{"product_id":"chasing-beauty-the-life-of-isabella-stewart-gardner","title":"Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe vivid and masterful biography 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.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIsabella 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAn extraordinary achievement of narrative nonfiction and scholarship, \u003ci\u003eChasing Beauty\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBorn 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut in time this Gilded Age art patron found 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom award-winning author Natalie Dykstra, \u003ci\u003eChasing Beauty\u003c\/i\u003e is the essential art collector biography 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis definitive work of women's history reveals the story behind the legend: \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eBoston History: \u003c\/b\u003e How a privileged New York transplant, misunderstood by Boston's insular society, carved out a life of daring originality on her own terms.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eA Gilded Age Circle: \u003c\/b\u003e The glittering, bohemian friendships with Henry James and John Singer Sargent, who captured her originality on canvas in a portrait that became a masterpiece and a scandal.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eBeauty Forged from Loss: \u003c\/b\u003e The profound personal tragedy that shaped her pursuit of beauty, and how collecting art became a balm for the devastating loss of her only child.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eThe Making of a Museum: \u003c\/b\u003e The creation of the iconic Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum as a form of memoir, with every object and its placement telling the dazzling and haunting story of the woman who collected them.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"Mariner Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51947881267431,"sku":"9780063378353","price":21.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0449\/4075\/5096\/files\/imageloader_ce706d7d-8cc6-40d8-87ab-fa8a508625ef.jpg?v=1775502845","url":"https:\/\/arvidabookco.com\/products\/chasing-beauty-the-life-of-isabella-stewart-gardner","provider":"Arvida Book Co.","version":"1.0","type":"link"}