“Isabella Stewart Gardner has found the ideal biographer in Natalie Dykstra, who gives Gardner, her nerves of steel, her expert eye, and her singular curiosity their due in this wise, sparkling book.” — Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams and Cleopatra: A Life
“Natalie Dykstra has written an absorbing, deeply researched biography that is also a travelogue, Edwardian period drama, and art history primer, with a supporting cast that includes Henry James, John Singer Sargent, Edith Wharton, and Henry Adams. In these pages, 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
“The complex, magnificent life of Isabella Stewart Gardner pours through the pages of Natalie Dykstra’s wonderful, definitive biography. Gardner left an incomparable legacy; at long last, she has found a biographer who can match her in range, profundity, and eye for detail. It is thrilling to watch the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum rise again in this powerful, timely book.” — Rachel Cohen, author of A Chance Meeting: American Encounters
“Dykstra’s deeply researched biography reveals the complex modern woman behind Isabella Stewart Gardner’s trademark gauzy veils. It’s such a compelling tale, how a woman born into a Victorian world of privilege and propriety stepped outside the dos and don’ts of her social set to become an incomparable entrepreneur and cultural visionary.” — Wanda M. Corn, author of Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern
“A lifelong friend of Henry James, Gardner inspired some of his fictional heroines yet surpassed them all in her psychological complexity, the magnificence of her vision, and her zest for experience. 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
“Copiously researched and engagingly written, Chasing Beauty is biography at its best: a vivid, empathic portrait of an extraordinary woman.” — Caroline Weber, author of Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siècle Paris
“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
“An exquisitely detailed and perceptive biography.” — New York Times Book Review
"A sympathetic, impeccably researched biography." — Wall Street Journal
“Marshalling vivid facts, fluent insights, and narrative radiance, Dykstra fully captures Gardner's dynamism, intrepidity, creativity, and singular achievements” — Booklist (starred review)
“[A] thrilling new biography.” — Town & Country
2024-01-18
The life of a preeminent art collector.
Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924), designer and founder of a Boston museum filled with her collections, was born into money and married into more. When she wed Jack Gardner in 1859, she joined one of the wealthiest, most powerful families in America. As Dykstra, author of Clover Adams, portrays her in a thoroughly researched, sympathetic biography, Gardner resisted the role of socialite to become a discerning patron of the arts. She was “a woman who saw what was expected of her as a Boston matron and decided to be something else. She made sense of her long life through far-reaching travel, avid collecting, and an all-consuming pursuit of beauty.” Dykstra reports those extensive trips in detail, making much of the biography read like a travelogue of places and famous people, including Henry James, John Singer Sargent, James Whistler, and Henry Adams. Along the way, Gardener shopped—for clothing, silks, pearls, and art. She could afford whatever appealed to her: Vermeer, Botticelli, Rembrandt, Tintoretto, Titian, among many more. Bernard Berenson, at the start of his career as a prominent connoisseur and art dealer, counted Gardner as his most important client. Her comings and goings, “musical occasions” and parties, were noted in the press. “Mrs. Jack Gardner is one of the seven wonders of Boston,” a reporter exulted in 1875. “There is nobody like her in any city in this country. She is a millionaire Bohemienne. She is eccentric, and she has the courage of eccentricity.” Dykstra deals with Gardner’s reticence—her diaries do not reveal her innermost feelings—with intelligent conjectures. “It is said that no more self-contained woman ever lived,” the Boston Journal noted in a profile. Ultimately, the author captures the sweep and energy of her life, and the book includes photographs and artwork.
A richly detailed biographical portrait.
