“Copiously researched and engagingly written, Chasing Beauty is biography at its best: a vivid, empathic portrait of an extraordinary woman.”
In Chasing Beauty, award-winning author Natalie Dykstra tells the vivid story of Isabella Stewart Gardner, the visionary collector who built one of America’s most remarkable museums. From the outside, her creation looked like a plain brick structure in Boston’s Fens, but inside unfolded a breathtaking four-story Italian palazzo filled with paintings, tapestries, rare books, porcelain, and fine furniture—each piece placed exactly as Gardner intended. Born to privilege in New York in 1840 and married into Boston’s elite, she endured personal heartbreak, including the death of her only child, and social ostracism from the city’s insular circles. What followed was a life of dazzling friendships, adventurous travels, and a fierce pursuit of beauty that drew the admiration of figures like Henry James and John Singer Sargent, and the counsel of art dealer Bernard Berenson. Dykstra reveals how Gardner’s museum became a kind of autobiography in objects, reflecting her originality, resilience, and unshakable belief in the power of art to transform a life.
Natalie Dykstra is the author of Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award, and recipient of fellowships and prizes including the NEH Public Scholars grant, the inaugural Robert and Ina Caro Research Fellowship, the Marfield Prize for arts writing, and the New England Society of New York Book Award. A Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society, she is professor emerita of English at Hope College and lives near Boston with her husband.
Our Speaker Series is free & open to the public! Light refreshments will be served.
This series is made possible by our generous sponsor, Christine Mayer, and is presented in partnership with the Wellesley Free Library.