“An exquisitely detailed and perceptive biography.”
— New York Times Book Review
“A sympathetic, impeccably researched biography.”
— Wall Street Journal
“A thrilling new biography … makes the case for [Isabella Stewart Gardner’s] enduring legacy.” —Town and Country
“…in the dazzling Chasing Beauty, Dykstra found a way into Gardner’s life through diligent research that uncovered traces of the woman in the worlds she inhabited. Evocative and absorbing….” –Washington Independent Book Review
“Marshalling vivid facts, fluent insights, and narrative radiance, Dykstra fully captures Gardner’s dynamism, intrepidity, creativity, and singular achievements.”– Booklist (★Starred Review)
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.
Praise for Chasing Beauty
“Thoroughly researched . . . the author captures the sweep and energy of [Gardner’s] life . . . A richly detailed biographical portrait.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“An elegant depiction of a larger-than-life trailblazer.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Isabella Stewart Gardner has found the ideal biographer in Natalie Dykstra.”
—Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams and Cleopatra: A Life
“Isabella Stewart Gardner comes to life as a feminist pathbreaker finally given her due—and an artist in her own right.” —Heather Clark, author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
“Gardner left an incomparable legacy; at long last, she has found a biographer who can match her in range, profundity, and eye for detail.” —Rachel Cohen, author of A Chance Meeting: Encounters Between American Writers and Artists
“Chasing Beauty is biography at its best.” —Caroline Weber, author of Proust’s Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siècle Paris
“Dykstra tells a captivating story of an artist and her time.” —Linda Leavell, author of Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore
Previous Work
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