American Women Collectors: Isabella Stewart Gardner, a Venetian fantasy in Boston

The history of art collecting is a fairly new area of research within the domain of art history but nonetheless highly interesting. At the beginning, the research focused solely on the big robber barons of the Gilded Age like J. Pierpont Morgan, William and Henry Walters or Henry Clay Frick.

Tosca Ruggieri has put togher a series of lectures on American Women Collectors*, to explore the portraits of some of the ordinary and extraordinary women who shaped part of today's American cultural scene thanks to their approach towards collecting art.

Why are we not talking more about women art collectors? Why did the collecting of precious objects became such a significant feature in the lives of American Woman during the late 19th and early 20th centuries? What legacy did they leave behind?

In the late 19th century, Isabella and her husband Jack started travelling regularly to Europe and found a particular liking to Venice. Isabella’s Venetian circle was composed by famous artists, historians, writers, and other art patrons.

Isabella, quickly smitten by the Serenissima, started developing an appreciation for the Italian Old Masters. She started collecting art in a serious and ambitious manner creating one of the most astonishing private collections of Italian art and European Art visible in the United States. She gathered paintings by Raphael, Titian, Botticelli, Vermeer, and Rembrandt to name a few.

In 1990, some of the most precious artworks in the collection were stolen in the most important art heist that ever happened. The mystery was never resolved, and the museum’s display shows the hope they will return one day.

Please join Tosca Ruggieri for an hour on the incredible life of Isabella Stewart Gardner and her legacy.

Suggested Reading: Isabella Stewart Gardner: A Life

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* Other talks in this series:

The lives of Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, Irene Leache and Annie Wood

The lives of Arabella D. Huntington and Lillie P. Bliss