{"product_id":"chasing-beauty-the-life-of-isabella-stewart-gardner","title":"Chasing Beauty","description":"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe vivid and masterful story of an American original--creator of one of America's most stunning museums--whose own life was remade by art\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIsabella Stewart Gardner's museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from Boston's Fens at the turn of the twentieth century. Its treasures encompassed not only masterwork paintings but tapestries, rare books, prints, porcelains, and fine furniture--all in evocative, intimately personal arrangements.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAn extraordinary achievement of storytelling and scholarship, Chasing Beauty provides compelling insight into the multilayered self-portrait encoded in the museum's objects and rooms--and delivers the absorbing story of a life every bit as dazzling and haunting.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBorn in 1840 to a privileged New York family, Isabella Stewart married Boston Brahmin Jack Gardner as she turned twenty. She was misunderstood by Boston's insular society and suffered the death of her only child, a beloved boy, not yet two years old.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBut in time came friendships, glittering and bohemian; awe-inspiring world travels; and collecting beautiful things with a keen eye and competitive pace--all these were balm for loss. Henry James and John Singer Sargent--whose portrait of Isabella was a masterpiece and a scandal--came to recognize her originality. Bernard Berenson, leading connoisseur of the Italian Renaissance, was her art dealer.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFrom award-winning author Natalie Dykstra, Chasing Beauty is the story of the complex and singular woman behind one of the most fascinating museums in the nation and the world--a tale of beauty and loss, grit and American self-invention.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Unity Books","offers":[{"title":"Chasing Beauty : The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner","offer_id":50734514274501,"sku":null,"price":87.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0625\/6679\/3413\/files\/978-1-328-51575-9.jpg?v=1792369178","url":"https:\/\/unitybooks.myshopify.com\/products\/chasing-beauty-the-life-of-isabella-stewart-gardner","provider":"Unity Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}