Isabella Stewart Gardner is an under-studied (by me, anyway) fascinating character in American history. She was powerful, unfathomably wealthy, and - for her time - really, really weird. She knew how to set Boston Society ablaze, and did it as much as she possibly could. The theft at the Gardner museum is simply another twist in a life full of them.
Born April 14, 1840 in New York City, Isabella (or "Belle" or "Donna Isabella" or "Isabella of Boston" or "Mrs. Jack") was the daughter of David and Adelia Smith Stewart. David Stewart was an extremely wealthy linen and iron merchant in Manhattan. The family could reportedly trace the paternal lineage through the royal Stuart family of Scotland. Her mother's family arrived in Boston in 1650 before settling on Long Island.
Her education was fairly typical (for the very wealthy): private tutors at home, private school in New York at the Miss Okill School where she demonstrated a penchant for sketching and watercolors, finishing school in Paris, studying music, dance, and foreign languages. Through Julia Gardner, her roommate in Paris, Isabella met Julia's brother Jack, Boston's "most eligible bachelor."
Jack Gardner's maternal grandfather was Joseph Peabody, a prominent Salem shipowner who went on to become one of the wealthiest men in America by importing pepper from Sumatra. Jack, a descendant of the Brahmin Peabody, Lowell, and Gardner families, was 23 and Isabella was almost 20 when they married at Grace Church in lower Manhattan. Matthew Hale Smith, a Unitarian minister and newspaper correspondent wrote in 1869 - nine years after the Stewart/Gardner wedding - that "to be married or buried within [Grace Church] has been ever considered the height of felicity."
After their marriage, Jack and Isabella moved to Jack's hometown - Boston - and settled into a house at 152 Beacon Street in Boston's posh Back Bay. The house was a wedding gift from Isabella's father. It was the eve of the Civil War, though you wouldn't know it from any of her diaries or letters.
In 1863 Jack and Isabella had a son, John Lowell Gardner III, whom they called "Jackie." Both were absolutely devastated when Jackie died of pneumonia shortly before his 2nd birthday. After two years of a spiraling depression Jack took Isabella abroad, first to northern Europe and Russia (where Isabella had to be carried up the gangway on a mattress) and later all over the continent, Egypt and the Middle East, and Asia. This is where Isabella re-discovered her love of art, and she kept extensive journals of her travels. If she didn't come out of her depression (because the death of a child isn't something you just Get Over), traveling and collecting at least muted the dark days.
Doctors advised her to not attempt another pregnancy. Now freed from the social construct of the "woman's place" in the mid-19th century, Isabella lived as she pleased.
Boston has always been - for better or for worse - an intellectual center of America, and Isabella was drawn to it. She attended readings by Charles Eliot Norton, Harvard's very first professor of art history, in 1878, and he invited her to join the Dante Society which was formally organized in 1881 under the leadership of Norton, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell. The editor William Roscoe Thayer said of Norton:
To read Dante with Norton was almost an act of worship. There was in his voice something wonderfully stirring and wholly incommunicable. As he reached a favorite passage his face became radiant and his tones more tender. He explained fully from every side - verbal, textual, literary, spiritual.
How could Isabella resist? Under Norton's urging, she began collecting rare books and manuscripts. That year Henry James, drawing upon his time and experiences with Isabella, published Portrait of a Lady, Isabella was the inspiration for the lady, as well as serving as inspiration for "The Spoils of Poynton's" Mrs. Gareth, Milly Theale in "The Wings of a Dove," and "The Golden Bowl's" Charlotte Stant. James said of Isabella that she "is not a woman. She is a locomotive with a Pullman car attached." Essayist John Jay Chapman described her as "a fairy in a machine shop."
Also emerging was Boston's "gay subculture of the time," according to Isabella's biographer Douglass Shand-Tucci. Isabella's coterie included numerous young gay men. Some of her closest friends were art critic Charles Loeser, philosopher George Santayana, and essayist Logan Pearsall Smith. All were gay. Years prior, in 1875, Jack's brother Joseph committed suicide, and Jack and Isabella adopted his three orphaed teenage sons. The oldest - Joseph Junior - committed suicide at age 25 with some evidence (uncovered by Shand-Tucci) that the reason was the "unrequited love for another man." Another of her nephews was rumored to be gay. It certainly could have been out of sympathy for the two that Isabella formed an attachment to gay men. Shand-Tucci dramatically wrote that "the gay mist that surrounded the chatelaine of Fenway Court is unmistakable."
Whether or not Isabella was actually an "early gay icon," she would have loved the gossip. She famously told a friend who had mentioned a rumor about her, "Don't spoil a good story by telling the truth." Isabella also saved newspaper clippings written about her. She just didn't care what anyone thought.
In 1884 Jack and Isabella took a trip to Venice and visited the Palazzo Barbaro, owned by Bostonians Daniel Sargent Curtis (whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower) and his wife Ariana Randolph Wormeley. The Palazzo Barbaro became a meeting place for high-minded expats and travelers. Notable visitors included John Singer Sargent (who would later produce a portrait of Isabella), Henry James, Robert Browning, James Whistler, Claude Monet, Edith Wharton, and the aforementioned Charles Eliot Norton. The building, and the company within it, inspired Isabella to think about replicating it back in Boston.
In 1886 Isabella met 21-year old Bernard Berenson, then a student at Harvard who had also studied Dante under Norton and who spoke English, German, Italian, (probably) French, as well as Hebrew, Sanskrit, Arabic, Latin, and Greek. Berenson (not gay) was also buddies with Ray Bradbury. Berenson became Isabella's chief art advisor, and helped acquire some of the more notable pieces in her collection. Berenson said of Isabella, "she lives at a rate and intensity, with a reality that makes other lives seem pale, thin, and shadowy."
Isabella's father passed away in 1891, leaving her an estate worth $1.75 million (over $45 million today). With this sudden influx of money, Isabella and Jack began to focus on their art collection. Some of the more notable acquisitions - with Berenson's assistance - were Rembrandt's Self-Portrait, Age 23, Titian's Rape of Europa (for a then-world record price of £20,000), and Vermeer's The Concert. For the Vermeer, she outbid the Louvre and London's National Gallery, firmly establishing her as one of the world's foremost art collectors. After acquiring the Rembrandt, Isabella and Jack began to plan the museum they had wanted since spending holidays at the Palazzo Barbaro.
On December 10, 1898 Jack died suddenly of a stroke. He was 61. Six weeks after Jack's death, Isabella hired architect Willard T. Sears to design Fenway Court, which would become the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. Sears and his architectural partner Charles Amos Cummings had designed Brechin Hall and the Stone Chapel at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and the Old South Church in Copley Square in Boston. At the time, there were basically no other buildings in the Fens, in Boston's Back Bay, near where Jack and Isabella lived.
Construction on the museum began in 1899 and was completed in 1901. Isabella lived on the 4th floor, while the 1st-3rd floors were devoted to her art collection. She arranged the displays herself and Fenway Court opened at 9pm on January 1, 1903 for 150 of her closest friends while she served donuts and champagne, and 50 players from the Boston Symphony Orchestra welcomed her guests through the gate. Edith Wharton - who had traveled to Boston via a private railcar from New York specifically for the opening - said of the food served at the opening that it was what you would expect from a provincial rail station in France. As Wharton got up to leave, Isabella thanked her for coming and jabbed that she shouldn't expect another invitation to eat at her railroad restaurant. The museum opened to the public in February 1903.
That same year, the Boston Americans - known officially in 1908 as the Boston Red Sox - broke ground on the Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds, located at the present-day site of Northeastern University. In 1903 the Americans won the best-of-nine World Series against the Pittsburgh Pirates, 5-3. They played at Huntington Avenue until Fenway Park was built in 1912, about 1.4 miles from Isabella's house in the Back Bay. Isabella bought season tickets, where she "loudly encouraged all the Boston players by name."
The 1912 Red Sox, in their first season at Fenway Park, won the World Series, this time beating the New York Giants, with a rare tie in Game 2 (game called after 11 innings due to darkness). The 1912 World Series is generally regarded as one of the greatest World Series in baseball history (I'll take 2017, for obvious reasons). Isabella loved it.
Two months after the Red Sox beat the Giants, Isabella attended a performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra wearing a white headband with "Oh you Red Sox" written in red letters. A Boston gossip columnist wrote:
It looked as if the woman had gone crazy...almost causing a panic among those in the audience who discovered the ornamentation, and even for a moment upsetting [the musicians] so that their startled eyes wandered from their music stands.
Why was polite Boston society freaking out? "Oh you Red Sox" was a popular song of the Royal Rooters, a Boston baseball fan club, to put it mildly. The Rooters were led by Michael T. "Nuf Ced" McGreevy, owner of Third Base Saloon. Why "Third Base?" Because it was the last stop before home, and it was America's first sports bar. Boston Mayor John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald - maternal grandfather of John F. Kennedy, was a chairman of the Royal Rooters for a time (though the position may have been politically-motivated, as Honey Fitz tried to mobilize the Irish vote). Seeing as how baseball, at the time, wasn't exactly for High Society, Isabella's fandom was a veritable scandal. There is a provision in her will stipulating that anyone who comes in wearing Red Sox gear gets a discount on their admission.
Independently wealthy, Isabella was freed from any concern for social convention. She was known for smoking cigarettes and driving at excessive speeds through Boston. Isabella was seen at boxing matches, horse races, anything that featured a sporting event. She was once spotted taking the Boston Zoo's lions for a walk through the park. In an era when many women didn't drink in public, Isabella drank beer and smoked a cigarette. Again, she didn't care what anyone thought of her. The more scandalous, the better. Isabella burned her letters in an effort to shape her own narrative going forward.
Over the next 20 years, Isabella used the museum as a living, breathing artistic space. John Singer Sargent painted for the public in the Gothic Room. Ruth St. Denis performed her famous dance The Cobra in The Cloisters. Australian opera superstar Nellie Melba performed from the balcony of the Dutch Room into the Courtyard. She organized concerts, lectures, and exhibitions for the public, which were admitted on special days.
In 1919, a year after the Red Sox won their last World Series until 2004, and months before Boston sold Babe Ruth to New York, Isabella had a stroke - the same affliction that took her husband's life. She recovered, somewhat, and continued to receive visitors at her home/museum. This 1922 John Singer Sargent portrait shows a "frail but alert" Isabella. She passed away on July 17, 1924 at the age of 84 and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery next to her Jack, and her son, Jackie.
In her will, she left an endowment for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and stipulated that nothing in the galleries should be changed. No pieces were to be bought or sold. The galleries remain as they were when Isabella climbed ladders to oversee the installation of various pieces. In the event that some curator comes in and starts making changes to the collection, her will says that the entire museum is to be sold and the money given to Harvard University. Also, anyone named Isabella gets in for free.
Her will left a not-insignificant amount of money to the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the cringely-named Industrial School for Crippled and Deformed Children, the Animal Rescue League, and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
The night of March 18, 1990 was a security mess from the beginning. The two men pushed the Museum's buzzer, identified themselves as Boston police who were responding to a disturbance. The two security guards inside let them come in through the employee entrance. The two men asked the guard at the watchdesk to step away, whereupon he and the other security guard were immediately handcuffed and tied up in the Museum's basement. They disarmed the security cameras
Over 81 minutes, these two men took 13 pieces of art worth over $500 million - though they left other, more valuable pieces alone. Titian's The Rape of Europa, for instance, is still on display. Vermeer's The Concert - Isabella's first major acquisition - was among the 13. Rembrandt's Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee and A Lady and Gentleman in Black were cut from their frames. Five Degas drawings were taken, as well as a French bronze eagle finial and a Chinese gu. The two men made two trips to the car before departing at 2:45am, telling the handcuffed guards, "You'll be hearing from us in about a year." Police arrived at 8:15am to find the guards still handcuffed. They didn't, in fact, hear from them in about a year.
Initially a $1 million reward was offered to anyone who had information that would lead to the recovery of the stolen art "in good condition" to the Museum. Then it was bumped to $5 million, which was later doubled to $10 million (I did the math for you). In accordance with Isabella's will, the frames from which the works were stolen remain on display, empty, "as a placeholder for the missing works and as symbols of hope awaiting their return. After almost 30 years, none of them have been returned.
There were leads. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum director Anne Hawley got a letter in 1994 promising the return of the pieces for $2.6 million, but the museum had to get the Boston Globe to publish a coded message in the business section. They did. Nothing came of it after law enforcement got involved.
A video released in 2015 showed what seemed to have been a dry run taking place at the Museum the night before. One of the two men was Richard Abath, one of the two security guards on duty on the night of the actual robbery. Abath was the one who buzzed the disguised-as-cops robbers in.
Among the theories as to the motive or actors: the thieves were professionals, the thieves were amateurs (given how roughly the paintings were cut from their canvases), one of the guards was involved, Whitey Bulger was involved, they were sold to the IRA. Whitey Bulger sold the art to the IRA.
(Note: for a remarkable, in-depth examination of the facts and theories surrounding the theft, check "Last Seen," a podcast collaboration between the Boston Globe and WBUR. If you like Serial or true crime podcasts, this will be right up your alley.)
In 2017 the Boston Globe reported that key pieces of evidence, mainly the handcuffs and duct tape used to immobilize the guards and could be tested for traces left by the robbers were missing from the evidence files.
One New England musician who had performed with Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash (!?) before discovering his love for stealin' art - Myles J. Connor, Jr. - was in jail for, yep, stealing art. He had robbed museums before, dressed as a police officer. Connor made a statement to the FBI saying he didn't commit the robbery (he was in jail, after all, and also noted that he totally would have taken the Rape of Europa if he was behind it), but he absolutely knows who did: "I know emphatically and beyond any doubt who stole the art." But he wanted the cash reward, and to be released from prison. He said the mob did it. He might be right. He could also be blowing smoke. Myles Connor released an album under the name "Myles Connor & Friends." Here's the cover:
Note that it's titled "I Was The One..." and in the bottom left hand corner, in tiny script, reads "Rembrandt."
It's been almost 30 years since the heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The $10 million reward is still active, as is the FBI's investigation. Ultimately, the theft of 13 invaluable pieces of art is as remarkable as Isabella's life, itself.
