Isabella Stewart Gardner: A Life

Isabella Stewart Gardner was an art collector and philanthropist who built a Venetian-style palazzo in Boston to share her collection with the world. A new biography by Nathaniel Silver and Diana Seave Greenwald sheds new light on her life, including her connections to minority communities, views on suffrage, wealth, and ties to politicians, writers, and artists. The book challenges any portrayal of Gardner as a straightforward feminist hero, revealing her as an exceptional, complex woman who created a legendary museum and played a vibrant and influential role in the art world.

Format: Hardback
Length: 112 pages
Publication date: 29 November 2022
Publisher: Princeton University Press

Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) was a legendary art collector and philanthropist who assembled an extraordinary collection of art from diverse cultures and eras. She built a Venetian-style palazzo in Boston to share these exquisite treasures with the world. However, her life and work remain shrouded in myth. Nathaniel Silver and Diana Seave Greenwald, in their new biography, "Isabella Stewart Gardner: A Life Unveiled," separate fiction from fact and paint an unforgettable portrait of Gardner, drawing on her substantial personal archive and including previously unpublished findings to offer new perspectives on her life and her construction of identity.

Silver and Greenwald shed new light on Gardner's connections to minority communities in Boston, her views on suffrage and other issues of the day, the sources of her and her husband's wealth, and her ties to politicians, writers, and artists. What emerges is a multifaceted portrait of a trailblazing collector and patron of the arts—from Italian Renaissance paintings to Chinese antiquities—who built a museum unprecedented in its curatorial vision.

Beautifully illustrated, this book challenges any portrayal of Gardner as a straightforward feminist hero, revealing instead an exceptional, complex woman who created a legendary museum and played a vibrant and influential role in the art world.

Distributed for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, "Isabella Stewart Gardner: A Life Unveiled" is a must-read for anyone interested in art, history, and the remarkable life of a truly remarkable woman.

Weight: 568g
Dimension: 161 x 245 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780691235967