The Art of Collecting Week 5

Assignment:

Read Isabella Stewart Gardner A Life  Introduction and first 3 chapters. Answer the questions for each chapter.

Isabella‘s family And Early Life 1840-1867

1.      List significant facts and events that you think our worth focusing on about her family. 

2.      What kind of education did Isabella receive? 

3.      Whom did she marry and when? 

4.    What major trip did the Gardners take in the spring of 1883?

5.      Describe the early years of her marriage. 

Isabella’s Education 1867 to 1890

1.      How many international trips did the Gardners make between 1867 and 1906? 

2.      What major change occurred in the life of the Gardners when Jack’s brother Joe died? 

3.      How did Isabella continue her education? With whom did she study?

4.      What church did Isabella belong to? 

5.      Who are some of the famous artists and writers who stayed at the Palazzo Barbaro? 

6.      How did she meet Bernard Berenson? Why did Berenson convert to Christianity? 

7. What happened to Isabella's nephew, Joseph Gardner Jr.?

8.      How did Isabella change Berenson‘s life? 

9.      Why were purchases by artists like John la Farge and Delacroix not unusual in the 1880s? 

10.      What happened to the Sargent Portrait in 1888?

11.   How did Isabella‘s fortunes change in 1891? 

Art Collecting in Earnest 1890 to 1896

1.      Why were there only a few Renaissance paintings in the US in the 1880s? 

2.      How many paintings and sculptures did Isabella buy through Berenson between 1894 and 1899? 

3. Why did Jack feel that Berenson was taking advantage of his wife?

4.      What were some of the highlights in the collection?

4.      How do you feel about the fact that some of Isabella‘s purchases may not have been entirely legal?

Assignment:

• Watch the first half of a video titled The Gilded World  of Isabella Stewart Gardner.  Stop at 29:11 minutes.

•  Use this link if the video below doesn't load. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbjHsF4dTqg

Assignment:

• Read the following notes about ISG

Mrs. Jack was hardly singular in her turn toward collecting art as a passionate pursuit. Other wealthy American men and women displayed their riches and sophistication by means of their collections of fine and decorative arts. For these women and others, who were largely constrained to a domestic sphere, no matter how privileged, the act of collecting empowered some of them to cross from a private to a more public life.

In 1878 she purchased a semester of tickets to the blockbuster lectures at Harvard College given by Charles Elliott Norton, who had been appointed the college's first professor of art history, three years before. She was not the lone society lady there, though it is not known how many others attended that year.

In a letter to Berenson December 2, 1895 Isabella wrote "I should only like to say first that in future and for all time, please don’t let me and someone else know of the same picture at the same time."  She was referring to Berenson‘s recent letter in which he explains how the work by the early Florentine painter, Giottino, which she'd wanted, had been sold out from under her. Some paintings, he warned are so desirable that they disappear quickly.” There were many risks in collecting which required nerve, judgment, quick decisions, and the belief in one’s own taste, and the advice of one's dealers.  Much could interrupt a purchase. The worries for everyone involved from seller to buyer were many and complicated such as  attribution, gaps in provenance, contested wills, the transfer of works out of their countries of origin, import tax evasion, hasty, and destructive restoration, and the wildly fluctuating values of the paintings. “  Collecting at this level was a high stakes game; Isabella needed to establish her terms. "It may only be a prejudice of mine," she continued in her note to Berenson, "but it is disagreeable to me to be put in a competition in these things. So if you want to get pictures first for anyone else, do so;  and after that is all settled, have me in mind another time, when I am to be first and wait until you hear from me before passing on the chance. My foremost desire is always for a Filipino Lippi and Velasquez very good and Tintoretto.  Only the very good need apply! ”

• Relationship with Jack

She needed very badly what he had given her. Like a partner in a pas de deux, he showcased her moves, not his own.  He was the de facto manager of their domestic life, making sure guests felt welcome at dinners, planning menus, keeping track of finances, organizing travel, smoothing hurt feelings and misunderstandings. There were dustups. Isabella had been restless in midlife- a flirtation with Frank Crawford was an expression of that. And she could be trying, tyrannical even, “running rough shod” over propriety and expectation, as a friend would later recall. Once, Isabella was behaving “uproariously” at a dinner.  Jack turned to his table companion and observed in a quiet voice, “that the trouble with Belle is she never grew up;” then added that “her immaturity was a secret of her charm.”

Assignment: 

• Watch a short video titled  Welcome to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDtGCCzvNPs

Images Class 5