collection. 

The first of this trilogy of Musings, Isabella Stewart Gardner: The Person, is available to read on our website. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Art Heist will be the focus of an upcoming Musings from Main.

Sources used for this Musing are listed below.

• Casone, Sarah, Before the Notorious Art Heist Eclipsed Her, Isabella Stewart Gardner Made Headlines as ‘America’s Most Fascinating Widow.’ Here’s Why, Art Net News, November 24, 2022, retrieved March 17, 2023.
  
• Fleming, Candace, What Isabella Wanted: Isabella Stewart Gardner Builds a Museum, Published by Neal Porter Books, 2021
• Greenwald, Diana Seave, A Grand Opening, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum website, accessed March 31, 2023.
• Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum website, accessed March 17, 2023.
• McKenna, Shana, Visiting Fenway Court in the Days of Isabella, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum website, accessed March 31, 2023.
• Shea, Andrea, New Exhibit Explains How Isabella Stewart Gardner Amassed Her Famous Art Collection WBUR March 16, 2016,  retrieved March 17, 2023.
  

Visit www.WoodMemorialLibrary.org and www.Nowashe.org for details about all of our upcoming programs.

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