Chasing Beauty and Isabella Stewart Gardner

by admin | August 29, 2025 7:58 am

Latest in a series after a recent trip to my native New England

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS — We are searching for the tomb of an old friend in the lush beauty of Mount Auburn Cemetery, established in 1831, a few miles outside of Cambridge. From its higher points, the Boston skyline is visible across the Charles River.

We came back to Mount Auburn, which we first visited in 2009, to try to find the family tomb of Isabella Stewart Gardner. I called her an old friend because that is how Gardner feels to us, this amazing woman who used her family wealth — and that of her willing husband — to acquire art from all over the world during her long life (1840-1924). My[1] Beautiful Mystery Companion “found” her first, devouring a historical novel (The Lioness of Boston) just before our trip here last summer.

We made our first visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum last summer. Somehow, despite visiting Boston dozens of times over the decades, and growing up in Concord, N.H., about 70 miles north, I had never visited this museum until last summer. It was built in Boston’s marshy Fens (also home to Fenway Park) to house her collection of paintings, sculpture, tapestries, and decorative arts when she ran out of space in their Beacon Hill brownstone. Architect William Sears was commissioned to design a museum patterned after a 15^th-century Venetian palazzo, or palace. He succeeded.

Armed with a sizable inheritance upon her father’s death, plus her husband’s wealth, the couple traveled through Italy in 1897. They purchased windows and doorways to adorn every floor, as well as balustrades, reliefs, capitals and statuary from the Roman, Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance periods, primarily in Venice, Florence, and Rome. Construction began in 1899, a year after her husband’s unexpected death. Jack Gardner never got to enjoy seeing the collection a[2]t the new building,

Isabella opened her four-story museum in 1903 “for the education and enjoyment of the public forever.” Its main feature is a stunning interior c[3]ourtyard, filled with lush flowers and foliage, with balconies looking inward on all four sides and stories. Isabella spent her last few decades on the fourth floor, which now serves as office space for museum staff. The lower three stories are filled with the artwork she and Jack collected.

And I mean filled. We turn every corner on all three stories to come upon another room filled with paintings by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, John Singer Sargent and countless others. Tapestries cover the walls. It is rather a sensory overload to go through the entire museum, but we always do.

In three of the spaces — the Dutch Room, the Short Gallery, and the Blue Room — several empty frames hang on the walls. They await the unlikely return of paintings and other works stolen in a daring heist in 1990. Two men disguised as police officers talked their way into the museum before it opened, overpowered two guards, tied them up in the basement, and then stole 13 works of art, including two paintings by Rembrandt and one by Johannes Vermeer. It was the largest art theft in U.S. history and remains unsolved more than 35 years later.

After visiting the museum, we headed to Beacon Hill, looking for the address where Isabella and Jack lived — 152 Beacon Street. A sign on the wrought-iron fence protecting the home announces this is “Mrs. Gardner’s Address,” though the original home has long been replaced with a different brownstone.

Back at Mount Auburn Cemetery, daughter Abbie uses the cemetery’s map app to figure out where the Gardner family tomb is located. She drives our rental — a Jeep Grand Wagoneer the length of a school bus — along the narrow roads of the cemetery. More than 100,000 people are buried here on about 175 acres, so there are plenty of roads with picturesque names, such as Arethusa Path, Walnut Avenue, and Harebell Path. The Gardner Family Tomb can be found in Lot #2900 on Oxalis Path, near Auburn Lake. It appears to be built of light-colored granite with simply “Gardner” engraved above an ornate wooden door. Its grounds are covered in peonies, caladiums and a version of mondo grass. It is a peaceful, verdant setting.

I am certain Isabella directed every detail of the tomb with the same attention she paid to creating her museum. A recent biography of her is titled Chasing Beauty. It fits her perfectly. That is how she used her family’s wealth over more than three decades. Now anyone who can afford the modest museum admission price can see what she and Jack acquired over their 38-year marriage.

Admission to Mount Auburn Cemetery is free. That is quite a bargain for anyone visiting Boston, chasing their own beauty.

Source URL: https://garyborders.com/pages/chasing-beauty-and-isabella-stewart-gardner/

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