Isabella Stewart Gardner By: Jim Lane Isabella Stewart Gardner by John Singer Sargent 1888, oils Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (Click on picture for the pastel portrait of Mrs. Gardner by James McNeill Whistler)

The art world is balanced firmly on three legs, not unlike the tripod easels many artists use when painting outdoors, or even in their studios. One leg is, of course, the ARTIST. The second is the art LOVER. The third is the one most often forgotten, that being the art BUYER. The first of these is so obvious as to bear no further elucidation at this point. In the ranks of the art LOVER I include the millions who visit art galleries and never buy, or troop through museums 'til they're so pooped they plop, and those, like myself, who write ABOUT painting. (What one wag once compared to DANCING about ARCHITECTURE.) And, though artists seldom forget about them, most other people think little about the third leg, the art buyer--specifically, homeowners, museums, and collectors. In recompense for this oversight, I'd like to pay homage to one of the greatest American art collectors of this century--Isabella Stewart Gardner.

Isabella Stewart was born in 1840. In 1860, she married John Lowell Gardner. Their only son having died before his second birthday, she raised three orphaned nephews while her husband raised a family fortune. In 1891, she inherited her father's fortune of $1.6 million accumulated from the sale of the family's large farm near Jamaica, New York, on Long Island (he was also in iron and steel). It was with this windfall she began collecting art, and not just ANY art, but one of the better self-portraits of REMBRANDT (one of sixty he painted during his lifetime). With the untimely death of her husband in 1898, Isabella Gardner quieted her grief by throwing herself into the construction of a museum to house her collection as well as herself. (She lived on the fourth floor.) Today it is a Boston landmark. She called it Fenway Court.

The place is somewhat Moorish in style, featuring a large courtyard which in some climates might have been open to the sky, but being in Boston, it was wisely covered with a then unusual glass roof so as to admit natural light to the inner rooms of the mansion/museum. The numbers are impressive--2,500 objects spanning 30 centuries of which about 300 are paintings. They are housed on three floors of the museum in rooms reflecting in their decor the historic period of the art work contained therein. Also included are a similar number of sculptures, textiles, ceramic/glass objects, as well as a lesser number of drawings, prints, and art objects of other kinds. Antique furniture makes up an astounding 450 pieces in the collection.

In addition to Rembrandt, Isabella Gardner acquired Botticelli, Raphael, Titian, and Degas, as well as portraits of herself by such contemporary art luminaries as Whistler and John Singer Sargent. Her portrait by Sargent can be seen above. (Click on that image for the portrait of her by Whistler.) The Sargent portrait was considered shocking in 1888 when it was first exhibited because of the then-daring neckline, her shapely figure, and the halo effect created by the background behind her head. When her husband saw it, he requested that it not be shown again during his lifetime. In fact, it was not publicly show again until 1924 after Mrs. Gardner's death. While some characterized her as eccentric, perhaps independent and unconventional would be more accurate. She was a wise, witty, and determined collector, a very strong, legendary third, tripod leg in the art scheme of things. If only there were more like her today.

Jim Lane is fifty-ish, balding, bearded, bespectacled, professorial, outgoing, knowledgable about a lot of things, expert on a very few. He grew up in the small town of Stockport, situated on the Muskingum River in Southeastern Ohio. He graduated from a un-noteworthy business college in Cincinnati, from the U.S. Air Force, and from Ohio University where he also obtained a masters degree and wracked up several hours of post-graduate work as well. For most of his professional life he's run a portrait business out of his home, specializing in sports portraits done in pencil and colored pencil.

Happily married for almost 30 years, Jim taught elementary and high school art for 26 years and also spent many enjoyable hours in the front of a local community college classroom. Recently he has retired from teaching in favor of painting, traveling, writing, designing web pages, and "...doing things I've never done before."

E-mail Jim at: jimlane@jimlaneart.com

Visit The Jim Lane Collection at:   http://www.jimlaneart.com

Or Jim Lane's Arty-fact Archives at:   http://www.1st.net/users/jimlane/Archive.html