Chasing beauty : the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner / Natalie Dykstra.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The vivid and masterful story of an American original--creator of one of America's most stunning museums--whose own life was remade by art

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--all in evocative, intimately personal arrangements.

An extraordinary achievement of storytelling and scholarship, Chasing Beauty provides compelling insight into the multilayered self-portrait encoded in the museum's objects and rooms--and delivers the absorbing story of a life every bit as dazzling and haunting.

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.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Prologue: Notes on a Museum (1)
• Part I Becoming Belle
• 1 A New York Girl, 1840-55 (11)
• 2 "A Far-Famed City," 1856-58 (20)
• 3 Mr. and Mrs. Jack, 1859-61 (33)
• 4 "Remaining Dear Ones," 1862-65 (46)
• Part II Around the World
• 5 A Return, 1866-67 (59)
• 6 "Mrs. Gardner's Album," 1868-73 (64)
• 7 "Zodiacal Light," 1874-75 (74)
• 8 "Millionaire Bohémienne," 1876-80 (87)
• 9 The Cosmopolitan, 1880-83 (96)
• Part III Motion and Light
• 10 The Way of the Traveler, 1883-84 (111)
• 11 "A Whirlwind of Suggestion," 1884 (125)
• 12 "The Fiddling Place," 1884-87 (134)
• 13 Love and Power, 1886-88 (148)
• 14 Seeing Wonder, 1888-89 (160)
• Part IV Fancy Things and Ordinary Objects
• 15 "Dazzling," 1889 (173)
• 16 In the Middle of Things, 1890-91 (182)
• 17 The Concert, 1892 (193)
• 18 To Remake the World, 1893 (204)
• 19 "The Age of Mrs. Jack," 1894-95 (214)
• 20 A Poem, 1896 (226)
• 21 "List of Things for the Museum," 1897 (237)
• 22 "I Always Knew Where to Find Him," 1898 (246)
• Part V One-Woman Museum
• 23 Fenway Court, 1899-1901 (261)
• 24 God Is in the Details, 1902-3 (277)
• 25 Unfathomable Heart, 1903-4 (289)
• 26 "Lonesome Cloud," 1904-5 (305)
• 27 "The Whole Interesting World of Paris," 1906 (314)
• 28 "Undying Beauty and Light," 1907-9 (324)
• Part VI A Dream of Youth
• 29 Seeing and Hearing Modernism, 1910-13 (339)
• 30 The Dancer, 1914 (356)
• 31 Blood and Thunder, 1915-18 (364)
• 32 "Very Much Alive," 1919-22 (373)
• 33 Spring, 1923-24 (383)
• Epilogue: Lacrimae Rerum, or The Tears of Things (389)
• Acknowledgments (393)
• A Note on Sources (399)
• List of Illustrations (403)
• Notes (409)
• Selected Bibliography (473)
• Index (479)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Biographer Dykstra (Clover Adams) paints a captivating portrait of philanthropist and museum founder Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840--1924). Raised near New York City's Washington Square, Belle (as she was known) developed an "early appreciation for art." At age 20, she married Boston Brahmin Jack Gardner, who worked at her family's shipping and real estate firm. Her charmed life collapsed five years later, when her toddler son died in 1865. Afflicted with "neurasthenia," she was taken by Jack on the first of many trips abroad to recover, and the couple returned to Boston in 1867 laden with art and treasures. She became a fashion icon (known for her "signature" pearl necklace) and a patroness of the English label House of Worth. By 1880, she aimed to establish an art salon in Boston inspired by the Palazzo Barbaro in Venice. After Jack died in 1898, she devoted herself to building Fenway Court--today known as the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum--to display her impressive collection. Dykstra's high-spirited narrative devotes ample time to Gardner's friendships with famous figures, including Henry James (whose Portrait of a Lady she inspired) and John Singer Sargent (her museum's inaugural artist in residence). It's an elegant depiction of a larger-than-life trailblazer. Illus. Agent: Zoë Pagnamenta, Zoë Pagnamenta Agency. (Mar.)

Booklist Review

The Stewarts were a prosperous and prominent New York family when Isabella was born in 1840, though one beset by sorrows when her siblings died young. Belle and her parents found solace traveling throughout Europe; she also attended school in Paris, acquiring multiple languages and setting the template for her cosmopolitan life. When she married John Lowell Gardner Jr., she joined a Boston Brahmin clan in a conservative enclave hostile to her energetic independence. The young couple began their extensive world travels after the devastating death of their young son and failed pregnancies, elaborate journeys during which Belle adventurously acquired myriad objects and artworks. Throughout this vibrant, reconfiguring biography, Dykstra (Clover Adams, 2012) illuminates Belle's perpetual vigor, avid curiosity, profound receptivity to beauty and diverse cultures, unconventional ambitions, generosity, and triumphs over loss and adversity as a master gardener, philanthropist, trailblazing art collector, and museum founder. Along the way, Dykstra tracks Belle's key relationships with John Singer Sargent, Henry James, Bernard Berenson, Okakura Kakuzō, and many more, and recounts just how radical her aesthetics and mission were as, after her husband's death, she ingeniously designed, exactingly built, and innovatively administered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Marshalling vivid facts, fluent insights, and narrative radiance, Dykstra fully captures Gardner's dynamism, intrepidity, creativity, and singular achievements.