Isabella's father, David Stewart, a New York importer and mine owner, had married Adelia Smith, of Long Island Puritan ancestry. They lived at 20 University Place, New York City, where Isabella was born on April 14, 1840, the oldest of four children.
The household discipline was religiously rigid; at Fenway Court are preserved the now amusing Sunday-school books of Isabella’s childhood, the literary pabulum on which “a daughter of the Renaissance” was nourished.
The summers of the Stewarts were passed at a Long Island farm where the girl, shapely and energetic, acquired a lifelong zest for outdoor sports. She was taught by private teachers until it was determined to place her in a school at Paris, “to finish. ” Among her friends at this finishing school was Julia Gardner of Boston.
Mrs. Gardner’s interest in the arts of design, which finally motivated her greatest project, Fenway Court, began in 1867 when she visited Copenhagen and saw Thorwaldsen’s sculptures.
Amid feverish social enterprises she began buying works of art from local art dealers. She attended lectures by Charles Eliot Norton, professor of art at Harvard. She painted a little in water-colors, illustrating, for example, her journal of travel in Egypt and Palestine.
Artists, musicians, and literary workers thronged her salon.
In 1880, the Gardners, to have a better music room, bought an adjoining house at 150 Beacon St. That accession accelerated the collecting of art treasures with which to fill the additional rooms.
Fired by Prof. Edward S. Morse’s lectures on Japan, the Gardners started in May 1883 on a trip around the world. Thus began an avid collecting of orientalia. It vivified Mrs. Gardner’s appreciation of Whistler, on whom she called in London and from whom she acquired important works.
In the eighties and nineties, the Gardner music room in Beacon St. resounded with the best music and conversation of contemporary Boston. Gericke, Paderewski, and many other celebrated musicians frequented it.
George Proctor, organist at the age of fifteen in the Church of the Redeemer, had attracted Mrs. Gardner’s attention; his career as pianist she followed like a brooding mother during the rest of her life, and in his pupils she took keen interest.
The art collection, meantime, was growing by the accession of Italian, Flemish, and Spanish masterpieces; of works by English pre-Raphaelites; of paintings by Sargent, Zorn, and others. An acquaintance with Bernhard Berenson greatly aided the Gardners in acquiring art works of unique interest.
The lady of the house, however, continued to shock Boston convention by attending prize fights, and conversing familiarly with John L. Sullivan, pugilist, and with Sandow, the strong man. She liked to know unusual people, whatever their social background.
Mrs. Gardner bought land at Fenway and Worthington St. , Boston, on January 31, 1899. A Boston tradition that she literally starved herself to save funds for the contemplated museum is absurd.
It is true, however, that she reduced her establishment and devoted all her time and available means to the enterprise. It was incorporated as the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the Fenway, Limited, and an Italianate structure, destined to house important paintings and sculptures, many of which were brought in free of duty, was erected and first opened to the public on February 23, 1903.
In 1921, she bought her last old master, a madonna by Giovanni Bellini.
She had had a paralytic stroke from which she partly recovered. Her mind remained clear and active; her daily routine was maintained, this including a brief afternoon drive.
In July 1924, Boston was alive with a convention whose decorations and regalia greatly amused her. She ordered her car for a second trip downtown in the same day. The unusual exertion and excitement brought on a heart attack from which she died.
American socialite and patron of the arts, best known for founding the Boston art museum that bears Isabella's name. If anyone had a vision for making the arts accessible to the people, it was Isabella Stewart Gardner. The museum and its collection, both monuments to personal taste, remain unique to this day.
Quotations:
"Years ago I decided that the greatest need in our Country was Art. .. We were a very young country and had very few opportunities of seeing beautiful things, works of art. .. So, I determined to make it my life's work if I could. "
"Win as though you were used to it, and lose as if you like it. "
"Don't spoil a good story by telling the truth. "
Isabella visited the Gardner home, where Julia’s brother, John Lowell Gardner, fell in love with her. The engagement and subsequent marriage were conventionally proper, although the Boston legend persists, that “Belle Stewart jumped out of a boarding-school window and eloped with Jack Gardner. ”
During the Civil War, which Isabella afterward said she was too young to remember, the Gardner’s home régime was as humdrum as any other. The monotony of long evenings in which the young people played backgammon was interrupted by the birth of a son but the child died, however, and the mother was prostrated with a grief from which she never recovered though in time she sought relief in social activities that dazzled the city. Her baby lost, she henceforth mothered all the world that was gay, clever, and socially minded. She emerged from her mourning an enchanting hostess.
While many of the stories told in Boston about “Mrs. Jack” are either false or distorted, they reflect the state of excitement in which she kept her fellow townsmen. She was alive to the value of publicity, and she did not contradict a good story about herself, be it true or otherwise.
Her good-natured, complacent husband not only never thwarted her social ambitions but rather abetted them.
On December 10, 1898, Mr. Gardner dropped dead at the Exchange Club. His will proved that he had implicit confidence in his wife’s taste and judgment, and that they had together planned to create an art museum.
Mrs. Gardner’s many friendships and social contacts made her Italian palace worthy of its historic mission, for not only local writers, musicians, and artists, but many visiting celebrities were entertained against a regal background which the hostess had established, in some passages by work of her own hands.
Her will established Fenway Court “as a museum for the education and enjoyment of the public forever. ” It so stands, with no legal possibility of changes or additions to the collections. It is the donor’s monument. On it a remarkable woman had lavished much of the affection which would normally have gone out to her child.
Her enduring passion for art can be seen in the diverse collection that remains untouched at her home. In 1990 the Gardner museum was robbed of 13 masterpieces worth an estimated $300 million. None of the works has yet been recovered and the empty frames continue to hang in their original positions.
Quotes from others about the person
“Effervescent, exuberant, reckless, witty, she did whatever she pleased, and the men, the gayest and most brilliant of them, she captivated. Her figure was perfect, her complexion marvellous, her grace incomparable. ”
Isabella Stewart married John Lowell Gardner, at Grace Church, New York, in April, 1860. On June 18, 1863, was born their son but the child died on March 15, 1865.
