FOURTH OF JULY:In 1903, Isabella Stewart Gardener, a Boston heiress and friend of Henry James, opened one of America's first private museums with an eclectic collection of art, furnishings and manuscripts acquired during her travels. EILEEN BATTERSBYrecommends a visit.
SUNLIGHT FALLS ON the gracious courtyard of stonework arches, columns and chalky plaster walls, the effect softened by palm trees, ferns and delicate flowering plants. A Roman mosaic dating from the second century dominates the centre of the space. The courtyard is overlooked by three floors of intricate, balustrade windows; the ground floor level is bordered by dramatic, shaded cloisters. It is a serene place, a Venetian palazzo, featuring a range of antique stone figures and urns. Except this is not Italy, it is Boston, and this remarkable building with its dazzlingly varied collection of artefacts reflecting the centuries is the creation of Isabella Stewart Gardner, an intrepid American whose eye for beauty was brilliantly served by her passion, energy and great wealth.
In advance of other great US collectors such as JP Morgan, Henry Clay Frick and Henry Huntington, Gardner pioneered the idea that the US, a young country, could house great international art works in an imaginative and sophisticated setting of intimate rooms, stately galleries and passageways.
Born the eldest of four children to a wealthy New York merchant in 1840, Isabella Stewart at 20 married Jack Gardner, brother of a school pal and heir to a fortune based on trade and sailing ships, and entered Boston society.
Following the death of their baby son and only child at the age of two, Isabella suffered from depression. These were the years of the American Civil War. Her husband was advised to take her to Europe. They explored Paris and Vienna, saw the midnight sun in Norway and travelled to Moscow and St Petersburg. She recovered, and their eyes were opened to culture in all its diversity. Admittedly, in the early years of her foreign travel, the young Mrs Gardner was more drawn to fashion than art. Her interests would change.
The couple enjoyed travelling. Their first European tour was soon repeated. From Germany, Austria and Greece, they set off again, this time to Egypt and Palestine. They went back to Paris in 1874, and returned within the year.
When Jack Gardner’s widower brother died, the couple raised his three sons as their own. During a visit to Henry James in London, the novelist introduced Isabella to the artist James McNeill Whistler. He would later paint her, as would John Singer Sargent. Again, it was James who introduced Gardner to Sargent on a later visit to London and she would, in time, own more than 60 of Sargent’s works.
The Gardners continued travelling. They went to Japan and on to Cambodia, Indonesia and China. All the while her eye for beauty was becoming increasingly excited – and refined. Her collecting began with rare books and manuscripts. On her father’s death in 1891, Gardner, then aged 51 and the only surviving sibling, inherited his estate, valued at $1.75 million. After a period of mourning, she and her husband again set off for Europe. During this trip in 1892 she purchased Vermeer’s The Concert and brought it to Boston.
It would be displayed on the small table by the window in the gallery known as the Dutch room. Just short of 100 years later, on the night of March 8th, 1990, the Vermeer, along with a dozen other works including Rembrandt's seascape, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, would be stolen by thieves dressed as Boston police officers. None of the works have been recovered. Interestingly, the thieves overlooked another Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, an early work dating from 1629. Gardner maintained it was the purchase of this work that inspired her to create a museum collection.
Wandering through her wonderful museum with its breathtaking range of material spanning world history and culture, from ancient China to Matisse's The Terrace, St Tropez(1904), could be overpowering but for the engaging intimacy of it all. Gardner's lively, eccentric presence is everywhere, from the striking arrangement of the displays to the bold blues and reds of the walls. This is an intimate collection housed in an atmospheric setting dominated by its creator's personality.
Each gallery has the feel of an individual room in a unique home. It is impossible to nominate a favourite, although the Tapestry Room entered through 16th-century Spanish doors, and a concert space in its own right – the Irish Baroque Orchestra performed here – has a powerful Gothic personality. The room is so named because of the two series of Belgian tapestries, each including five works, adorning the walls. Dating from the mid-16th century, the tapestries were woven in Brussels when Flanders was the world centre of the craft. The heart of the room is a 14th-century French Gothic stone fireplace decorated with carvings of monkeys and other animals. Hanging over it is a gold and tempera panel of the warlike archangel Michael, dated circa 1450 and attributed to Spanish artist Pedro Garcia de Benabarre.
Along the wall above the stairway leading to the third floor is another tapestry, Amazons Preparing for a Joust, an early Franco-Flemish work, dated circa 1450-1475. Combining wool and silk thread, it depicts a tournament scene and evokes the world of medieval literature and chivalry. Here is a work which tells a story. The Veronese Room with its painted and gilded ceiling, inspired by Venetian ceilings of the late-15th and early-16th centuries, houses an array of Venetian works including The Wedding of Frederick Barbarossa to Beatrice of Burgundy, which is attributed to Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) and was probably executed by his son, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804), working from his father's designs. Tiepolo's gorgeous oil had been commissioned by the splendidly named Prince Bishop Karl Philip von Greiffenklau to decorate his palace in Würzburg, Germany where the historic wedding had taken place in 1156.
True to her eclectic style, Gardner also placed four Whistler pastels in the room, including a charming one he did of her, The Little Note in Yellow and Gold(1886). The collection has a number of icons, particularly Italian ones, and placed on a marble table in the Veronese Room is the black glass Venetian Madonna altar figure from 1600. Gardner wanted the room to have the feel of a personal saloneand placed her writing desk in here. She also added a table set with an early-19th-century gilt porcelain tea service.
The room also serves as an inspired ante-chamber for the shimmering rococo grandeur of the adjoining Titian Room. Here truly is Venice in Boston. Works by no less than Cellini and Velázquez provide an impressive support act for the finest Italian Renaissance masterpiece held in the United States, Titian's The Rape of Europa.
Inspired by Ovid's description of the myth as written in his Metamorphoses, the work was painted for King Philip of Spain between 1561 and 1562. Gardner had been advised to buy the painting as it was about to be sold by its then owner, the sixth earl of Darley, the ninth person to own it. She finally agreed and in 1896 the deal was struck. The price? $100,000. Ironically her scout, Bernard Berenson, had actually travelled to England in pursuit of Thomas Gainsborough's Blue Boy. Having failed to acquire the English painting, the Titian proved fair compensation. Also displayed in this opulent room is Bellini's Christ Carrying the Cross, dated circa 1505. With its quality of sculptural relief, Bellini conveys extraordinary empathy as Christ stares at the viewer. Of the many riches gathered in Gardner's treasure house, few challenge the candid humanity of this piece.
Leading off from the Titian Room is the Long Gallery, a corridor leading to the Chapel. Hanging on a vivid blue wall is Botticelli's The Madonna of the Eucharist(circa 1470). Beneath the painting, the earliest Botticelli in the collection, on a 15th-century carved Tuscan credenza, is a fragment of a mosque lamp. The Madonna and Childwas not an easy buy – the previous vendor, Prince Chigi, outraged Italian authorities by selling it to a London dealer. Chigi was fined by the Italian government, while Gardner had to have it authenticated as Botticelli's work and also prove her ownership by exhibiting the painting in London before it was finally shipped to her in Boston. Botticelli's late work, The Tragedy of Lucretia (1445-1510), is also at the Gardner and was the first major Italian masterwork she acquired.
Having begun her collecting career with rare books, she would eventually amass more than 1,000 rare editions and manuscripts. Among the many Venetian texts is an illustrated edition of Dante's The Divine Comedyprinted in Florence in 1481. The Gardner copy is priceless as all of its 19 illustrations are intact.
At the far end of the Long Gallery is the Chapel, dominated by a 13th-century 12ft-high French High Gothic stained-glass window. Datable to 1205, the window was removed with several others from the cathedral at Soissons in 1882. The historian Henry Adams alerted Gardner to its availability. A service is held here each year on Gardner’s birthday.
Selecting a favourite work is impossible; every aspect of anyone's imagination and emotions are engaged in this place. The only way to satisfy your desire could be to move in and enjoy the rooms and their contents on a daily basis. Still, if a wish could be granted, I would go for Crivelli's vivid panel Saint George and the Dragon. Crivelli (circa 1430-95) was born and trained in Venice but left the city after serving a prison sentence for abducting a sailor's wife. It is a terrific picture, colourful and dramatic, capturing a sense of the medieval with the hero brandishing a spear, while using his other arm to balance off his horse's neck.
It would take several visits to explore every aspect of the collection; consider Fra Angelico's Death and Assumption of the Virgin(circa 1432), A Portrait of a Seated Turkish Scribe or Artistby Gentile Bellini, elder brother of the more famous Giovanni Bellini, or one of the most beautiful altar pieces in the collection, The Madonna and Child with Saints Paul, Lucy, Catherine and John the Baptist. Italian art is dominant but there are so many elements, from Dutch masters to bronze bears from China dating from the Han Dynasty.
On entering the museum, the ground floor alone offers the brooding cloisters with its theatrical long view of Sargent's El Jaleo (1882) depicting a dancer in performance in a taverna outside Seville. In contrast to this dramatic area with its stone and shadow are the Yellow and Blue rooms, with their emphasis on 19th-century painters such as Degas, Manet, Whistler and Sargent. Standing before the Titian, I noticed two elderly women. They were sisters, born and raised in Boston. "We have been coming here all our lives," said the elder sister, who reached 80 earlier this year, "and each visit we see something new."
Gardner the collector soon realised that her works of art needed a space. A site was selected in the Fenway area, then newly created by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. The Fenway Court project began as a dream, interrupted when Gardner’s husband died suddenly. Isabella Gardner, then approaching 59, decided to carry on. She completed the land purchase and proceeded to oversee the construction. From the plaster and the arrangement of every ancient stone and tile, to the hanging of pictures and placing of artefacts, Gardner took charge. On January 1st, 1903, guests were invited to a concert of Bach, Mozart and Schumann to mark the opening of Fenway Court, as it would be known during her lifetime.
As Ireland has benefited from the benefactor Chester Beatty, so Boston has gained from the acquisitive curiosity and generosity of Isabella Stewart Gardner. She died on July 17th, 1924, aged 84. Her legacy testifies to her celebratory flair and her enthralling, lovingly created museum ranks among the most unique on the planet.
See www.gardnermuseum.org