review by Tammy Nguyen
Fear, curiosity, and admiration go hand in hand when you
visit the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum. Enclosed in this large mansion
turned museum are more than 2,500 paintings, sculptures, furniture, books,
letters, photographs and much more. In 1903, after three decades spent
traveling the world collecting art, Mrs. Gardner decided to build a place where
she could house all of the priceless artwork she possessed.
Isabella Stewart Gardner was born in 1840 to David
Stewart and Adelia Smith. Her father
made his hefty fortune trading linen and investing in mining. She married John
“Jack” Lowell Gardner. They travelled a lot throughout their lives. Together, they
immersed themselves in the European culture. Mrs. Gardner died in 1924, only 21
years after her museum opened, and in her will left a $1 million endowment and
instructions that no placements of any piece of art be altered.
Walking through this museum incites many emotions. The
first thing you see is the beautiful, luscious indoor courtyard that Mrs.
Gardner had built when she first obtained the property. It is center to the
museum, and extends all the way up to the fourth floor with a massive skylight on
top. The garden is filled with flowers of all kinds and colors and sculptures
of Persephone, a headless Pelophoros, Odysseus, and a Maenad. It is a space
filled with light and natural life, something that is incredibly unique in
Boston.
Then,
you walk to your left and El Jaleo, a
dark toned painting by John Singer Sargent depicting a Spanish Gypsy dancer and
musicians, hang prominently at the end of the Spanish Cloister. This is one of
the many spaces in this museum that shows Mrs. Gardner’s brilliance when it
comes to displaying art. She had left the floor around the painting concrete,
displayed similar items that were in the painting next to it as an extension of
the background and used a mirror to reflect the painting to bring it to life. The
painting has its own spotlight, and it is mysterious and mesmerizing to look
at.
As you make your way up the stairs and into the different
rooms, which are mostly dimly lit, you can see hundreds of artworks by many
different artists with completely different styles. The furniture is spaced out
and the walls are covered in elegant wallpaper or red velvet.
There is a room in the museum that was
not open to the public when the museum was first opened; it was Mrs. Gardner’s
private space. There is a six feet tall oil paint portrait in there of her done
by John Singer Sargent. It is a painting that you will not be able to stop
staring at. In the painting, she’s in a low-cut velvet black dress, her waist
wrapped in two strings of pearls, her arms bare, her mouth slightly open, her
skin smoothly fair, her hair tied up – a look that was simply unacceptable in the
1800s. This is such an image of power in that no woman back then was courageous
enough to be flaunting her jewelry and her body in such an open way that Mrs.
Gardner did. In fact, the whole museum is an embodiment of elegance and power
and the incredible passion and intuition that Isabella Stewart Gardner had as a
woman in the 1800s
