Mrs. Jack: A Biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner

by Louise Hall Tharp

A biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner of Boston in the 19th century. An American charmer and art collector, Isabella Stewart Gardner and her husband Jack kept company with the leading men of the day including Henry James, Henry Adams, John Singer Sargent and Whistler. The Stewart Gardners' Boston home, which was modelled after a Venetian

Genres: Biography, Art, Nonfiction, Art History, History, Biography Memoir, 19th Century

365 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1984

Reviews

[Mia Marlowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last month, after taking the red-eye back from Seattle where I spoke for Eastside RWA, I went to the Isabella Gardner Museum. A friend of mine is a docent there and she treated a small circle of us to a private tour.

Isabella Stewart Gardner was the wife of a wealthy Boston Brahmin who inherited 1.6 million upon the death of her father in 1891, back when that was an embarrassingly large sum. She and her husband agreed she'd spend the lot acquiring art. So she spent her life and her funds traveling the globe cherry-picking masterpieces.

I was already so sick with envy, I was predisposed not to like Ms. Gardner a bit.

Then I saw what she'd created.

The Gardner Museum is an absolute gem! More than merely a collection of acknowledged masterworks, this is the sum of a life's passion, a peek into a woman's soul. It's a very personal exposee of a unique individual's quest to educate, to tempt, to infuse her culture with an appreciation for beauty. Not only did she acquire art, she encouraged and supported the best artists of her time. Then she put on her curator hat and transformed her home into a museum (She lived on the fourth floor of this incredible building that's wrapped around a four-storey Venetian-style courtyard). By observing what she'd so carefully chosen and so lovingly displayed, I learned about her tastes, her loves, her theology, and her eccentricities.

The museum was the site of a major heist ten years ago. Someone broke in with a "shopping list" and sliced a Ver Meer and several Rembrandts from their frames. Since the paintings haven't resurfaced, we can only assume they are in the private collection of some cash-rich, spirit-poor meany-head who doesn't work and play well with others. I wonder at the smallness of heart that would steal beauty from the world so they alone can enjoy it. But I suspect owning those pieces gives them little real pleasure because they can't let anyone know they have them. The frames still hang empty in the Gardner Museum to this day.

The painting above is a portrait of Isabella Gardner done by Anders Zorn, a Swedish artist. I think it beautifully captures her generosity of spirit. She's stretched out, filling the space and pressing against the walls, refusing to be confined by the conventions of her day.

I like Isabella Gardner very much indeed.

I had to learn more about this fascinating woman. She was an original! I highly recommend the book.

http://www.emilybryan.com

[talia ♡]

i am seriously in disbelief rn. my library has a "store" inside where they sell all donated books for $1—it is my absolute favorite place ever because the books are usually hardbacks in brand-new condition. you can find everything there, especially recently published, hot, it-girl books. anyways, i screamed inside the store today when i found a copy of this book: brand new, reissued copy, with a map of the Gardner Museum (and bookmark!) inside!!! like??? i have been looking for a copy of this book for AGES since it's been out of print for a few decades and the one place you can buy it is from the Gardner Museum itself. so, thank you rich socal resident neighbor of mine who went to the Gardner Museum, bought the reissued edition of this book, read it prob once, and donated it to the library e x a c t l y for me to find it. it was fate.

[Annie]

There is an extensive amount of detail in this book. It was a bit too much for me, trying to keep track of the many, many names of acquaintances mentioned. I appreciate how thorough the biographer was, but it made it pretty hard to get through at times. I did get a full picture of Isabella’s life, so that was successful.

[Jennifer Hollandbeck · Rating 4 out of 5]

We visited the Isabella Gardner Museum while in Boston (after learning about it from the Netflix documentary “This is a Robbery”). The museum is unique and a must see in Boston. But it is different - there are no informational placards about the artwork, only an online guide to learn about the pieces on display. This biography about the founder really explains the mission of the museum and why/how things are the way they are (and will remain, per the decree of the founder). An amazing story.

[Svetlana · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a life!! Certainly aspiring to at least come close to the level of Isabella's kindness, bravery, and extraordinary impact she's left on the world.

[BookSweetie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Five million dollar reward !!

The reward is real but, sorry, not for plodding (or even traipsing merrily) through MRS. JACK, Louise Hall Tharp's biography of the extraordinary, red-headed Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924), whose life spanned pre-Civil War nineteenth century America through the early twentieth century and immediate post-World War I years.

The reward is for information that leads directly to the recovery of the items taken in one of the most significant art thefts in history (art still awol, as I write this anyway). In 1990, art masterworks by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Manet, and Degas went missing, stolen by a pair of criminals disguised as police officers. (They managed to deceive the security guards who ended up being duct-taped and helpless until the shocked next shift arrived.)

If you have guessed that this record-setting theft is somehow connected with Isabella Stewart Gardner, you are right. New York born Isabella Stewart was married to the fabulously wealthy Beacon Hill Bostonian John ("Jack") Lowell Gardner Jr. (1837-1898) and Bella became the charming and unconventional "Mrs. Jack," philanthropist, patron of the arts, and with her husband, collector of art.

After Jack's death, Isabella directed her own creative energies towards leaving a lasting legacy: the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Yes! The very museum invaded by the art thieves was Isabella's! Of course, she has long been dead, but even before her death, her fortune and determination had been successful in creating a place for her passionately-collected art to be shared with the public.

Now, I've never been to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, apart from an internet visit I just made and very highly recommend. You may or may not have been there yourself. Still, you and I are each part of that public, so we were robbed, too! Hence, if you have any information to help Isabella rest a little better in her grave in Cambridge, Massachusetts' notable Mount Auburn Cemetery, please share it with the FBI; then collect your millions.

One wonders if the thieves had read MRS. JACK before their selfish heist. Would that have stopped them? That's tough to say, but it would give me some comfort to know that they had cared enough to learn something about the stories behind the museum, the art collecting and the people involved, most notably Isabella herself.

In contrast, I wish I had known about the art heist connection before I had completed reading the biography. I discovered that news by researching the museum just a short while ago. Naturally, nothing about the theft is mentioned anywhere in the book; it hadn't happened yet. However, I think I might have enjoyed the reading experience a bit more knowing that fact in advance, or perhaps having previous knowledge of the museum or having already visited there.

Just a short while ago, I also learned that the currently popular fictional book titled The Art Forger: A Novel by B. A. Shapiro, which won a Boston Globe's Best Crime Books of 2012 designation, was inspired by the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum theft.

Let me be clear: MRS. JACK is a meticulously researched 1960s era biography by Louise Hall Tharp, but the book itself is far less extraordinary than the subject.

Yes, readers encounter a wealth of information and insight about the subject; it's rich in detail, (historical) name-dropping, and nuanced incidents that reveal aspects of a complex personality, but the delivery does not dazzle. This biography does manage to acquaint readers with an intriguing person and a rather unreal, foreign-seeming Gilded Age social world filled with encounters with famous writers like Henry James and artists like John Singer Sargent. The finished product is adequate, but oh, such a missed opportunity!

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book at the behest of my closest friend, who lives in Massachusetts and whom I visited in August. She attended college across the street from the ISG Museum and frequented there during her college days. She planned to take me to the museum, which has always been her favorite, and I needed to read up about this lady, whose name I had never even heard until my friend bought me the book. When I received it, I thought, "Oh boy." That baby was 324 pages long and written fairly densely. I struggled to get through the first 50 or so pages, and parts that were heavy on Boston society were particularly hard to read for me. However, I never expected to love the whole experience as much as I did, and I'm so glad that I read this book!

My friend, for her part, did not brush up on the book since reading it in college. So, while she had the local knowledge and the stomping grounds down pat, I was the one during our museum visit who was able to point out particular stories about paintings, their placements, reasons for their purchase, etc. Thus, we made a great combination. The book really picked up for me when Isabella transitioned into a serious art collector. At that point it became supremely interesting. All in all, a good read despite some dry recitations and too many letters quoted. You can really sense Isabella's ache that follows her throughout life due to the loss of her young son, almost two years old, and her subsequent inability to have children. It really seems to affect so much of what she did and who she became, and understandably so. At the museum, I could practically feel her presence. It really was awesome. The book was written in the 1960's and thus cannot predict the major heist that occurred in 1990 when two men posed as police officers and stole 13 of the priceless works of art, so I did some additional reading on that afterward. It all just lends to the air of wonder in the place.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love this museum. Every year we visit Boston and I have to go to her museum as well as the mfa. It is very intimate and the garden in the spring is breathtaking. I enjoyed this biography, although she enjoyed a wonderful marriage, extensive traveling, gifts of amazing jewelry and great wealth to be able to acquire old master paintings as well as contemporary artists (Sargent, Whistler), she also suffered greatly after the death of her little boy and a miscarriage of her second child, and later the death of her beloved husband. But she was a strong woman, before her time.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I put this aside because it was so much more dense than I thought. She is an amazing character, but the fact that this was written in the 60s really shows. I got so lost keeping track of all the Boston society names/faces and there is soooo much unnecessary detail! Every letter, every move...you don't even get to the museum until 3/4 through. Still has enough fun/interesting tidbits that I'll finish it eventually :)

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book, recommended in my book club. Makes you want to read more about the "Gardner Heist". Some in the book club felt it seemed to be written more for academia, and felt a little hard to get into, as well as keep up with all characters. Found it quite interesting about life in her "circle" in the 1800's.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent!!!!

[Peter Parziale · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a student in Boston in the 1970's, I spent lots of free time at Isabella Stewart Gardner's jewelbox of a museum in the Fenway. Cool. Quiet. Classy. Eclectic. The art! The architectural eccentricities. The occasional concert. But I knew next to nothing about the benefactrix and I suppose that I never really thought about it.

This book satisfies that unrecognized hole. What a fascinating woman and personality. Coming from a somewhat humble NY background, young Isabella Stewart's marriage to a comfortably wealthy Bostonian proved to be a catalyst for an extraordinary life. This biography focused on her, but clues in the tale tell of a marriage that was both loving while simultaneously a life where both partners had separate lives and interests...truly, companions. Together they traveled and acquired art, friends, jewels, and experiences; separately Mrs. Jack nurtured a stable of devoted young men, musicians and artists, and an outrageous lifestyle that made her the talk of the town's elite.

Spanning 1840 to 1924, author Tharp relies on exhaustive first-person sources to trace Gardner's life and exploits. At first I was a little worried that the book was too heavily annotated, but she tied the threads together in a way that I found appealing. Indeed, Mrs. Gardner had a practice of burning much of her correspondence and that coulda-woulda provided some fascinating insights. Her exuberant lifestyle didn't endear her to the women in her social strata, so some of the story is told through their catty eyes. She seemed to have men generally tied about her little finger.

She was generous and a patroness to many musicians and artists. She recklessly drove a sleigh and a carriage. She traveled extensively in Europe. She wore her fantastic jewels, especially two huge diamonds that she stuck in her hair, a large ruby at her throat, and a 149-pearl rope around her neck. She favored wild animals. She rented a palazzio in Venice and loaded barges with musicians and friends to have parties on the water. She befriended the German-born conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the outset of WWI.

The last chapters of the book tell of the building and furnishing of the home/museum in Boston's former marshland, the Fenway. Age and ailments and growing money problems became stressors in her later life. Cantankerously, Gardner made and changed the blueprints on a whim. She was at war with her own architects and tradesmen, and Boston's planning commissionaires pulled out their hair, but Gardner always seemed to get her way. She wrote into her bequest precise instructions for operating the Museum after she died; breaking any of her rules meant a sale of the Museum and contents. She could not have anticipated 20th- and 21st-century technological developments, and evidently her operating instructions meant lax security at the Gardner Museum and contributed to the 1990 thefts (that part isn't in Tharp's biography).

I'm going to re-read the book. I have this notion that I missed a lot of stories that whizzed by in the telling. And when I visit the Gardner Museum again, I'll appreciate the space a whole lot more than I did when I was in my 20's.

[Mary Lou · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Isabell Stewart Garner Museum is my favorite museum in Boston. I have visited it since my teens and never fail to find some new "discovery". I read this biography for a book club and looked forward to finding out more about this forward-thinking woman who built her home after a
Venetian villa and filled it with priceless works of art.
I did learn a lot: her loss of her only child at a young age; her "friendships" with artistic men from all areas of the cultural arts; her raising her orphaned nephews; her relationship with her husband which covered art, literature etc.
It was the dry, footnoted slog to get through the biography that finally made me close the book 3/4's of the way through.
A fascinating woman at a time where women worked more behind the scenes. An emotionally damaged woman who sought attention, a vibrant voice for the arts for all people: this is what I take from Mrs. Jack.

[Rita · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up at the Gardner Museum. It's a 2016 re-issue of the Louise Hall Tharp 1965 biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner with a new foreword and new photographs. Tharp's style is very readable and she creates a compelling portrait of Gardner and her circle. Gardner enjoyed some notoriety in her day and Tharp is very happy to retell the tales, dispelling some, confirming others. The biographical style is definitely not one you'd encounter today -- more familiar, as if Tharp is sitting next to you and recounting the events, complete with little asides and winks. That said, if you're a fan of the Gardner museum and interested in learning more about Isabella, this is a good read.

[Katherine Tobichuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a bit biased because I already have an adoration for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. However, this book goes into as much detail as possible to uncover the elusive, grandiose life of Isabella Stewart Gardner. If you are from the New England area it is also fascinating to hear the famous names of all the people Isabella interacted with in the late 1800's and understand how many towns and cities got their names. Isabella Stewart Gardner was so much more than just an art collector and I encourage anyone who has any interest in her museum or art history to read this book. Quite scandalous.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner was a wonderful surprise...not just because it is clearly written...but because the subject is so charming. Isabella Gardner was an opinionated, unusual woman in the 19th century (and early 20th), but was also generous, curious, and honest. She was loyal to her friends and perhaps too kind to people who didn't deserve it. Her humanity and intelligence comes through. If you are going to visit the museum, read this first--it will give you a deeper understanding of the building and the creator. .

[Susan Lillis · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very thoroughly researched biography of Isabelle Stewart Gardner. The book is full of quotes from correspondence to and from her and also to third parties about her, diaries of her husband and acquaintances, and the many references to her in the Boston news papers and society pages. There are extensive footnotes and a thorough index. As a result, this book is authoritative but not very readable. (In contrast with the Lioness of Boston which was highly readable but not very authoritative.) Still worth the read if you’re really interested in her.

[Martha · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of research went into the writing of this book. Although it was written in a narrative style, it frequently bogged down in dates and details - what she bought and when, etc. The author certainly portrayed the strong personality of Isabella Stewart Gardner. Having visited the museum recently, I found the description of the design (with architect Mr. Sears), and the contruction extremely interesting.

[Chris Leuchtenburg · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first, I was put off by the frequent quotes from the society pages, but the detailed story of this wealthy woman's life grew on me. We travel a lot, but we don't go away for an entire year. I can't imagine traveling up the Mekong to Angor Wat without DEET. Still, the Kirkus Review nailed it saying the author is "stronger on documentation than imagination, lacks the flair which her subject certainly had."

[Rita · Rating 5 out of 5]

I regret not reading this book BEFORE I visited the Isabella Gardner Museum rather than purchasing it in the gift shop AFTER my visit. Mrs Jack put in a fugue. How the mega rich spent their money in the late 1800’s. This biography has original sources (letters, journals, eye witness accounts.) Much better written than the latest Astor, Vanderbilt books by a certain CNN anchor. Louise Hall Tharp has a sense of humor too! The life of Isabella Gardner rivals our favorite PBS series.

[Georgie Alef · Rating 4 out of 5]

The amazing story of the fabulous Isabella Stewart Gardener, the men in her life and the notorious exploits that brought scandal to her name. She collected artists as well as art, left price less painting in her Fenway estate and countless legends around her name. The Gardener Museum her home is still a museum in Boston.

[Stephanie Vogel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't get me wrong...Isabella Stewart Gardener is one of the most fascinating people of her time and her museum, paid tribute to in this book as well, is one of my favorite places on this earth. The book, though, wasn't nearly as interesting as either.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner. I loved reading about Boston soceity of the late nineteenth century, the famous artworks I have seen at ISG's museum and the MFA and Isabella's fascinating life.

[Pat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous! many questions answered but only really interesting if you want to know the answers. There is so much more to this woman than what is in the book, but lack of archival materials bog us down. Go to the museum and then read the book. it will become clear.

[Maddie]

DNF

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such an interesting woman who is also mysterious….I wish the book was more factual.

[Karen Kelliher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating woman ahead of her time!

[Sam Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A product of its time that paints ISG as a product of her time and stature. Somewhat interesting, mostly boring.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent and thorough biography of a grand and complicated woman. Such a life and legacy!

[Trudy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read only about a third of this book, because I grew weary of the Gardner's frequent trips, during which Mrs. Jack flirted shamelessly with handsome young men and Jack was not present. My take-aways from this book are random facts that interested me. Hollophane lamps, for example, were installed in one of their homes. They were the rage from the 1890's to the 1950's. They were clear molded glass or crystal shades with parallel or crosscut prisms. After a year of school in Paris, Belle visited the Poldi-Pezzoli Palace in Milan and vowed to build a palace and fill it with beautiful things if she ever had her own money. Cleopatra's Barge was a large sleigh that took young socialites from Boston to Milton. The Hotel Boston was the first apartment house in the country, very French, very Continental. The Gardner's first house was at 152 Beacon St. Washington Square in New York was called the Parade Ground back then. Charles Frederick Worth made dressmaking big business in Paris. Henry James appeared to have been in love with Belle, but he was safe because he avoided "entanglements." He was probably gay but didn't act on it because he hated Oscar Wilde's flamboyancy. Mrs. Jack and Frank Marion Crawford were accused of "chandeliering," making themselves the center of the ballroom. Frank Crawford suddenly, surreptitiously left for Rome on the Cunard Line without telling Belle he wasn't going to go to Japan with them. Jack Gardner took his wife alone, instead, in a very uncharacteristic move in the spring of 1863. The Country Club in Brookline did not have. Golf course in 1881. Golf came to attention after Queen Victoria built Balmoral. Harvard Musical Concerts at the Music Hall were the precursors to the BSO in the 1880's.