Fenway Court: 1972

Fenway Court Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 1972

Fenway Court

~ENWAY

COURT

Isabella Stewart Gardner Jviuseum

Published by the Trustees of the Isabella Stewart Gardner luseum, Incorporated Boston, Massachusetts Copyright 1973 Designed by Larry \ ehster Type set and printed by Thomas Todd Co., Printers, Boston

Photogroph• by Lury I •b•ter Frontispiece· The Court at Ea'>ter

p. v1 The Monks' Gorden p. H Orchids in • mu•eum greenhouse p. 49 The a . . s1stant re!tlOrer m the new laboratory p. so Fount.lm out 1de the office

p.

n: The Court, northeost corner

Cover: A letter from Henry James to Mrs. Gardner on a background of hotel letterheads taken from the Berenson correspondence.

Contents

2.

Henry James and Mrs. Gardner: A New Perspective

11. Berenson and Mrs. Gardner : The Venetian Influence

Frances L. Preston 18. The Dante Quest

Maureen Cunningham

26. The Price of a Small Motor-Car

Garnett McCoy

34. T. S. Eliot: Two Letters from 1915 40. Mrs. Gardner Cornes to Call

Linda V. Hewitt

A. Hyatt Mayor

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Incorporated Forty-eighth Annual Report for the Year 1972 43. Report of the President 44. Report of the Director

G. Peabody Gardner Rollin van N. Hadley

50. Note on the Organization of the Museum 51. Publications 52. Trustees and Staff

Clara Kozol Rollin van N . Hadley and

Foreword

Mrs. Gardner's other collection was the inspiration for this Annual Report. The hidden resources of the museum holdings were made evident when the Archives of American Art microfilmed the correspondence, records, guest-books and diaries of Mrs. Gardner. More than 1000 names appear at the bottom of letters to her, representing an extraordinary breadth of material and a remarkable comment on her life and times.

Her friendship for Henry James and its effect on his work is ably presented by a J amesian scholar who worked in the archives for her doctoral dissertation. Another article is from the Berenson correspondence which, thanks to Frances Preston, was typed and collated for the first time (her letters to him at Villa I Tatti have never been published). There are 897 letters including those from Mary Berenson to Mrs. Gardner. One article resulted directly from letters here fitting with papers already in the Archives of American Art and that is presented by their Archivist. Two staff members pursued their diverse interests, providing articles on the collection of early Dante editions, and the hitherto unrecorded links with T. S. Eliot. Finally, a personal remembrance from the Curator Emeritus of Prints, the Metropolitan Museum, New York, whose visual recollection and sensitive writing give a last glimpse of the worldly Mrs. Gardner just before the crippling stroke which so restricted her freedom.

It is seventy-two years since the museum was incorporated and ground was broken; the year after next will be the fiftieth since Mrs. Gardner's death. It is fair to say that the museum has found its place in history, as these articles attest.

1

Henry James and Mrs. Gardner: A New Perspective

From the solemn portrait of Henry James in the Blue Room at Fenway Court, it would be difficult to guess that a congenial friendship existed between the author and Mrs. Gardner.

One hundred charming letters to the collector, preserved in the same room, reveal the story behind this painting. Spanning thirty-five years and twenty-seven addresses in America and on the Continent, they are of historical as well as literary importance. Moreover, they suggest that the relationship of these distinguished contemporaries was mutually influential.

The correspondence begins during July 1879 in England, where James was living, where the Gardners were vacationing, and where they may have met through Mr. and Mrs. Henry Adams.

Although the author rarely subordinated professional responsibilities to social amenities, he often went sightseeing with the collector on both sides of the Channel. Together they toured the Grosvenor Gallery and Hatfield House, visited the cirque and the Theatre Franc;:ais, dined at a cafe chantant in the open air, and shared plaisirs and gingerbread at St. Cloud. Later James remembered " those most agreeable days last summer in London & Paris - those talks & walks & drives & dinners," and he promised, "Look out for my next big novel; it will immortalize me. After that, someday, I will immortalize you."

If the friendship blossomed during a lighthearted period, it deepened during a time of tragedy. After returning to Massachusetts in the fall of 1881, the author soon paid Mrs. Gardner a visit at her summer home in Beverly. The unexpected death of his mother early in 1882 curtailed his travels through the states, but encouraged his intimacy with the collector. Back in Boston, he confided, " I thank heaven that one can lose a mother but once in one's life. The loss of that love, however, is a suffering absolutely apart - for it is the most absolutely unselfish devotion 2

any of us can know." Sh e replied b y inviting him to read his newly dram atized version of D aisy Miller at her home. Those " pretty little evenings" proved to be the only public performance of that work, for in May, James wrote from Paris, "Drop a tear - a diminu tive tear (as y our tears must be - small but beautifully shaped pearls), upon the fact th at my little dram a is not after all to be brought out. .. ." As often, his words had a double entendre, for M rs. G ardner was an avid purchaser of pearls. The author h ad barely returned to Europe wh en he was summoned back to the deathbed of h is father. Again the collector was a neighbor, whom h e visited and accompanied to the th eater. In May, 1 883, he recrossed the Atlantic, determined to live in England as a permanent expatriate. Although James remained abroad for twenty-one years, Mrs. Gardner redressed the balance. Her proclivity for travel and her availab ility as an international hostess, if occasionally an interferen ce, were more often a resource.

In 1884, after a trip to the Orient which the author admiringly called a "coup de genie," the collector arrived in Venice. In lieu of his company, James sen t a felicitous introduction to Robert Brown ing's comp anion, Katharine Bronson, who later presented some of the poet's memorabilia to th e museum. This w as the first of many meetings arranged by the author for Mrs. Gardner in Europe and America, whereby she became acquain ted with, among others, the artist John Singer Sargent in 1886, the architect Harold Peto in 1887, the writer Paul Bourget in 1893, and th e actress Elizabeth Robins in 1898.

A ll of these celebrities were influential, but one, Sargent, was indispen sable. He became an astute advisor and a warm friend to the collector, and he contributed a number of paintings and watercolors to the collection .

Not only their circle of acquaintances but also their respective visits expanded during the middle

Henry James by William James, oil on canvas, 25 Y, x 21Y, in.

years. After 1890, the Gardners, who had decided to travel to Europe every other summer, regularly tenanted the Palazzo Barbaro in Venice. James planned a brief stay during their first occupan cy, however, his sister's increasing illness forestalled the trip. In March, 1892, she died of can cer, and the author wrote pensively, " that long, sad chapter is over - and I have been through a series of melancholy weeks." The Gardners sympathetically dispatched a new invitation, and this time James kept his appointment. On July 10, he arrived for a fortnight at the 'court' on the Grand Canal. The Palazzo was filled with guests, and the author's comfortable room in the library was crowded with pink chairs and a lemon colored sofa . There was some music and much floating in gondolas, as well as a romantic trip to Mrs. Bronson at Asolo, and an enchanted memory of " Donna Isabel . .. with your hair not quite 'up' - neither up nor down, as it were, in a gauze dressing-gown, on a sea green (so different from peagreen !) chair, beneath a glorious gilded ceiling, receiving the matutinal tea . . . ."

Jam es h ad visited the collector following the loss of his sister, and she called upon him after the death of her husband. When Mr. Gardner passed away in December 1898, the author elegized, " He remains one of my images (none too numerous) of those moving in great affairs with a temper that matched them, & yet never lost its consideration for small affairs & for the people condemned to them." The following summer, while the collector was in Europe, sh e proposed to spend one night at James's recently acquired home, Lamb H ouse, and he pledged to "reach out the friendliest of hands as you step, de votre pied leger, from the plank." It took many complicated letters to arrange for his simple tete-a-tete, but it must h ave been a success, for a month later the author wrote flatteringly, " I think of you as a figure on a wonderous cinque-centi tapestry - & of myself as one of the small, 4

quaint accessory domestic animals, a harmless worm or mild little rabbit in the corner. Well, dearest lady, the worm or the rabbit is very proud & happy to be in the same general composition with you."

Perhaps that day was a turning point, for in the late years, James realized that Mrs. Gardner's ambitions had changed, and his opinion of her altered accordingly. He had always appreciated her facilite a vivre, but now he applauded her magnificent acquisitions and admired her unaided courage. When he came to this country in 1904, he stayed with the collector for a week in October at Green Hill in Brookline, and he saw the all but completed and already inaugurated building on the Fenway. He wrote to Paul Bourget that the palais musee was a great creation, that Mrs. Gardner was a great little personage, and that her spirit was proof against time and fate.

During the final years of their acquaintance both the author and the collector lost much of their taste for travel, but each paid one last visit to the world of the other. Mrs. Gardner went to Europe in 1906 and stopped in London for a luncheon with James, and he sailed home in 1910 and called her his " principal ally" on the American scene. The occasion of this trip was the death of his brother, William James, and the author movingly described his personal loss as "a bleak nightmare, of which the darkness will long be over u s." The collector had met and befriended the psychologist's son, William Jam es, Jr., in Paris during the summer of 1906, and by the following March the author was posing to that young artist for the portrait in the Blue Room. James kept Mrs. Gardner informed of the work's progress, " I have ' sat' day after day to dear Bill . .. the admirable result (incomplete still) immensely justifies me." On March 29, 1911, William James, Jr. hesitantly presented the painting to the collector, apologizing for the untoned frame, and assuring her that if she were disappointed she

Letter from Henry James to Mrs. Gardner 3 September (1892] .

should send it quickly back and his feelings would not be hurt. Soon after this the author returned to Lamb House with a sigh of relief, but he told Mrs. Gardner that despite his sorrowful and difficult year, " flowers sprouted in the grey steppe; those evenings at your board & in your box, those tea- times in your pictured halls, flush again in my mind's eye as real life-saving stations." He wrote again when he returned to England, and finally on April 20, 1914. It was almost as if the author knew that these were to be his last words to the collector, for signing himself, " your faithfullest, & from further back now surely than any one, old Henry James," he evoked an exquisite image of her as a rare and precious jewel, "your life being a dense splendid tissue of adventure - in fact that exactly it is that coruscates. You shine out to me with undiminished interest & in your splendid setting - of so much art & so much honour . . .. "

Sargent once wrote that reading James's letters was like wa tching the evolutions of a bird of paradise in a tropical jungle, and this correspondence spectacularly confirms that judgement. Although the author's handwriting is not always legible, his pace is always lyrical, his craftsmanship always careful, a nd his sentences always quotable. The style does change as James changes, and early, middle, and late characteris tics may be abstracted. At first the letters are for the most part direct, formal, and flattering. As he grew better acquainted with Mrs. Gardner, the author exaggerated his metaphors and descriptions while he telescoped his impressions and expressions.

A further change occurred in 1895, wh en James began to dictate his work. Although only two of these letters are in " Remingtonese," he de6

veloped many new mannerisms. All but his most businesslike correspondence now included involuted sentences, intricate parentheses, ornate images, fastidious nuances and inflections, and a still-twinkling but deeper, more self-deprecating humor.

Certain unconscious topics, such as travel, art, and literature, which were of interest to both figures, make up the narrative. There is also flash y gossip about well-known personages, juxtaposed with gentle wisdom at the deaths of the author's mother, brother, and sister, and the collector's husband. At these times of crisis James is both compassionate and dispassionate, and if his prose conveys great feeling, his strict attention to literary technique tends to lift his words above the level of sentiment, so that they seem to balance on that gossamer line which Valentin in The American (1877) believed separated " the special intention" from "the habit of good manners," where "fine urbanity" ended and " fine sincerity" began . As perhaps his own best critic, the author wittily if unwittingly pinpointed a minor fault in the correspondence when, in The Tragic Muse (1890), Gabriel Nash says, "ah repetition - recurrence: we haven' t yet, in the s tudy of how to live, abolished that clumsiness, have we?" It is not, however, the chance phrase from these letters by James to his other friends, or the occasional redundance, but rather the brilliant abundance, which seems to " clothe the innocuous small change of letter writing in the vestments of literature" and cause the reader, like Sargent, to marvel at the elegance.

Similes may be the author's most effective s tylistic tool, for they allow him to achieve great variety and beauty even in the absence or scarcity of " news." Some examples are, " the winter has hopped from week to week like a bird on a series of twigs"; " today has had that exquisite distilled quality of English fine weather in those rare fractions or specimens of it that are handed

about like prize nectarines or chiselled nuts"; and " my lawn is as lustrous as your finest emerald - the one you wear on your left shoulder - or is it elbow, or knee ...." Other devices used are puns, " looking out for me, as hard as possible, - if not as soft!" ; parallelism, " he lives on canned meats, & now, doubtless, on canned memories"; personification, " This is a pale, dim, cold, skeptical season - a season that doesn' t believe in itself" ; and opposition, " To come to you to be punished is almost a reward." In addition, there is James's talent for flattery, " So I figure you as embowered & peached & peared & plummed & graped to say nothing of smotheringly fleurie" ; his gift for irony, " I had maltreated my poor heart it appeared (for considerable time back) by not calling upon it to frisk and frolic enough"; or during a better season, " I have had a winter, personally, without a fracture but on the other hand absolutely without a movement" ; and finally, his appetite for philosophy, "I find the same rather threadbare little circle of our sweet compatriots, who dine with each other in every possible combination of the Alphabet though none of their combinations spell the word satisfaction. That however is the most difficult word in the language - even I am not sure I get it right."

There is a special quality to these sentences which distinguishes them from those Jam es wrote to other acquaintances. Possibly the collector's love of elaborate form freed the author to write about the subjects which interested him in the manner which appealed to her. Once, James confessed that he was ashamed to toss his correspondent a fifty cent bouquet across the footlights. Surely his letters are the orchids of the Gardner collection.

As James's portrait hangs on the museum wall, so perhaps Mrs . Gardner's appears in his fictional gallery. It is tempting to surmise that the author's many imagined ladies, with " fierce appetite for the upholsterers', and joiners', and braziers' work"; Adela Gereth of The Spoils of Poynton (1896), Mrs. Gracedew of Covering End (1898) , Maria Gostrey of Th e Ambassadors (1903), and Isabella Gedge of " The Birthplace" (1903) may have been, in part, inspired by Jam es' s personal association with a collector whose surname, like theirs, began with a "G." Also, in The Golden Bowl (1904), written coincidentally with the opening of Fenway Court, Adam Verver and his daughter Maggie, the millionaires who have dreamed up and built a museum in " American City," resemble the Gardners. If some phrases from the correspondence reverberate in these works, i.e., the author calls the collector and her husband, " the evident Cinque-Centisti of the future," and Maggie's husband tells her, "the cinque cento at its most golden hour wouldn' t have been ashamed of you," others echo elsewhere. In an early letter, James discusses a party at which he has met President Chester Arthur and "some happy specimens of the finished American girl . .. who has profited by the sort of social education Washington gives." Possibly this was the germ for a little tale, "Pandora Day," written two years later, in which the "self-made American girl" meets the President. In a later communication, a delightful description of tea with the Whistlers, "in their queer little garden-house of the rue du Bae, where the only furniture is the paint on the walls and the smile on the lady's broad face," seems to have been incorporated into The Ambassadors. It is in Gloriani's "queer old garden" off the rue du Bae that Strether voices for posterity the remorse of middle age, " Live all you can; it's a mistake not to."

7

An Interior in Venice, 1899, by John Singer Sargent, oil on canvas, 25 x 31Y, in., Roya l Academy of Arts, London (diploma work). Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Curtis, their son Ralph, and hi s wife Lisa in the salone of the Palazzo Barbaro.

If these connections remain hypothetical, other influences are d em onstrable. The author's Venetian visit inspired him to model the Palazzo Leoporelli in The Wings of the Dove (1902) after the Palazzo Barbaro, and he included a photograph of it as a frontispiece to the second volume of the novel in h is " New York Edition ." Louise Hall Tharp, author of Mrs. Jack (1965) also suggests that James' s heroine Milly Theale d rapes and fingers her pearls just as Mrs. Gardner does in the portrait by Ludwig Passini, painted in the fall of 1892.

While her palazzo was a source for one work, the collector's passions were the basis for another. On July 15, 1895, soon after he declined an invitation to meet Mrs. Gardner in Rome, the author jotted down in his notebook, "splendid subject." It concerned the restlessness of his countrymen, " the insane movement for movement, the ruin of thought, of life, the n egation of work, of literature, the swelling roaring crowds, the ' where are you going?' the age of Mrs. Jack, the figure of Mrs. Jack, the American/' as well as their rapacity, " the Americans looming up, dim vast, portentous in their millions, like gathering waves, the barbarians of the Roman Empire."

Many years later James picked up this idea in a milder context, and created a topical comedy, Th e Outcry (1911), which he publish ed as both a drama and a novel. Although this work has fallen into obscurity, it was highly popular in its day, and is unusually apropos of our own. The author' s theme is the moral question involved in selling works of art abroad and thereby depleting a national trust. Mrs. Gardner's famous advisor, Bernard Berenson (popularly known as B.B.) may be thinly disguised in the figure of Breckenridge Bender, a " yankee on the spend," and her other assistants represented by Pappendick and Bardi, scholarly connoisseurs who argue . persuasively over the provenance of a painting. The words of the notebook entry are sounded when Bender, hoping to pick up an expen sive " bargain/' makes a " predatory assault" on some English aristocrats who own desirable family portraits. They

retain their possession s but recognize, " the certainty if we don' t do something, of more and more Benders to come: of such a conquering h orde as invaded the old civilization, only armed now with huge cheque-books instead of with spears and battle-axes."

More favorable references to the collector occur just after James stayed with her on his visit to America in 1904. The author describes, " the time I afterwards spent with Mrs . Gardner (ah, to squeeze a little, a little of what I felt out of that, too!) at Brookline, at her really so quite picturable Green Hill-which would yield a 'vignette' I think, whereof I fully possess all the elements." He also sketches their trips, " There was Dedham, where I went in a pouring rain, to dine with Sam Warren - went with Mrs. G., who took me there, from my Brookline visit to her, as she took me to that other s trange place on an other day, Blue Hill or wherever, to see William Hunt's daughters." Finally, he recounts his astonishment at the changed landscape, " the way the large, the immense ' Park' roads of the new System unrolled themselves in their high type during two or three of the drives I took with Mrs. G." In The American Scene (1907), James not only sh apes these random observations into cosmopolitan impressions, he also takes the full measure of his friend's achievement and recognizes an affinity. He suggests th at the same design in forms his " house of life" and h er " palace of art" when he praises the " wonderfullygathered and splendidly-lodged Gardner Collection/' and proclaims: . . . no impression of the "new" Boston can feel itself hang together without remembrance of wh at it owes to that rare exhibition of the living spirit la tely achieved, in the interest of the fine arts, and of all that is n oblest in them, by the unaided and quite heroic genius of a private citizen . . .. It is in presence of the results magnificently attained, the energy triumphant over everything, that one feels the fine old disinterested tradition of Boston least broken.

Clara Kozol 9

The Palaces by James A. McNeill Whistler, etching, 9 Y,, x 14 Ys in. No. 9 in "Twelve Etchings of Venice." Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Berenson and Mrs. Gardner: T he Venetian Influence

Bernard Beren son died in 1959 and th e following year saw the publication of h is last b ook, The Passionate Sightseer. Written in diary form, it includes h is trip to Venice in 1951 w h ere h e recalled, " The Venetian painters and sculptors and architects were my fi rst love but Venice itself, Ven ise la ville, n ot so much . N ow it is th e town that fascinates and rejoices m e at every step and in all effects of light and, I m ay say, in almost all weather." Perhap s when he wro te that h e h ad forgotten his first impression in September of 1.888 recorded in a letter to Mrs. G ardner : To-day is just three weeks sin ce I came to th is town, & perhaps if you were h ere I could talk enough ab out it to make you b elieve that I had spent m y time m ost industriously . T o write about Venice is a different matter. I can n ot for the life of me see h ow any one but a genius can find a word to say ab out it that h as not been said already more than once. H ere at least I have n ot b een wasting tim e in reading. . . . It will show you h ow m uch in love I am with the city if I tell you that I came with th e intention of staying a fourtnight, & that I will h ave staid four week s wh en I sh all leave it. Venice to me is above all things the Piazza & the mole with the buildings on them, & the view from them. These seem to me to form an indissoluable unity, made by time & tide, & the spirit of a people in a way that of course no merely individual genius could ever in vent.

Sometimes when I stop to consider details, or single buildings of this group, my satisfaction is not complete. I see faults, fantastic design s, barbarous ornamentations: yet would I not have a square inch of surface on the D oge' s palace, or St. Mares [sic] changed.

If he had forgotten in the intervening years how much Venice the city had meant to h im as a young man (perhaps subsequent visits h ad no t been as pleasant) his memory of his affection for the painters, sculptors and architects is verified

by other letters to Mrs. G ardner. Writing from Berlin in April 1 888 he sta ted it thus : You k now until a few months ago I thought tha t possibly Dutch p ainting, or Sp a nish might rival Italian. I think so no lon ger. I h ave now seen a t least samples of all the Dutch painters, and compa red to the Ven etian s they are what M r. H owells is to Sh akspere. I say the Venetians because th e m ore I see pictures and free m yself from b ook -opinion s and preoccupation s, the more does it seem to me th a t the Venetian s are the painters par excellence, the freest from all affecta tion, the m ost sen suous, the most beautiful. They give one n o ideas, and almost direct presentation and that is all we can get out of art. One may love Botticelli a thousand times m ore than any Venetian, but the pleasure one gets from Bo tticelli is really an exquisite, high strung pain.

Coin cidently in Seville Mrs. Gardner was buying her first old master, not a Venetian paintin g, but a Madon na and Child b y Zurbaran .

Berenson who had gone abroad to become a literary critic slowly transformed himself into a connoisseur. This was forecast in his letter to Mrs. Gardner written the day he left for Europe, " Many thanks for your most encouraging words.

I want more plastic, less subjective things." In h is next letter from Paris h e comments on travel, sayin g th at h is would not be in spired by historic sen timent but rath er by aesthetic merit. H e int~nds to justify his existence by writing about his observations. Meanwh ile, h e is still reading a good deal and discussing the books with h er. But by the fo urth letter (T hanksgiving 1887) he wrote, " Indeed, were I quite independent, I hardly sh ould look in to b ooks while in Europe. I could b e so busy observin g, looking at pictures, going to the th eat re, talking, and above all loafing miscellaneously . . .. I h ave so little time, and less inclination [to write] . I feel th at h ere I must ob serve, . . ." From Oxford h e wrote: " I am as 11

Nocturne by James A. McNeill Whistler, etching, 7% x 11 Ys in. No. 4 in " Twelve Etchings of Venice."

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

I

~

/r )

/ '7 4.

/I

~~~

/

// ,

/

'/,

/

7·/

t .(

(

.

,

I.

~'

I

•

/

/

,,..

(

<'

.,..

<) .

[

( /

/

>

I

~.

;;

f,

/'

(

('

,,

/ /,

-

>

'

\

/

/

/,/

_,.\///,,• .. / ~

Letter to Bernard Berenson from Mrs. Gardner, 5 August [1899]. Courtesy of the Berenson Archive at Villa I Tatti.

yet far from being a writer, and far ther still am I from h aving the mean s or the sp irit to be wh at on the whole I might b est be - a man of the world. But you see that is not a profession anywhere, and in A merica least of all."

From O xford h e proceeded southward toward Italy, posting letters from A ntwerp, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, and Bologn a b efore arriving in Venice in September. The letters reflect the tremendous enthusiasm Berenson was able to bring to new exp eriences through out his life. O ne city after another delighted him an d h e frequen tly commented how diffi cult it h ad been to leave a place. The catholicism of h is tas te in art is already remarkable as h e wro te of h is admiration for Memling, Velazquez, Rembrandt and Watteau but particularly for the Venetian Sch ool. Dresden and its museums affected him thus: " I know no pleasure equal to tha t I get from p ictures, from great Venetian pictures. It is like the pleasure I have when I come across a wonderfully beautifu l line of verse, or wh en I catch a strain of infini tely tender melody in one of Wagner's orchestral storms ; . . ." Once in Ven ice h e wrote: "One soon forgets to think of form h ere, going almost mad on color, thinkin g in color, talking color, almost living on color. A nd for one that enjoys color this certainly is paradise." Finally after a trip to Sicily the correspondence with Mrs. G ardner at this time of his life ends with a letter from Florence : A friend h as quite surprised m e with an offer of enough money to keep m e abroad another year. I shall go h om e a t last w ith the feeling I fear of one wh o after living in Rome for three years of our second century was returning to his home in Colonia. I sh all make the best of it however. Wha t I sh all do I do not know, almost anything for a living [,] writing, or teaching as a pis aller. I sh all be quite quite picture wise then, n ot unlearned in the arts, perhaps they will enable me to turn an honest

penny. . . . Meanwhile I intend lingering in Italy till August, to go to Spain in the autumn, & then to London till midsummer. . . . Remember that I look forward to going thro' some gallery of paintings with you.

How did Berenson come by this strong feeling for Italy and for Venetian painting particularly? It seems unlikely that he would have found it in the United States in either the Boston Museum of Fine Arts or any other local collection. Professor Charles Eliot Norton preferred Italian painting of the early Renaissance, and found the high Renaissance a period of decline.

T o a classical scholar the high Renaissance had an obvious affinity, and from his own studies, particularly Walter Pater's The Renaissance, Berenson was prepared to love Italy and things Italian even before visiting the country. His first letter to Mrs. Gardner from Italy records: It seems to me as if I had already been a long time in Italy, so much do I crowd into every day, & so fu ll of delightfulness is it all. The first few days on this side the Alps were d ream days. I seemed to be in a world where the sun shone so much more beautifully, where th e stars seemed nearer, and where lives could not be but beautiful.

That the Venetians and the high Renaissance would be Berenson's first love was confirmed by h is first two books: The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance (1894), followed the next year by Lorenzo Lotto: An Essay in Con structive Art Criticism (1895). T h e presentation of the former to Mrs. Gardner led to the resumption of their correspondence.

Mrs. Gardner came to Venice in 1884 from her travels through th e Orien t and was immediately in love with it. Sh e stayed in the Curtises' Palazzo Barbaro at least every other year from 1886 to 1899. In furnish in g h er house on Beacon Street and the house n ext door, acquired in 1880 as

I u t'-'-'f - /--. .,

~

B~V<b,.,,,,.., j>~ .?'~

~ 14./ '

-;:#,_a-iJ.;,.,J,:;.;,

112 ~

~

•-,

~

~

r ~~~-"- 4fawt•r A..;>·,

~

-1

·. "'"f '

\ u;

\<fr:

M rs. Gardner b y John Singer Sargent, pencil on paper, 8 x 5 in. Inscribed in ink by Mrs. Gardner: John S. Sargen t Feb 2 8 ( ?) 1 8 88. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Quiet Canal by James A . McNeill Whistler, etching, 9 x 6 in. No. 24 in " Venice, Second Series." Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

-f----

~I

I fat.4...c--4 -e/..,,;_.

Page from Mrs. Gardner's guest book from the Palazzo Barbaro, September 1897.

a proper setting for her private concerts, she had bought French paintings from a generation before, works by Corot, Delacroix, Courbet, Constant Troyon, and Emile Jacque. To these were now added contemporary painters : persons she had met like Whistler and Sargent, a nd persons they recommended such as Helleu and Mancini.

In Venice she bought paintings of Venice by F. Hopkinson Smith, Paul Tilton, J. H . T wachtman, Francis James, and of course Ralph Curtis and Joseph Smith. But in 1888 the barrier was broken, an old mas ter had been purchased and her zeal, which had never been satisfied as a bibliophile, was readily directed.

Her husband's election as treasurer of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1886 had spurred Mrs. Gardner's interest in museums and collecting. In 1892 he took stock of what she owned: a little panel attributed to Fra Filippo Lippi (now attributed to Pesellino) ; a portrait by Suttermans supposedly of the Duke of Monmouth ; the Vermeer, certainly the greatest single work that Mrs. Gardner found for herself ; an Adam and Eve attributed to Cranach, and the Zurbaran. During the Gardners' visit to Venice the same year, three others were purchased, one bought as Antonio dalla Corna (now Anon., Influenced by Mantegna) and two by Bonifazio Veronese; her first Venetian old masters. In his early letters Berenson had written to her of his admiration for Bonifazio, grouping him with Titian and Giorgione in a comparison of the Venetian school of painting with the " Shakspere of Midsummer's Nightsdream & of ' as You like it' [sic]".

When the correspondence recommences in 1894 the tone has altered; Mrs. Gardner who inherited a large sum from her father in 1891 now deals with Berenson much the way she would treat a young lawyer of whom she is fond but with whom she is forced to deal on a number of matters of great importance. There is affection and

respect, while from him advice, counsel, flattery at times, but never loss of control. He is now an authority ; witness a letter dated 1 August 1894:

I received the photographs to-day, & thank you for them. The portrait is by Bonsignori in spite of Paris expert. I should like, by the way, to know who the experts are, so ignorant of paleography as to think for an instant the signature can be genuine .. .. In my forth coming book I discuss the authorship of this portrait, & try to prove that it is by Bonsignori.

I think my proof will be found satisfactory by the few other people entitled to judge on the matter.

The idea of forming a museum may have been Berenson' s and first appears in the correspondence in 1896. He had previously referred to her "collection" of masterpieces, but in January 1896 he urged her to buy a Bellini " . . . for in my Platonic idea of your gallery a Bellini there must be, ..."

A month later he wrote at greater length: But I hope, you will not object to my feeling a Platonic proprietary right in these pictures. I already am beginning to feel that pride in your collection which I shall be amply entitled to feel when it is in reality what as yet it is only in my mind's eye. In said mind's eye your gallery possesses a masterpiece by each of the world' s great masters, .. .

Mrs. Gardner responded enthusiastically from Beach Hill, "Shant you & I have fun with my Museum?" Following the arrival of Th e Rape of Europa she added: " I think I shall call my Museum the Borgo Allegro - The very thought of it is such a joy . . .. Let us aim awfully high If you don' t aim, you can't get there-" Between the years 1894 and 1900 when the nucleus of the collection was being purchased the majority of the letters deal with business. In 1897 alone, the letters men ti on the following:

15

''

r

_...,.-

路~

%~~ ' Upright Venice (detail) by James A. McNeill Whistler, etching, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

*Van Dyck- Lady with a Rose Giorgione - Gypsy and Soldier Romney - Lady Milner Rembrandt - The Mill *Giorgione [now After Giovanni Bellini] Christ Bearing the Cross *Cima [now After Cima] - Madonna and Child Pieter de Hoogh *Titian [now Coello] - Maria [Juana] of Austria Vermeer - The Painter in His Studio Holbein - Sir Thomas More Piero di Cosimo - The Battle of the Centaurs and Lapithae *Pesellino - The Triumphs cassone panels Holbein - Edward VI at Age Two

10

x 7 in. No.

12

in "Venice, Second Series."

Gherard David - Madonna Watteau - figures in a landscape *Crivelli - S. George and the Dragon *Correggio [now Derived from Raphael] Girl Taking a Thorn from Her Foot Holbein - portrait of a man (*denotes those bought) In some cases Berenson would mention a painting, and after further inquiry, write that it was no longer available as the owner had decided not to sell. Mrs. Gardner's decisions were influenced as much by her circumstances at the moment of suggestion as by his persuasiveness. She rejected Romney's portrait of Lady Milner only because

she felt she could not afford it, having just purchased the Titian, a Velazquez and the Van Dyck.

Twice Berenson recommended that she buy works by Watteau, the " loveliest of all painters not Italian," and wrote in 1897: "A singular lacuna in your taste is W atteau. I worship him, ..." She did not buy the painting in question, but firmly refuted his statement : " ... you have not in the least understood me vis a vis Watteau! I have not that "Lacuna" au contraire, I like him very much . . . [but] dont you too think there are others better for that price?" A week later she wrote again: " I should love it [the Watteau] - but I must choose between it & the Pesellinos. Do you blame me for my choice? Certainly, one more easily finds Watteau."

The intent of both Berenson and Mrs. Gardner in their purchasing was to form a representative rather than a specifically Italian collection. In 1900 she answered his suggestion of two portraits, one by Bacchiacca, with " . . . I don' t feel sure that it is not wiser to get neither; for the reason that there is only a certain amount of room in any house; mine, even my new one, will be crammed - and I think perhaps it is best to get nothing more ever, but A No. 1 ." Berenson responded : I can most sincerely urge you to get the Bacchiacca portrait of a lady. It is not a Titian or a Velasquez, but my ideal for you is that you should have a collection not only of masterpieces of the highest order, but some also which are indispensable to a notion of the life of each school of art. .. . It is besides a highly representative work of the last great phase of the Florentine School.

Needless to say, she bought it. Berenson several times discouraged a purchase if he felt she already owned a better example of the artist's work, and Mrs. Gardner had very strong feelings about a picture being unique. When Beren-

son first recommended the Holbein portrait of the young Edward VI she responded favorably, but the Earl of Yarborough decided not to sell. Later Berenson wrote that he had learned of a superior version of the portrait in Hanover. When the Yarborough portrait again became available, she wrote: " This moment a cable to know if I really want the Yarborough - Whatever makes you think that? Of course I don't, after what you wrote about it & the other one-" In the 1931 Catalogue of the collection Philip Hendy was able to write that " The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum . . . merits a great place among American museums by its magnificent collection of portraits of all nationalities, . . . but it is the Italian pictures which give the Museum an unique character in the United States and a special value in the world." Inevitably the character of the collection and the atmosphere would have to have been Italian based on the associations that both Mrs. Gardner and Berenson had. What is surprising is that that was not the intention. And as time went on the net was cast even wider. After 1900 they bought portraits

by Manet and Degas, and examples of Persian miniatures, medieval sculpture and Oriental art.

The expense of building the museum made Mrs. Gardner more circumspect. The correspondence continued with increasing affection and fewer and fewer acquisitions until her death in 1924.

From Venice where he was again a guest in the Palazzo Barbaro Berenson wrot~ in 1923 : And I mind me of 26 years ago or is it just more or just less, when I stayed here in this apartment with you. I shall never get over that fortnight, & h ow you made me feel as if you had nothing in the world to think of but my happiness. Yes, it was wonderful, & if ever I sigh for anyth ing in the past, it is for those daysRollin van N. Hadley Frances L. Preston

The Dante CJ.yest

" Th e tradition of travels in Italy is perhaps the only one that is common to all schools."

Fromentin, Maltres d' autrefois.

This tradition is as venerable as it is universal; for centuries Italy has drawn and captivated travelers. While other lands attracted, Italy enthralled and the spell did not weaken with the passing of time. It was as if some potion were mixed with the air, and simply by breathing that air the traveler was changed forever. Henry James described himself and his fellow-writers Mark Twain and Henry Adams as "old-time victims of Italy," and in a letter to Charles Eliot Norton he wrote: "As I grow older, many things come and go but Italy remains." (Van Wyck Brooks, Dream of Arcadia, 1958, p. 227) Charles Eliot Norton knew himself how strong the pull of Italy could be. In one passage he described Italy as " the very home of summer and of repose." (Norton, Notes of Travel and Study in Italy, 1859, pp. 1-2) And Norton's fellowItalophile, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, reminisced in a lecture to his Harvard class of 1851 in the same vein: The mind resolutely refuses to associate anything disagreeable with Italy .. . Dante may speak of the snow and sleet of the Apennines ... b~t our fancy does not feel them . . . Italy ... remains to the poet the land of h is predilection, to the artist the land of h is necessity, and to all the land of dreams and visions of delight.

(Samuel Longfellow, Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Vol. II, 1968, p. 200) 18

Thus Isabella Stewart was following a wellestablished tradition in being enchanted with Italy. She was seventeen when she first saw the country. She and her parents, Mr. and Mrs. David Stewart of New York City, toured northern and central Italy fo llowing Isabella's year of study in Paris. Their itinerary took the Stewarts to the major cities, Milan, Rome and Venice. Mrs. Gardner left no records or diary of this first visit, and there is no way of knowing what those critical first impressions were. But it is known that she had Italian lessons while in Rome and that she proved exceptionally quick at the language.

Her second visit to Italy was not made until 1884, but after that she returned frequently.

That Mrs. Gardner succumbed to the charms of Italy is evident from her collection. Her museum, Fenway Court, was designed to resemble an Italian palazzo, and the majority of paintings she placed there were the works of Italian artists. In addition to paintings, Mrs. Gardner also collected Italian manuscripts and incunabula, placed inconspicuously throughout the museum in bookcases covered with heavy grey drapes as protection against fading. This part of the collection, which is too often overlooked by the visitor because of the way in which it is stored, deserves attention for two reasons. The books themselves are fine examples of the art of bookmaking and the formation of the collection reflects a curious cultural phenomenon of the late nineteenth century, the widespread interest of Americans in Italian studies and in Dante in particular.

The man responsible for reviving interest in medieval art was also influential in creating new interest in the great medieval Italian poet. In 1845, twelve years before Mrs. Gardner's first visit, John Ruskin had made his crucial journey of discovery to northern and central Italy, a journey which resulted ultimately in an entirely new view of the past. From the neo-classical period through the early nineteenth century Roman Italy had been in the ascendancy and medieval Italy and its art, architecture and literature had been dismissed as amateurish efforts of the dark ages. Ruskin changed this. He found in medieval art and architecture a joy and beauty unknown to him before, and he described these discoveries in powerful prose which swept away any opposition.

Ruskin's love for the medieval extended to literature as well as to art, and he was especially devoted to Dante. In the epilogue to The Stones of Venice, he remarked that the only book which had been a more constant companion to him than Dante was his Bible, and he wrote in section 67 of The Stones: " I think that the central man of all the world, as representing in perfect balance the imaginative, moral and intellectual faculties, all at their highest is Dante." (John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, 1853, ยง67) The Dante scholar Paget Toynbee has suggested that there was scarcely a single author to whom Ruskin's debt was greater than to Dante and that there can be little doubt that Ruskin's eloquent and insistent appreciation of the Commedia helped to awaken and stimulate widespread interest in Dante studies. (Paget Toynbee, Dante: Essays in Commemoration, 1921, p. 57) Ruskin, the great cicerone of the nineteenth century, had his American counterpart in his contemporary and close friend, Charles Eliot Norton.

Both men found their spiritual home in the Middle Ages and both shared a reverential devotion for Dante.

Mrs. Gardner met Norton in the spring of 1878 when she attended his lectures on the Italian Renaissance. Professor of Art History at Harvard since 1875, Norton considered the Middle Ages more than an area of study and specialization. For him medieval Italy exemplified the former greatness of the human spirit.

Italy of the thirteenth century, in particular Florence in " the days before Dante's times, just before Giotto began to build his Campanile" provided inspiration and was an example of integrity and civic pride and beauty, all of which Norton found missing in America. To the knowledge of these past glories Norton led those in whom he discerned the stirrings and sensibilities he felt. (Kermit Vanderbilt, Charles Eliot Norton, 1959, p. 54) Mrs. Gardner was one of these initiates. Norton found her alert and interested, and they formed a deep and lasting friendship based on their love for Italy, its art and literature - most particularly Dante. The correspondence from Norton to Mrs. Gardner which remains in the museum's archives is not large and the early, formative years of the friendship are not recorded in great detail. But there is no doubt that he influenced her greatly, in effect pointing out to her a new course in life, one revolving around medieval Italy and its great Florentine poet. Later Mrs. Gardner would branch out, finding Norton's view restrictive. But for the while sh e was his pupil.

Charles Eliot Norton was himself a follower in a long tradition of Italian studies. A love for Italy and its literature, and an ability to translate were family characteristics. His father had translated the Italian classic I Promessi Sposi, his mother the less well-known Silvio Pellico's Le Mie Prigioni. His uncle, George Ticknor, as first Smith Professor of Modern Languages and Literature at Harvard, had introduced Italian language and literature courses into the curriculum. On Ticknor's retirement in 1836 the posi-

Dante and Virgil begin the journey through the underworld. Engraving illustrating canto ii of the Inferno from the edition of 1481 printed in Florence.

tion passed first to Longfellow, then to Lowell and upon Lowell's resignation in 1877 Norton became the fourth to lecture on Dante at Harvard.

Norton knew both Longfellow and Lowell and together they began a series of Dante readings in 1863. At the time Longfellow was making final corrections on his translation of the Divine Comedy, and sought the advice of Lowell and Norton.

Norton described these gatherings: They were delightful evenings; there could be no pleasanter occupation; the spirits of poetry, of learning, of friendship, were with us. Now and then some other friend or acquaintance would join us for the hours of study. (First Annual Report of the Danie Society May 16, 1882, p. 22) Once Longfellow's translation was in the hands of the printer, . . . our Dante evenings did not come to an end. We continued for a time to meet once a week, but now in my study to revise in the same manner my version of " The New Life."

(Ibid., p. 24) Thus, there was already a tradition for the gathering of scholars to read Dante. The impetus for the founding of a similar society for the 20

educated layman came from Norton's students who met once a week at his home, Shady Hill.

In a letter to William Roscoe Thayer, Norton wrote: It was, I think, in 1880 that some members of the class which I was conducting in The Divine Comedy, hearing me speak of the possible service which a club for the promotion of Dante s tudies might render, came to me to say that they wished such a club might be founded ... I told them that I thought that the success of the effort would depend on whether Mr. Longfellow would consent to take the presidency ... Longfellow was cordial in his approval . . . A meeting . .. was held at Craigie House ... bylaws were adopted, officers were elected, cir ulars were prepared, the aims of the society were thoroughly discussed. (TwentyEighth Annual Report of the Dante Society 1909, pp. 2-3) The Society held its first open meeting 16 May 1882, shortly after the death of Longfellow.

Lowell was chosen president, and the society announced its aims: to enlarge its own Dante library; to award a yearly prize for the best essay on Dante by a Harvard student (later broadened so that students of other colleges might apply); to print in its yearly report a scholarly article

on some aspect of Dante studies. In 1886 the Society brought out its great project, the Concordance of the Divina Commedia, by E. A. Fay. The cost of printing the work was high, and Mrs. Gardner, a member of the Society since 1885 and a generous supporter of its activities, anonymously offered to pay the costs not met by members' subscriptions to the Concordance.

Charles Eliot Norton was from the start the central figure in the Society although he did not become its president until Lowell's death in 1891.

After he assumed office the Society met every third Tuesday of May at Norton's home. As William Roscoe Thayer recalled : .. . nobody who attended one of those meetings will ever forget the way in which he presided, so informally, yet with that unfailing dignity of which he alone seemed to have the secret. In a few penetrating sentences he would review . . . Dante books of the year; point out new work that the society might undertake .. . . To the end ... the 'Gracious amity and unequaled intuitions' which Mr. Howells recalls of him ... shone in his manner and in his criticism . .. Mr. Norton had . . . erudition, but, as was his wont, he never gave it out as mere erudition; he always vitalized it by his sympathy, and so endowed it with immediate human interest. He scorned loose thinking; he despised inaccuracy or misstatement. His critical keenness made him instinctively take care to be sure of his fact, but he unconsciously presented his facts with charm ... (Ibid., pp. 3-6)

If Norton was the "exquisite scholar" (Brooks, Flowering of New England, 1952, p . 468), he was also a generous teacher, lending encouragement as well as his own personal library to his students. With Mrs. Gardner he was also the superb advisor, always aware of the sales of books and manuscripts, always alert for books he felt she would enjoy. In fact, Norton's first

letter of any length to Mrs. Gardner, written from Cambridge 13 June 1 886, suggested two editions of the Divin e Com edy which were the first to enter her collection : I send you a Catalogue of the Library of an old acquaintance of mine, Mr. Edward Cheney, which is to be sold next week in London. Mr. Cheney was a great lover of Italy and of fine books, and among his books is a copy of the Aldine Dante of 1502 [and] . .. the Brescia Dante of 1487, with very curious and interesting woodcuts . . .

To these first two purchases were added other editions of the Divine Com edy. A brief description of Mrs. Gardner's early editions of the Com edy follows: 1. COMENTO DI CHRISTOPHORO LANDINO FIORENTI I NO SOPRA LA COMEDIA DI DANTHE ALI I GHIERI POET A FIORENTINO. With colophon: FINE DEL COMENTO DI CHRISTO I PHORO LANDINO FIOREN I TINO SOPRA LA COMEDIA DI DAN I THE POET A EXCELLENTIS I SIMO. ET IMPRESSO IN FIRENZE PER NICHOLO DI LORENZO I DELLA MAGNA A DI. XXX. DA I GOSTO .

M. CCCC. LXXXI. Folio, with the text of the poem in roman type with the commentary of Landino in smaller roman type around the lines of the poem under discussion. Mrs. Gardner's volume is identical with the description of the edition given by Colomb de Batines to be found in Bibliografia dantesca, 1845, pp. 36-43.

Aside from some light foxing midway through the Inferno the volume is in very good condition. Marginal notes are found in the last cantos of the Inferno.

Mrs. Gardner's copy is important because it has the full set of nineteen engravings illustrating the text, while most copies have only two or three. This prompted Norton, in his letter to Mrs. Gardner of 4 June 1887 to call the book a " trea21

-~+-H.-.c

sure". \\'hen lrs ardner told orion she had pun:ha" d it h replied n ~' Jun b ok wac; " su h a Fortune c; Id colle tor. I admir th spirit quick & r enough to cat h the flying t1pportunity \\'ith hearty c n ratulations . . . ." That mo~t opies ha\'c only ti\' r thr n ra\'ing 1 du pnmanlv to th tcchnkal d1ffitUlttcc; of pnntanp both t t and engra\'ings on a slr ·w pr c; nginally thl' ngradngc;, don .1ft r dcs1•ns b) Bottitcllt, " r • meant t be printed on th pa c \\tth th• le t, but 'Kholaus I aur •ntii f und 1tting the ·n gra\'ings into th • pat alk '' ·d tor th m It demanding, and att r .1 fo" · pcrun ·nt h • print d th illu,trati n s cp.n.11 ·Iv and pa ... tcd them an th book. ( ,\, Hyatt lay r, Pri11ts a11d People, io71 , no. 1 ~3) In most l pi th pnnt \\ r cith r n t llpp d in or \\ r lo~t. Th first l\\'O print~ of , Ir ... .

Gardn r's c py \\'Cr print d and th ther ". r past d an and r main d in plal Th e p ·rimcnt of printing te t and ngr.wcd illustration tog th r wa not rep at d, cpl for o ac;1onal c ·ptions, until the end of the ne t < ntury "hen it was r \'i\'ed succ fully Book illustration \\'as predominantly don with "' d -tulc; through ut the first three quarters of the c;i teenth c ntury, (Hind, History of E11,'l,ravi11g 1111d Etclii11g, 100~ , pp. 47-49) Mrs ardner pur ha ed this copy of the 1.181 edition , the first print d an Flor nc from the sale of the library of th Earl of ra\\'ford in 1887. Th b ok had carlt r belong d to th Duke of Grafton, whose name, and the dat 1781, are written in ink n th first page of the Procmio of th omm ntary.

The binding, by Franu.., Bedford , 1s full bro\\'n crushed I van t mor cco e tra; on th sides, a gold fillet with a wide and narrow blind fi llet, succeeded by the same ombination of fillets with an arabesque ornament at the e'<terior corners, succeeded again by the same fi llets with fleurons 22

rnn

..-(•· u

7' . .

at the the int

th left of the coloph on is the print r., mark Folt . The te t of th e poem is m lar er r man t ·pc than the commentary which surr unds 1t The b k is in ver good condition c pt f r casi nal light foxing.

Th te t 1s the same as that of the 1481 ed ition mentioned ab \'e, but the illustrations a re woodTh begins with REG ISRO DI lumns on &1 ' and on the E TO DI CHRISTOace mpan ·ing the te t faces the first p age of the l11fcn10, th border of wht h ts ill um in ated and ildcd Th first letter of the poem, the o f el is gilded .md illuminated wi th blue a nd purple around whi h is a thin green b rd er. The border at the t p of the page shows a bird w ith lon g and multi-colored plumage pe king a t the back of a fat, nak d man who covers his h ead \\'ith his hands. At the right bottom o rner i shOI n a bird \\'ith a long, arching neck and the bord er of the bottom of the page i foliage a nd pod s.

The first letter of Landi no's p rologo to the Pw gatorio is ill uminated and gilded. The colors are blue and red . The fi rst letter of the P11 rgatorio is ill umi n ated a nd g ilded w ith a zinnia- like flower of a rust ·olor tn a bla k backg round in

Dante and Virgil enter Limbo. Woodcut illustrating canto iv of the Inferno from the edition of 1487 printed in Brescia.

the center of the P. The first page of the Purgatorio is illumin ated wi th an acanth us leaf and pod and flower border. The colors are blue, claret, green and gold. A t the bottom of the page is a medallion surrounded by a laurel wreath. The design w ithin the wreath has disappeared.

The fi rst initial of the tex t of the Paradiso is gilded and illuminated in dark blue and red, and a flo wer and tendril border surrounds the print on all sides. The colors are blue, dark red and green, gold and a lighter shade of gold.

The binding by Riviere is fu ll brown crushed levant morocco extra; on the sides, a fillet, succeeded by a double fillet, the enclosed space fi lled by a complicated design of interlacing scrolls and straps of different widths on a ground of gold dots, with a blank medallion in the center; in the panels of the back , a pierced escutcheon on a dotted ground ; inside fillets; gilt edges. This

Dante and Beatrice begin the ascent to heaven.

Woodcut illustrating canto i of the Paradiso from the edition of 1578 printed in Venice.

copy belonged to John Ruskin who wrote on the free end-paper "parted with for want of room I Brantwood 3 April 1880."

The Brescia edition is notable primarily for its woodcuts which Norton found "very curious and interesting." The woodcuts are not attractive and in fact almost detract from the book, but they are of interest because the first nineteen were based on drawings by Botticelli which had been copied and engraved in the 1481 Florence edition. In fact, Hind says of the woodcuts: " The best books are often the least happy in their illustration, and there is no exception in the three chief editions of Dante's Divine Comedy, printed with woodcuts in the XV century, those of Brescia, 1487. . . ." (Hind, An Introduction to a History of Woodcut, 1963, II, p. 482) It would appear that Boninus ran out of funds and hired a "j acknife slash er" to do ill us tra tions for the

Purgatorio, for which no Botticelli design s existed. He stopped all illustra tion s after the first canto of the Paradiso and stretch ed his 60 blocks with eight repetitions. (Mayor, op. cit., no. 156) Mrs. Gardner purchased the book in 1886 through Quaritch, after the Cheney sale.

3. LO' NFERNO E' L PVRGATORIO I E' L PARADISO I DI DANTE ALAGHIERI. With colophon : VENETIIS IN AEDIB. ALDI. ACCVRA TISSIME. I MEN. A VG . I M . DII. I Cautum est ne quis hunc impune imprimat, I uendat ue librum nobis inuitis. Octavo. Occasional foxing and spotting throughout the text, otherwise in good condition. Occasional marginal notes.

This edition, the product of the Aldine printing house of Venice, is printed in the italic type cut for Aldus by Francesco Griffi in imitation of the fine humanistic handwriting of a slightly earlier period. The type was first used in the Aldine Virgil of 1501, and became so well-known as Aldus' invention that it was called the character Aldino. The italic was neat, legible and small, allowing a great deal of printed m atter on the page, and the book's small format meant the book could be carried about with ease. This is the first book from the Aldine press to bear the famous printer's mark of an anchor around which a dolphin is entwined. (D. B. Updike, Printing Types I, 1962, pp. 127-131) Not all copies have this mark, whereas Mrs. Gardner's copy bears the mark both on a1 and on the last page of the text of the poem, H4v路 The volume is in good condition except for rather considerable foxing and spotting which occur throughout the Inferno and on the last few pages of the Paradiso . There are a few marginal notes in ink throughout the text.

Mrs. Gardner purchased it from the collection of Edward Cheney in 1886.

The binding is the original binding of crimson

morocco; in the corners a diaper of overlapping scallops with a leaf in each scallop and between the scallops on the edge, each of which is tipped by a larger pointed leaf; tooled back; narrow inside border; gilt edges. (A Choice of Manuscripts & Bookbindings, p . 96) 4. DANTE / CON L' ESPOSITIONI/DI CHRISTOFORO LANDINO, I ET D ' ALESSANDRO YELLVTELLO. I Sopra la sua Comedia dell' Inferno, del Purga torio, & del Paradiso. I Con Tavole, Argomenti, & Allegorie, & riformato, riueduto, I & ridotto alla sua vera Lettura, I PER FRANCESCO SANSOVINO FIORENTINO./ IN VENETIA, Appresso Giouambattista, Marchio Sessa, et Fratelli. 1578. With colophon: IN VENETIA, I Appresso gli Heredi di Francesco Rampazetto. Ad instantia di Giouambattista. I Marchio S essa, et Fratelli. M D L X X V I I I. The printer's mark, a cat eating a mouse, is placed above the colophon. Folio. On the title page is a medallion portrait of Dante within an elaborate frame including scroll work and winged female figures, putti, and garlands of fruits, leaves and flowers. The portrait is signed AB. Elaborate head-pieces depicting the Sessa trademark of a cat eating a mouse within a cartouche and surrounded by scrolls, putti, garlands of flowers, fruits and leaves, with two ewers, one at the left and one at the right of the piece are found on a2, on a5, on b2, on c1, on c2v, on A1, X8, on NN2. The text of the poem is printed in italic type in one column set within two columns of smaller roman type. The book is in good condition except for considerable foxing on the title page, a1, and on a2. The book is bound in vellum.

The illustrations of this edition are famous and noteworthy. The wood blocks were first used in the 1544 edition of the Divine Comedy published by Marcolini of Venice. The Sessa brothers produced three editions of this version of the Divine Comedy, one in 1564, 1578 and 1596.

Their only change from the 1544 version was in

replacing the illustration for canto xvii of the Purgatorio with the illustration for canto xxii, thus using that illustration twice. They also increased the number of illustrations by repeating, during the text, the blocks showing the descending circles of hell from Vellutello's introduction to the poem. The illustrator of the Marcolini edition was the first to initiate a new direction in illustrations for the Divine Comedy since the woodcuts done for the three northern Italian versions of the Divine Comedy printed in 1491.

The artist of the 1544 version showed himself clearly independent of the earlier tradition of illustration. (Above, courtesy of Ruth Mortimer, Rare Book Cataloguer for Printing and Graphic Arts at Houghton Library.) The woodcuts have a detail, power and expression not seen in earlier illustrations done for the Divine Comedy . The cuts in Mrs. Gardner's copy are somewhat worn, lacking the crispness and freshness of the prints to be seen in the 1544 version at the Houghton Library, but the intensity of the designs is still very evident.

5. DANTE I ALIGHIERI I TOMO PRIMO I VENEZIA MDC C LXXXIV. I PRESSO ANTONIO ZATTA ET FIGLI. I Con Licenza de' Sup. e Privilegio. This volume is actually three books bound together as one. The title pages of the Purgatorio and Paradiso repeat that of the Inferno except that they are marked TOMO SECONDO and TOMO TERZO. Prefatory remarks by Andrea Rubbi precede each cantica. Each canto is illustrated with a small engraving. The illustrations are pleasant but not striking.

6. LA I DIVINA COMMEDIA I DI I DANTE ALIGHIERI I COL COMENTO I DI PIETRO FRA fICELLI . . . FIRENZE, I G. BARBERA, EDITORE. I 1879. With engraved portrait of Dante opposite title page. See illustration of doublure.

This flower and tendril design was executed by Tiffany after a sketch by Francis Marion Crawford.

Crawford and Mrs. Gardner read the Divine Comedy in the winter of 1880-1881, and in the a utumn of 1893 Crawford sent their copies to Tiffany to be interleaved and bound. The flowers are pink enamel and the stems are silver. The leather is dark green and the border details are gold. The book's four outer corners have silver mounts and each of the silver covered corners bears one word of the inscription Hi e lncipit Vita Nova.

Maureen Cunningham

25

The Price of a Small Motor-Car

Al'llERICAN PRIVATE

COLLEOTIONS.

/ f(/

7

NOTEWORTHY PAINTINGS IN Al\IERICAN PRIVATE COLLECTIONS.

Edited by JOHN LA li.,ARGE and AuousT JACCACI. Vol. I. (London Agents, The Burlington :Magazine, Limited. ÂŁ200 net.)

The most remarka.ble point about this book is its price. We wonder whether any one will be found to pa.y ÂŁ200-the price of a small motor-car-for one or more vast volumes, measuring 20in. by 16in., and containing a comparatiYely small number of good but not astonishing photogravure illustrations and a quite confusing multitude of comments by all the best-known English and American critics upon the pictures tb,at have been bought by :rvr rs. Gardner and other American collectors.

From a review in The London Times, 12 December

" It seems to me to be too too delightful to have you write about my pictures," Mrs. Gardner wrote to the venerable American painter John Lafarge on March 26, 1903. " Thank the Lord for all his blessings."

The venture begun on this auspicious note was an ambitious one devoted to the publication of a series of luxurious volumes describing the major private art collections in America. As its initiator, co-editor, and eventual proprietor stated, it would be " A work which whether considered in its ensemble or in any of its component parts, could not be surpassed in any place in the world."

The long and complex history of this undertaking is revealed in infinite detail in the August F. J accaci papers in the Archives of American Art. Although the events took place nearly seventy years ago, their implications are still as time! y as ever.

26

1907.

August Jaccaci, a French-born writer and editor who is quite forgotten today, was a man of great charm, cultivation, and force of character. He had prodigious energy, an impressive organizational talent, and an enormous circle of literary and artistic acquaintances which ranged from John Jay Chapman and Mary Cassatt to Roger Fry and Edith Wharton. As art editor of Scribner's Magazine and, after 1897, of McClure's, he played an important role in the improvement of design and illustration in American periodicals. In 1903, having accumulated a modest fortune, he left McClure's and began the grandiose project whose rise and fall is the subject of most of his correspondence.

While the initial stages of this enterprise are murky, it seems clear that J accaci conceived the idea, pursuaded a publishing house, Merrill and Baker, to take it up, and prevailed on John La-

Farge to serve as co-editor and, in effect, front man. In 1903 Lafarge was old and sick, but his reputation as artist and connoisseur and his entree to rich collectors like Mrs. Gardner made him an indispensable cover for his more energetic colleague.

J accaci planned about fifteen volumes, each to contain lengthy, sumptuously illustrated descriptions of three or four art collections, together with brief critical essays on the paintings selected for particular comment. These essays would be written by reputable experts, chiefly European authorities of the highest eminence. When completed, this elegant and scholarly work would present the results of late 19th century art collecting by American millionaires. The same millionaires would buy the volumes. At a thousand dollars apiece, few others could afford them.

It was important, therefore, to have critical essays which would appeal to the collectors. As J accaci expressed this view rather plainly to his agent in Europe on January 29, 1904: Be sure to h ave as many papers as possible from experts on each picture of these first volumes, the first especially. That is where a good part of the strength of our publication will lie. I wish I could be sure to have five or six on each picture of Mrs. Gardner's. And with all other people, the Goulds, Fricks, Wideners, etc., the fact that all the great men (and even obscure men, but having the magic glamour of " authority" about them) will say things recondite and sympathetic of their pictures, will give these collectors a new pride, a new delight in their possessions. It will be to them and their friends like a glorious justification of their sagacity and good taste. They will need our great work to quote from constantly and to show everyone.

From the beginning, J accaci regarded Mrs. Gardner's collection as the one to be given the highest priority. By 1903, its reputation for bril-

liance was already so fixed that he was determined to present it as the first section of the first volume. There was, to be sure, a minor obstacle to be overcome in the form of Bernard Berenson' s expressed intention to publish a catalogue raisonne of the collection, but as J accaci informed Mrs. Gardner in his proposal to her, " we had naturally planned to secure Mr. Berenson's cooperation." She replied on April 16, 1903, " On carefully reading your letter I have decided to say that I see no reason why your work should in any way interfere with a later Catalogue raisonne by Berenson. Therefore please feel at liberty to go to work at once."

This initial cordiality soon deteriorated. Jaccaci needed photographs and Mrs. Gardner was reluctant to admit the photographer. " As to photographing the pictures," she wrote, " it is a worrying idea, that of taking them down to get better light." When she finally relented late in August, two sets of prints were made - one for the printer and one for the European authorities to consult. J accaci incautiously promised Mrs. Gardner a set too, assuming she was in no hurry for them, but as early as September 14, she was writing, "I am most keen to see the photographs.

When?" Two months later she asked for them again. At the end of January 1904, she had run out of patience. " I am quite seriously displeased that an extra set of photographs of my pictures was not taken at the beginning for me," she wrote. " I should not have supposed it possible that I should have been obliged to ask even once for it. As that part of your bargain has not been kept, why should I not retract my permission to have any of my pictures reproduced or spoken of in your book?"

A much graver source of conflict lay in Jaccaci's insistence on obtaining precise and detailed information on the provenance of each painting to be discussed. At first Mrs. Gardner seemed will-

27

,,,-'J- u.--h-7

/3 .r,,,_ f

--~

/

~

L-,,

John LaFarge's letter to Mrs 路 G ar d ner 0 f

15

December 1 902 ,

ing to cooperate in this effort, but in November she began to express reservations . In a letter to Jaccaci of November 13, LaFarge's secretary warned him that " the lady has evidently twisted or had twisted her entire concept of the thing."

Mrs. Gardner herself wrote a week later: " I think the great charm of your book will really be in its esthetic quality and description and appreciation, and I should think the Provenance of very inferior value and in many cases likely to hurt the feelings of the sellers. I know that would be the case in some instances." She then referred Jaccaci to Berenson for facts on her paintings.

Berenson had arrived in Boston late in October for the first stage of an extended American visit, and although he promised J accaci his cooperation, he remained evasive on the subject of provenance. " The trouble with the dealers and with Mr. Berenson so far," Jaccaci wrote Lafarge in December, " is that they tell a story to the buyer which is very pretty, very vague, or whatever it may be, and when you ask them for facts, you find they either do not have them or have reasons for not wanting to give them." Lafarge, in turn, had been talking to Berenson and wrote that " he implies she [Mrs. Gardner] is not reliable on the subject of her getting of her pictures." To which Jaccaci replied, " I have no doubt that is true and also that it is true of almost everybody and perhaps a great deal of Mr. Berenson himself."

Faced with these frustrations and anxious to round up his European authorities, Jaccaci despatched an agent, Carl Snyder, to Europe early in December to solicit the all-important essays.

Snyder had strict instructions " to do all that can possibly be done in connection with the Gardner Collection. It is most essential that this collection should be done up to the handle." While he knew nothing about art or about art critics, as a former McClure' s editor he had experience in the handling of writers, and he soon learned more than

he wanted to know. His frequent reports to Jaccaci are model expressions of the layman's bewilderment when faced with conflicting opinions of art historians: Florence, January 11, 1904 [Corrado] Ricci thinks Mrs. Gardner's Tintoretto, " The Portrait of a Woman" is more likely to be a Dominico Robusti, and Dr. Gronau is of the same opinion. Friedlander thought that it was a Venetian portrait along about 1600, and in this Bode was inclined to agree and Friedlander suggested that it might be a Bassano. Gronau will give me a note upon it, but not as a Tintoretto.

Mrs. Gardner's Titian - " Maria of Austria and her Daughter" - Ricci thinks he has positive evidence [it] is from the hand of Antonio Moro. . . . Dr. Gronau believes he had evidence that it is a Coello and this was the guess of Bode and Friedlander. At any rate everybody agrees that it is not a Titian.

Here is one of the cases where I am up a stump .. . .

What, for example, would Mrs. Gardner say if I go ahead and get notes from four or five of the biggest authorities over here that her beloved Titians and Tintorettos and so on are not Titians and Tintorettos at all, but by much lesser masters? ...

Of course it would be interesting to print all the opinions side by side. But what will Mrs. Gardner say, for example, when you have four explicit essays detailing why it cannot possibly be a Tintoretto or a Titian and you can only get Mr. Berenson to back it up? Everybody over here thinks that Berenson made a good thing out of Mrs. Gardner.

After two months of dealing with the authorities Snyder was ready to give up: "For my own part," he wrote on March 15, "I have come to the conclusion that the whole Stilkritik game is the most utter rot that I know of outside of the same thing in biblical exegesis. . . . Probably

29

every collection has got weak things in it, and you know what a lot f damned cranks I am dealing with - they would not be in the business if they \vere n t cranks; tho I am bound to ay personally that I never met a nit r lot of p ople and I cannot begin to tell you how ver' pl asant the ' have been to me" Jaccaci's response t Snyder' c nfu ion was sufficiently cool but his publisher, 0 0 1errill, had invest d a ubstantial sum in th \' ntur and took a more hard-headed approach. " ou know, my dear Snyder,'' he wr te on r bruary 19, 'that \\'e hav to sell our b k. You kn "'that r. Ja ca 1 1s trying t d an hone t pi e f ' ork, but if we ar going to allow the "'hims and fancie , the mor or less di inter ted notions of the e perts, to hamper us b · antag nizing ur ollectors, we might as \\'ell close up hop . . . .

I hope that somehow you \\'Ill . UCL d in inducing these great perts t modify and ton down the harsher things thev \\'Ould sav n L rtain points and to enlarge ~pon th m~r fa\·orable riticism . . . . I think ·ou hould mak up v ur mind, Snyder, that \\'e are using these pc pie for our purpose and that they are not u ing us." fter Berenson returned to Eur pe in larch Jacca i wrote nyder a long I tter n hi v1s1t Berenson talked, he ays, "parti ularly to 1rs Gardner . . . in the m st c nt mptuo~s manner about LaFarge and myself." Ja a i also reports several harsh things Ber ns n said f Mrs. ardner and adds, " he told me he would be hanged before he wrote a catal gue ra1sonne of Mrs. Gardner's ollection, and that he cared not a rap for provenance."

Whether Berenson persuaded rs. Gardner to take a strong stand on Jaccaci's proposed critical essays on her paintings is not !ear, but at any rate she made up her mind to keep them out. " ! ~m really afraid," she wrote on April n, i904, that there may be some misunderstandings about that article in your book about my colle tion.

30

Please don't let there be any mistake. I do not want an ·thing to be publi hed but the article that r. La Farge writes - liis views and ideas - not the vie\\'S and ideas of a lot of other men. I do hope to s e "actly what is to be published beforel11md, and in time to say a 'no' if necessary to me."

J a caci immediately detected "Berenson's fine \\'Ork behind this attitude, and in his reply to 1rs. ardner he adopted a firm tone : "As to the desire you e pre s of having only Mr. LaFarge's paper, mJ\' I beg you to look up my letter of April 14 100; and your answer of the next day. nd · u \\'Ill see that then . . I explained the plan of our bo k and that you acquiesced very fully in y ur ans\\'er I have been working for a year up n this plan and the book with your collection i now largely in the hands of the printer, and it is not p . sible to have any changes made. But I assur you nothing has been done that is in any way different from the plan and what you gave me permission for in the beginning."

Her answ r \\'aS instantaneous and shattering: f cour~e I should have kept your letters and constanth· s tudied them, had I realized that this book \\'a; n t being made on the principles I upposed I do remember, though - and first and foremost I remember that when the question f having my collection in your book c.ame up, I said it could only be so if it in 110 way \\'Ould interfere with a catalogue raisonne that Mr. Berenson was to make in the future. ou answered me that this was not in an · sense a Latalogue raisonne and could in no sense interfere with him. \ hen you read to me, some short time ago, extracts from writings that had been made by various people solicited by y u, yo11 said they were interesting but not to be u ed. I said, "of course not" ...

I have since heard that you are making notes and enquiries that do not please me - therefore I \\'rote to you the other day. I very much regret saying anything you may think dis-

Photograph of Mrs. Gardner about 1905.

agreeable, but your letter received this morning makes me think that it is perhaps better that I should write wh at I think about the book.

It certainly seem s more and more as if it were a purely business affair, which means I fancy a profit to someone - who is not myself. In fact, the book is no t a thing that I desire in an y way. Therefore, as I allowed you to see my collection for one of the articles (probably one that will be advantageous to the sale) I at least fancied my wishes and desires would be con sulted . . . . At the interview I speak of in this letter, that took place in this room, I said (very distinctly I thought) that I m ust see a proof of what is to be published before the publication. You must acknowledge that this must be and that the p roof must be subject to alterations, if I do not like it.

In your letter this morning you say "it is not possible to h ave any ch anges made." This I do not accept. I shall take m ean s formally to prevent anything's being published at all about my collection, unless it is in accordance with my wishes and agreeable to me.

But I feel sure I have misunderstood what seemed a threat from you, and shall expect very soon to see the proof, which will be subject to my corrections.

In his next letter to Snyder Jaccaci refers to " an unpleasant sean ce with Mrs. Gardner, which I hope we shall straighten out all right, but it illustrates the fact that these collectors are mighty ticklish and touchy and we never know when they are going to fly off the handle."

To a lesser man than Jaccaci, Mrs. Gardner's blast might have been crushing. His answer was a masterpiece of tact and firmness . It recapitulated the history of their negotiations, denied her interpretations, and simply did not mention her de-

32

mand for a veto on what was written. This tactic failed too. " I have nothing more to say than what I have already said," Mrs. Gardner wrote at the beginning of May. At this point there is a marked falling off of correspondence between Mrs. Gardner and Jaccaci. Apparently she transferred her communications to Lafarge and his secretary, Miss Barnes.

Negotiations were conducted and a compromise is indicated in a letter from Mrs. Gardner to Miss Barnes dated June 18: " I am quite willing to have the publishers go on and publish all essays and written material about my collection which Mr. LaFarge has seen and approved of."

But the business was still not entirely over.

Writing to Miss Barnes on September 29, Jaccaci asked her to get Lafarge to learn from Mrs. Gardner the answers to several more questions about the provenance of certain paintings. "Not a fact should be set down in our book unless it really be a fact," he concludes. Miss Barnes sent the letter itself to Mrs. Gardner, who returned it to Jaccaci with the following cryptic note written across it in her hand: " Mrs. Gardner is wholly unaware of these things, which are called facts."

At the end of 1904, just when the book was finally to appear, the publishers Merrill and Baker went into bankruptcy. A year and a half later J accaci himself bought out the property and the volume came out late in 1907. Of the projected fifteen volumes, it was the only one produced. Relations between Mrs. Gardner and Jaccaci evidently improved during the time.

Her last letter to him, undated, is a fitting tribute. " I will keep the book," she wrote, "since you say I may - in delightful remembrance of you and all you have said and done."

Garnett McCoy

The Tower of Babel, Flemish (Brussels), late XVI or early XVII century. Tapestry, silk and wool, H . 11' 4", L. 12'11" . Cleaned and repaired in 1972. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

T. 5. Eliot: Two Letters from 1 91 5

Isabella Stewart Gardner offered to the poets whose lives crossed hers the same response to new experience which made her a friend of painters and musicians, novelists and philosophers. Her interest in modern poetry seems to have been particularly strong in the period from 1914 to the early twenties. She bought volumes of Robert Frost, Edgar Lee Masters, Rupert Brooke, James Stephens, and an anthology which included the work of Hilda Doolittle and D . H. Lawrence. Between 1915 and 1921 she subscribed to the magazine Poetry, which brought her the latest work of Conrad Aiken, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Howard Mumford Jones, Arthur Symons and Amy Lowell, among others. Miss Lowell, her Brookline neighbor, gave Mrs. Gardner several volumes of her own poetry and Mrs. Gardner bought others herself. In her seventies, Mrs. Gardner sometimes dined with Miss Lowell and discussed " the New Poetry" with her. The forty-two year old poet found it " .. . very agreeable to read to so sympathetic a listener. . .."

(Letter to Mrs. Gardner, June 19, 1916, Museum Archives) One of Mrs. Gardner's most intriguing literary associations was with the young T. S. Eliot. His signature in her guest book on two occasions in 1912 and two letters he wrote to her from London in 1915 are all that remain in the museum archives of what appears to have been a cordial, if brief, encounter between the young poet and the elderly patron. Eliot entered Harvard as an undergraduate in 1906 and remained there as a graduate student and teaching assistant until June 1914, except for a year in Paris and Munich in 1910-11. Mrs. Gardner was in Boston throughout that period. There were common interests which might have drawn them together. Among these was the poetry of Dante. Eliot's distant relative, Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908), had stimulated Mrs. Gardner's career as a collector through his lectures on the fine arts, and by 34

leading her into the Dante Society in 1885.

Twenty-five years later, the tradition of Dante scholarship which Norton had established at Harvard played a role in Eliot's education. "The influence of Dante was to be of lifelong importance, not only for his poetry, but for his whole intellectual development." (Bernard Bergonzi, T. 5.

Eliot, New York, 1972, p. 5) How they first met is not yet known. They may have been introduced by George Santayana, who shared music and conversation with Mrs. Gardner until he left Harvard for Europe in 1912. Santayana's course on modern philosophy was a factor in Eliot's decision to turn from English literature to the study of philosophy during his graduate years. Or their intermediary may have been Mrs. Gardner's great friend, Okakura Kakuzo, the Japanese author and lecturer who was advisor and, later, curator of the Department of Chinese and Japanese Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from 1904 to 1913. Eliot, who mentions Okakura in one of his letters to Mrs. Gardner, made an intensive study of Oriental philosophy and culture while at Harvard, and he seriously considered becoming a Buddhist during the writing of The Waste Land in 1922. (Ibid., p. 23) It is more likely that Matthew Prichard arranged the introduction. Prichard, an Englishman who was associated with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from 1902 to 1906, was Mrs. Gardner's close friend during that period. He carried on a long correspondence with her after he left the United States for good in 1907. Eliot and Prichard both studied philosophy at the Sorbonne during 1910-11. In a letter of September 17, 1911 from Munich, Prichard wrote to Mrs. Gardner: A young Bostonian, John Elliot, [Tom Eliot?] very reserved and intelligent ... has left Munich & is bound for Boston & Harvard. I have asked him to write to you for leave to call & tell you of me & of the ideas he has gathered

during a year's study in Paris where he followed much the same courses of lectures as myself. He is particularly well informed of the newest ideals and desires and is, I think, clear and simple, though as he speak s very little, it is not possible for me to speak certainly . ...

Prichard's description fits Eliot, who was known for his reticence. Perhaps Prichard simply misspelled his name. It would appear that he had the name right when next h e referred to him in a letter to Mrs . Gardner a year later, apparently in response to her inquiry. " I will try and find out about Eliot. I owe him a letter since a long while . ..." (Letter to Mrs. Gardner, September 17, 1912, Museum Archives) If the Eliot mentioned in this letter was T. S. Eliot, Prichard's efforts were unnecessary, because the very day before, September 16, 1912, Eliot had gone to Green Hill, Mrs. Gardner's Brookline house, for his first recorded visit. His name is again in her guest book, without date; between the entries for October 31 and November 3 of the same year.

It is probable that Eliot met Mrs. Gardner on other occasions in the eighteen-month period between his late autumn visit to Brookline and his departure from Boston in June 1914, because he did write to her when he was finally settled in. England. His original plan to spend his last year as a student of philosophy at Marburg was shattered by the outbreak of World War I. He left Germany, with difficulty, and went to Oxford to read Greek philosophy. from Merton College, on April 4 [1915] , he wrote to Mrs. Gardner of his feelings about the war and of his concern for Prichard, who was then interned in a German prison camp. Eliot had found the German people hospitable and he did not wish their country to be destroyed, but he greatly feared the possibility of a French defeat. He found that Santayana shared his feelings. In Cambridge (England), Eliot had dis-

Matthew Stewart Prichard by John Briggs Potter, pen and water color on paper, 18 x 12Y, in. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Both m en were on the staff of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts when this was done in 1905.

35

~~ ~~~4: 0( ~ ~~~ fk~WVL

MR. PADEREVVSKI

WILL PLAY

PIANOFORTE PIECES BY

BEETHOVEN

SCHUMAN

BACH

CHOPIN

AND

A

QUARTET FOR PIANOFORTE AND STRINGS

BY BRAHMS

FEBRUARY TWENTY-SIXTH

1892

Santayana's program for Paderewski' s concert in Mrs. Gardner's Beacon Street house. On the top he wrote: Impromptu Three things are infinite: the Sea Of griefs uncomforted unknown, The laughter of the Stars at me, And music's woof of peal and moan -

covered his former teacher installed in terrible lodgings and at work on an article for the New Republic on Spanish attitudes toward the war.

In an effort to lighten the tone of the letter, Eliot described for Mrs. Gardner the artistic scene in London, a city which he was learning to enjoy.

He had attended an exhibition at the Goupil gallery, where, along with a canvas by Wyndham Lewis, two woodcuts by Edward Wadsworth, whose work he especially liked, and a marble by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, there were four wood statues by Jacob Epstein, which did not please Eliot, although one or two suggested to him the vitality of central African art.

Eliot then promised Mrs. Gardner that he would send her a copy of the second issue of Blast, which he described as an infamous journal, because he expected that it would amuse her.

In a modest aside, he mentioned that the issue would also contain a few of his poems.

During the summer of 1914 Eliot's friend Conrad Aiken had unsuccessfully tried to find a London publisher for some of the poems Eliot had written at Harvard when they were both students there. Before returning to the United States Aiken arranged for Eliot to meet Ezra Pound, who quickly became Eliot's enthusiastic mentor. Pound was at that time involved with Vorticism, "a movement . . . in the visual arts, which was a real attempt to foster a native English version of cubism and futurism." (Bergonzi, op cit., p . 29) Wyndham Lewis, Edward Wadsworth and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska were associated with Pound in the movement and in the publication of the magazine Blast.

Before the second issue of Blast came out Eliot sent Mrs. Gardner one of his poems. (Not in the Museum Archives) The poem must have been The Love Song of]. Alfred Prufrock, which was published in the American magazine Poetry in June 1915. Ezra Pound, the magazine's London correspondent, had arranged for the poem to be

printed. When the second issue of Blast appeared in July 1915 it contained Eliot's Preludes and Rhapsody on a W indy N ight.

During the year 1915 Eliot changed the entire direction of his life. He had been writing poetry since childhood and he now rejected the career as a professional philosopher which his family had assumed that he would follow. At the conclusion of his letter of April 1915 he mentions seeing Bertrand Russell and it was to Russell that Eliot's mother turned in 1916 when she realized that her son had determined to be a poet. " I am sure your influence will in every way confirm my son in his choice of Philosophy as a life work. I have absolute faith in his Philosophy but not in the vers libre." (Letter to Bertrand Russell, May 1916, in Bergonzi, op. cit., p. 36) Eliot's second letter to Mrs. Gardner was written from London in late June or early July 1915.

He gratefully acknowledged the news she had sent him of Prichard, and then confided to her the details of his changing life - his hopes for a literary career, his marriage to Vivien Haigh Wood in June, and his decision to live in England. (He became a British subject and a member of the Church of England in 1927.)

He reminded Mrs. Gardner that she had once described marriage as a great test. While realizing that marriage required much more of the individual than a pleasant disposition, he nevertheless looked forward to its demands.

Marriage was not the only challenge he was eager to meet. New friends and literary acquaintances in London had been nurturing his desire to express himself through literature, which seemed to him a more satisfactory way of life than a career in philosophy. In retrospect he recalled his work at Harvard as confining, and the idea of a teaching post at another American university had no appeal. He wrote of settling in London, the best place for a man seeking a literary career, and of finding a temporary teach37

ing position. Eliot confessed that this decision worried him far less than trivial things had in the past.

At the end of the letter Eliot told Mrs. Gardner that he did not expect to visit the United States during the summer of 1915 . He had hopes of placing his poetry in American journals and of becoming a foreign correspondent for a periodical. His brother was going to assist him in Bos ton by seeking interviews with the Atlantic Monthly and, perhaps, with Miss Lowell. H e would carry with him a letter of introduction to Mrs. Gardner so that he might have the pleasure of meeting her and of getting her advice.

If Mrs. Gardner advised Eliot's brother or spoke to Amy Lowell on Eliot's behalf, that story

is not known. Eliot's poetry was published in several American journals during 1915 and 1916 but his personal and professional life was increasingly centered in England. After a brief visit to his father and mother in August 1915, Eliot did not return to the United States again until 1932. His letters of 1915 are the only ones in the museum and his last known connection with Mrs. Gardner.

Linda V. Hewitt

Note: As Mrs. Eliot is preparing a collection of her husband's letters for publication, his letters to Mrs. Gardner have not been quoted in this article.

LIBRARY AND PARLOR BUSTS. LON G FELLOW, TENN YSON, D AN TE, SCHILLER, AN D

MANY

MENDELSSOHN, BEETHOVEN, GCETH E, HAHN EMAN N , OTHERS .

Mrs. Gardner surrounded by azaleas in a sunny corner at " Green Hill," Brookline, around 1905.

Mrs. Gardner Comes to Call

A child hatching into an adolescent suddenly sees a grownup or two as something interesting to speculate about, something apart from the unquestioned fixtures of Mama, Papa, Brother, Sister. This revelation happened to me in one of the early summers of the first World War. My aunt, Anna Hyatt, as she was then, was helping the war effort by farming our dry fields in Annisquam with a vegetable garden that I worked, chickens for my sister, and a cow for herself, which she milked dressed in smart close knee britches of gray tweed and matching worsted stockings. When the cow took to mooing gloomily over the fence, she brought a chair and her knitting into the back lot to keep it company.

One sunny afternoon a tall black limousine drove up with some family friend s, then so familiar that I have now forgotten them, who brought John Singer Sargent and Mrs. Jack Gardner to see Aunt Anna. These were names that even I had heard of, so I opened my eyes for my first exploratory scrutiny of adults. Sargent, tall, portly, smoothly tailored, absorbed my immature hand in an ample, warm, pneumatic engulfment that I can still feel enfolding me. We heard later that he thought Aunt Anna' s legs the finest he had ever seen on a woman - a praise that delighted her and horrified my grandmother.

But it was Mrs. Gardner who filled the air. She wore white linen to her ankles and a wide hat valanced with linen embroidered in eyelets, through which she must have seen about as much of the world as a medieval knight through the slits in his helmet. We welcomed her into a house in dust and disorder where my mother and I had recovered sections of the original eighteenth

century wainscoting from closet backs and coal bins, and were then assembling these fragments to panel the living room. The clutter of planks, saws, planes and clamps unexpectedly made Mrs. Gardner feel at home. She selected a chair with her back to the window of strongest light and at last lifted her linen curtain. Hideous.

Exactly how she was hideous I cannot now remember, but I do remember my shock at her wrecked features . And I as quickly forgot them when she began to talk. The carpenters' tools and leaning panels reminded her of the time when she had been installing a painted Italian ceiling at Fenway Court while striking workmen were milling and muttering under the windows.

She and a faithful helper were continuing the work when she heard the strikers beginning to shout insults. She opened the window and leaned out, aiming at the strikers with the polished brass nozzle of a fire hose, which was not attached to any water main. "I looked partly back and said 'Giovanni, when I count three, turn on the water . . . one . . . two!' . . . and they did not stay to hear me count three."

I can still hear her words, but even more clearly I hear her voice, a contralto that saturated her surroundings as effortlessly as a wood dove's call. The only utterance as compelling was Sarah Bernhardt's when just her whisper sent gooseflesh to the back row of the top balcony where I sat. Both women sounded supremely assured, with a voice that draped and caressed their self-esteem like a silken mantle on a venerated image. Even the recollection still commands me across so many decades.

A. Hyatt Mayor

Mrs. Ga rdner in White, by John Singer Sargent, water color on paper, September 192 2 (detail) .

John Singer Sargent, July 1920 . Photograph by Sidney Carter, Montreal (detail) .

The Secretary of Educational Affairs, who was sworn in at the museum on January 20th, stands in the Court wi th the Governor and the museum' s President. Photograph by Dennis Brearley, Boston Herald American.

Report of the President

The excellent report of the director, Rollin van N . Hadley, sets forth the principal happenings of the museum during the year 1972. I shall, therefore, only emphasize the importance of a few of them.

The completion of the new greenhouse and the removal thereto was certainly of major importance and so far seems to be an improvement in mos t respects.

The marked increase in attendance, due in large measure to the extended hours of casual visiting, is indeed encouraging; as is also the fact that this year more children from the Boston Public Schools visited the museum than in any previous year.

These favorable factors indicating the museum's u sefulness to the community, plus the fact that increased expenses are already beginning to exceed our income, make the fact tha t we are penalized by Federal taxes because we do not charge admissions or seek to raise money from the already burdened public seem all the more inexplicable!

Again we have deep appreciation and admiration for the splendid work of our director and the entire staff.

In this connection it would indeed be graceless if we did not express our regret that Dennis Mahoney has retired after forty-seven years of faithful and efficient service. We wish him well and shall miss him.

G. Peabody Gardner

43

Report of the Director

Imagine the museum surrounded by open space and on the outskirts of town, as it once was. Today it is hard to imagine when on every side the city draws closer. The new greenhouses offer a protection to the museum while reversin g the trend toward taller and taller buildings and less and less green space. Around us prospects grow less fair, and crowding is the rule.

The museum adapts within the boundaries set for it and it seem s to do more at a time when more is clearly wanted. The increased hours have been received with enthusiasm by the public (attendance figures below) . Many visitors return several times, not with a precise goal but to refresh themselves as Mrs. Gardner intended they should in her museum. What the visitors take away is the ambience, the sen se of luxury and timeless antiquity which now stands in contrast to much of the city's outward face.

The greenhouses were opened in May. The Trustees gave a dinner for 100 persons followed by a concert in the Court. The flowers survived the transition with only a few exceptions. These are compensated for by the excellent response of others to their new surroundings. The convenience and, in fact, pleasure afforded to all the staff by being united is not to be belittled. Again the work of the gardeners was recognized a t the Massachusetts Horticultural Society Flower Shows by the following awards: Massachusetts Horticultural Society. Display of Camellia Plants. 100 sq. ft. First Prize and Gold Medal. January 20, 1972.

Massachusetts Horticultural Society. First Prize and Cultural Certificate for an outs tanding Laurel Leaf Camellia.

Massachusetts Horticultural Society. The Chicago Horticultural Society Gold Medal for cultural quality in any plant collection or display.

Massachusetts Horticultural Society Gold Medal and First Prize. "A Medieval Mount." March 17, 1972 (Spring Flower Show) .

44

Massachusetts Department of Agriculture State Award. Blue Ribbon.

Despite the rainiest spring in memory, landscaping was carried out in connection with the new con s truction, in the Monks' Garden and at the front entrance. Besides the new planting required by the above, a tree was given to the city to fill the gap at the comer of Tetlow Street and the Evansway. Further outside work was done on the front entrances and, by necessity, to the Main Gate. On the night of November 27, a car, still unidentified, went through the gate and struck the brick pier. It was decided to repair the gate without replacing the brick supports.

Blessed as we are with fine musicians in Boston, we have also been fortunate this year in drawing from across the country and, indeed, from around the world. The 127 concerts in the Tapestry Room included names from Japan, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Spain, France, Germany, England, Hungary, Poland and the Soviet Union.

Soloists of all varieties and conventional groups such as s tring quartets were interspersed with unusual combination s - bassoon quartet, flute and guitar, and harp and French horn. First performances were given on several occasions, and on many more first Boston performances.

A series of woodwind ensemble music was begun in the fall to enable the public to hear these rare and delightful pieces. Another series of piano trio music was inaugurated to perform the complete trios of Dvorak along with some Haydn trios. Of special interest again this year were the opera concerts in which the singers presented little-known works.

The new public area on the ground floor was opened in March following the laying of a tile floor from Palace Road to the elevator. Beyond that the new Sales Desk and wash rooms were opened into the Chinese Loggia permitting an easy passage all the way around the court. The

old Sales Desk was then converted to coat space, relieving the public entrance of coat racks.

The textile workroom was moved in June to new quarters in the south comer of the ground floor with no appreciable loss of time. The Tower of Babel, a XVI century Flemish tapestry, was returned to the Second Floor Stair Hall and Abraham sending away Hagar and Ishmael went back to the Tapestry Room, both repaired and washed. A number of smaller pieces were treated and service was performed for current requirements as the demand arose. For example, one member of the staff vacuum cleans each week the entire textile collection exposed to the air.

In the laboratory the variety is always s taggering. Books, leather pillows, wood carvings, frames and mats, painted furniture, stone of several kinds, metal and ceramic objects came and went in uneven numbers. The Uccello portrait was a major undertaking and, for comparison purposes, the Metropolitan Museum in New York kindly lent us their portrait thought to be by the same hand, but not attributed to Uccello. Four pictures had scratches, the work of vandals from whose attacks we mercifully had been

spared in recent years. None was severely damaged and all were minor works from the last 100 years. Security was increased to counter any reoccurrence. Finally, El Jaleo received a clean surface of wax, with the aid of some ingenious rigging by the Supervisor of Buildings.

Carolyn Horton came for three days in September on a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her advice on the care and preservation of paper products is invaluable and fortunately with the new laboratory the conservator and his staff are able to treat problems on the spot. The work of the Archives of American Art in microfilming the archives gave us the opportunity to go over the letters and documents one by one. The work goes on and will, we hope, result in safe permanent storage.

The Trustees joined with the Archives in presenting a small evening reception, at which a few of the choice pieces were on exhibition.

Those who worked on the project, Paula Kozol and Pam Peterson for the museum, also produced a checklist of names represented in the correspondence. It is being printed and circulated to major libraries.

45

The Master of the Castello Nativity, Profile Portrait of a Lady, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Jules S. Bache Collection, 1949, No. 491.6) (left) and Paolo Uccello, A Young Lady of Fashion, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (right). Both portraits were stripped of old varnish and retouchings b y the con servation departments of their museums and then retouched without invention a nd revamished. In the process a ll spurious retouching was eliminated. Scholars may now make a more accurate appraisal of the relationship between these fifteenth century portraits which many believe to be by the same hand.

The attendance reflected the Trustees' decision to increase the hours of casual visiting. On this measurement it put this museum just below the leading art museums in the country.

Weekdays Sundays Closed-day tours (omitted after August 1971) Special visits during closed hours Total

1972 128'428 64'440

1971 83A96 58,107

Total

Executive Office of Edu(150) cational Affairs United Service Organization 7 March (600) Navy League of the 25 March (200) United States National Fisheries 21 April (200) Institute Pan American Society of 22 April (400) New England Handel and Haydn Society (300) 28 April Plastic Surgical 4 May (175) Research Council Bennington College Alumni 12 May (100) Association (300) Beth Israel Hospital 22 June (300) Boston Globe 25 June Society of Nuclear 13 July (1200) Medicine Boston University Center 5 October for Latin American (200) Development Studies Chinese Snuff Bottle 27 October (150) Society 1 November Archives of American Art (100) 1 December Friends of Armenian (325) Culture Friends of the New England 15 December Conservatory of Music (100)

20 January

Further experiments with the Boston Public Schools led to another music appreciation concert, this time preceded by orientation tours five in number - for the pupils. The Copley Square High School class in Renaissance Florence met with the staff six times to explore the evidence of Italian genius in all the arts represented within the walls.

The director spoke at Villa I Tatti and was a guest there for ten days in April. In October he spoke to the Fine Arts Society in Peoria, Illinois. He served as Chairman of the Boston Chapter of Save Venice, Inc., one of many groups formed to preserve the art and architecture of Venice by raising money for conservation of monuments and objects.

Morris Carter's biography of Mrs. Gardner, first published in 1925, went into another printing with a new foreword by the museum's president. Next year should see the publication of catalogues on the collection which have been in preparation for some time. Income from the sales desk was up a bit: Books Guides and Information Folders Cards Color Transparencies Miscellaneous

The State Commissioner of Educational Affairs Joseph M. Cronin asked and received permission to be sworn in at the museum. The ceremony took place on the morning of January 20.

Other special visits were permitted to many organizations. Those of one hundred persons or more were:

1972 $ 3,159.50

1971 $ 2,760.55

4,182.75 5'498.50 2,114.00 2,027.70

3,555. 20 4'494路15 1,716.25 971.68

$16,982.45

$13,497.83

At the service in memory of Isabella Stewart Gardner on Friday, 14 April the celebrant was the Reverend Father Alfred L. Pedersen, S.5.J .E. Five of the Staff have retired : Flora A. Berry, maintenance technician, 31 December; Michael Cogavin, gardener, 1 August; John A. Madden, gardener, 1 June ; John Kennedy, maintenance foreman, 7 January; Dennis Mahoney, mainte47

The Accreditation Commission of the American Assoc1at1on of Museums

nance technician, 31 December. They will be greatly missed.

Seven have resigned: Beverly J. Chatham, secretary for administration, 14 January; George Coleman, maintenance technician, 1 August; Carl R. Erlandson, sales clerk, 30 November; Garen Lindsay, gardener, 2 September; Noreen O ' Leary, conservation technician, 2 September; Thomas D. Reynolds, guard, 30 November ; Elwin Rich, nightwatchman, 19 March.

Fourteen have been engaged for regular duties: Kenwood M. Cappers, guard, 19 May; Elizabeth B. Cobb, conservation technician, 11 September; James Culhane, guard, 9 September; Maureen I. Cunningham, research associate, 5 June; Edward P. Downs, guard, 13 October; Francis R. Gillis, guard, 1 December; Joyce Haynes, receptionist, 22 February; Joseph Kiarsis, gardener, 15 May; William Metten, sales clerk, 31 Augus t ; Edwin J. Olson, guard, 1 December; John Pantano, guard, 14 August; Steffen Pierce, nightwatchman, 19 March; John A. Specker, maintenance technician, 4 December; Alfonso Walker, nightwatchman, 30 March.

On restricted schedules were: Exibee Coleman, Samuel C. Re. On 1 July Yasuko Horioka left the staff, having successfully catalogued the Oriental objects in the collection.

The assistance of Janet Mclean and Kathie Stone, volunteers, was of great help to the staff.

Although it has been a fruitful year in which new marks were made in many places, one that the director would prefer not to record is the deficit. It is the third time in the museum's history; the other two caused, as was this one, by construction. Were it not for the extraordinary response from the staff and the encouragement of the Trustees, the results in all that was planned would have fallen below expectations. But, despite our loss on operation s we must account it a good year.

Rollin van N. Hadley

Note 011 the Orgn 11izntion of the Museum

The Isabella tewart ardner useum, lnorporated ( u eum orporahon), a assachusett charitable c rp rati n, is th sole trustee under the will of Isabella t \\'art Gardner pon her death in 1o:q, !rs Gardner left to even indi\'idual tru 路tees the pr pert \\'htch now constitutes the Museum Fenway ourt and the works of art he had colle ted there, . ome of which \\' re owned bv her dire tly and some by a corporation of wh1 h h wned all the capital stock. The I abella tewart ardner 1useum in the F n\\'ay In orp rated (Fenway orp rati n).

She also ga\' h r trust an endowment fund for the support of the useum.

In 10;0 the md1v1dual trustees under ardner's \\'ill organized the u eum orp rati resigned as truste s under the \\'tll The useum Corporation was app int d by the Probate ourt to be succ ssor tru t e in their stead and now holds all the trust property, ns1sting f the real estate, the colle !ton ( "'ned either dire tly or through Fenway orp ration), and theendowm nt. nder the By-laws of the Mu eum orp ration it ts managed by a b ard of seven tru tees wh have the power to fill vacan ies in th ir own number. The officers, elected annually by the trustees, are a President, i e-Presid nt, Treasurer and Secretary. A Finance omm1ttee of at least two members appointed by the tru st es is re ponsible for the Museum's inves tments.

Under the terms of Mrs. Gardner's will full authority over the Museum, the ollection, and the staff is vested in the Director, who is appointed and subject to removal by her trustees (now the Museum Corporation).

Publications

CATALOGUE OF THE EXHIBITED PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS, by Philip Hendy A descriptive catalogue, with biographies of the artists and reproductions of the paintings. $2.00 Cloth bound $ .50 (domestic) Postage and packing $ .70 (foreign) DRAWINGS/ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM, edited by Rollin van N. Hadley A small group of notable drawings ranging in date from the late fifteenth to the early twentieth century; thirty-eight illustrations, frontispiece in color.

Paper bound $2.50 $ .35 (domestic) Postage and $ .45 (foreign) packing ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER AND FENWAY COURT, by Morris Carter A biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner and a history of the formation of her collection, by the first director of the museum ; foreword by G. Peabody Gardner ; illustrated ; third edition.

Cloth bound $6.oo Postage and $ .50 (domestic) packing $ .60 (foreign) MUSEUM GUIDE For the use of visitors; illustrated ; 98 pp.

Paper bound $ .95 Postage and $ .35 (domestic) packing $ .45 (foreign)

TITIAN'S RAPE OF EUR OPA, by Arthur Pope A study of the composition and the mode of representation of this and related paintings; illustrated.

Paper bound $1.95 Cloth bound $2.95 $ .35 (domestic) Postage and $ .50 (foreign) packing FENWAY COURT 1966-1970 A small illustrated journal, each issue on one subject. A list of 22 subjects will be sent on request. 30 cents per issue.

(Library discount offered only on set of 22 issues.)

TREASURES FROM THE ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM, by George L. Stout (Crown Publishers, New York) An illustrated history of the museum and its collection by the second director.

Cloth bound $7.50 $ .50 (domestic) Postage and packing $ .60 (foreign) Mail orders will be shipped by 4th class, library rate (domestic) or surface rates (foreign). Please make check or money order payable to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Libraries and other educational institutions are offered a 40% discount.

A list of slides and color reproductions is available on request.

51

Trustees

Staff*

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Incorporated, Sole Trustee under the will of Isabella Stewart Gardner

Di rector Emeritus George L. Stout

President G. Peabody Gardner Vice-President and Secretary Malcolm D. Perkins Treasurer John Lowell Gardner

Elliot Forbes Mason Hammond Francis W . Hatch, Jr. James Lawrence, Jr.

ADMINISTRATION

Director Rollin van N . Hadley Assistant to the Director Linda V. Hewitt Secretary for Administration Frances L. Preston Associate Secretary for Administration Joyce L. Haynes Director of Music Johanna Giwosky Research Associates Paula M. Kozol Maureen I. Cunningham Docents Molly Bond Judy Hanhisalo Clara Monroe Nicholas Tranquillo Photographer Joseph B. Pratt Sales Clerks Loren Benson William H. Metten COLLECTION

Chief Conservator and Curator James W. Howard, Jr. Conservator of Textiles Yvonne A. A. Cox Assistant Restorer Leo V. Klos, Jr. Conservation Technicians Marjorie Bullock Elizabeth Cobb Pam M. Peterson Ana Wertelecki

SECURITY AND MAINTENANCE

Supervisor of Buildings John F. Niland Security Foremen Patrick T . Niland Patrick J. Naughton Maintenance Foreman Alfred J. Smith Shop Technician Michael Finnerty Maintenance and Watch Robert Anderson Flora A. Berry Patrick Burns William Evans Robert French Thomas Little Dennis S. Mahoney Yvonne Mercer Joseph Miniutti Steffen Pierce John Specker Alfonso Walker Guards Walter Benson Stanley Bentley Kenwood Cappers Jeremiah Clifford Edward Conley James Culhane Bernard Doherty Benjamin Donahue Alfred J. Donnell Edward Downs Dennis Fitzgerald John W. Fleming Anthony Flynn

Francis Gillis Albert B. Gordon Edward Gray John H. Holland Harold R. Holm Patrick Hurley Thomas Jennings Ja trick J. Kearney John J. Kennedy Patrick McDonough John F. McElhinney Daniel J. McGuire Charles A. McStravick Edwin Olson John Pantano Charles R. Parsons Joseph Rajunas John C. Ribner Martin J. Roper Patrick Slevin David A. Twomey GARDENING

Head Gardener Robert M. MacKenzie Gardeners Michael Cogavin Martin Davis Charles P. Healy, Jr. Joseph Kiarsis Stanley Kozak John A. Madden

Report of the Treasurer STATEMENT OF ASSETS AND FUND BALANCES DECEMBER 31, 1972 AND 1971

ASSETS CASH

1971 $

INVESTMENTS, at cost (Note 1): Bonds (quoted market price at December 31, 1972 - $3,705,122) Stocks (quoted market price at December 31, 1972 - $13,274,743)

7,119,324 $12,166,608

$11,680,059

MusEUM PROPERTY, primarily at 1936 appraised values (Note 2): Land and buildings

$

366,400

$

366,400

All the outstanding shares of The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the Fenway, Incorporated, representing Contents of Museum building

4,015,000

4,015,000

49,000

49,000

$ 4,430,400 101,658

$ 4'430,400 101,658

$ 4,532,058

$ 4,532,058

$

$

Lot and greenhouse Adjacent land, at cost

ADVANCES TowARD SPECIAL PROJECT (Note 6) Total assets

470,579

179,892

$17,215,727

$16,511,591

54,953

27,653

$17,-160,774

$16,483,938

$

$

LEss - Reserve for Federal income taxes (Note 7)

FUND BALANCES OPERATING (Note 3)

115,545 15,229,191

GENEl!.AL PENSION (Note 4) MAINTENANCE AND DEPRECIATION

54,-156

14,502,723

1,097,929 718,109

1,134,586

$17,160,774

$16,483,938

The accompanying notes are an integral part of these statements.

792'473

STATEMENTS OF INCOME AND EXPENDITURES AND ALLOCATION TO FUNDS FOR THE YEARS ENDED DECEMBER 31, 1972 AND 1971

INVESTMENT INCOME: Interest from bonds Dividends from stocks OPERATING EXPENDITURES: Museum operating expenses Maintenance and security Gardening and grounds Music Care of collections and paintings Administration Insurance Compensation of managing trustees Professional services Cataloging expense Pensions (Note 4) Sale of publications and other items* EXCESS OF INVESTMENT INCOME 0vER OPERATING EXPENDITURES PROVISION FOR FEDERAL INCOME TAX (Note 7) Net operating income NON-OPERATING INCOME (EXPENDITURES) Renovations to Museum building Extraordinary income items (Note 5) EXCESS (DEFICIT) OF INCOME OVER EXPENDITURES NET CAPITAL GAINS ON INVESTMENT TRANSACTIONS, less applicable taxes (Note 7)

ALLOCATED TO FUNDS AS FOLLOWS: Operating General Pension Maintenance and depreciation

1972

1971

$311,262 359,220

$ 335,032 340,:;92

$670'482

$ 675'424

$233,630

$ 191,145 58,307 33,726 43,841 153,160 11,663 4,060 21,874

54'373 43,606 50,896 162,780 15,936 3,760 33,741 14,784 36,657 (29,913)

29,115 (19,000)

$620,250

$ 527,891

$ 50,232 25,500

$ 147,533 26,500

$ 24,732

$ 121,033

(161,565) 45,306

(74,364) $(49,632)

$

4,774

726'468

1,193,899

$676,836

$1,198,673

$ 61,389 726,468 (36,657) (74,364)

$

$676,836

$1,198,673

The accompanying notes are an integral part of these statements.

20,148 1,239,205 (29,115) (31,565)

STATEMENT OF FUND BALANCES FOR THE YEARS ENDED DECEMBER 31, 1972AND1971

BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1970 Excess of income over expenditures Allocations Replenishment (Note 4) Pension (Note 4) Net non-operating expenditures Capital gains on investments, net BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1971 (Deficit) of income over expenditures Allocations Renovations Pension (Note 4) Capital gains on investments, net BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1972

Operating (Note 3)

General (Note 5)

$ 34,008

$13,263,518

Pension (Note 4)

Maintenance & Depreciation

$1,163,701

$ 824,038

4,774

$15,285,265 4,774

(130,000) 29,115

130,000 (29,115)

116,259

45,306

$ 54,156

1,193,899 $14,502,723

{161,565)

$1,134,586

$ 792,473

(49,632)

1,193,899 $16,483,938 (49,632)

(74,364)

74,364 36,657

$ 115,545

Total

{36,657) 726,468 $15,229,191

$1,097,929

$ 718,109

STATEMENTS OF CHANGES IN FINANCIAL POSITION FOR THE YEARS ENDED DECEMBER 31, 1972 AND 1971

726,468 $17,160,774 Total Funds Including Unrealized Gains

Funds on Cost Basis

Unrealized Gains

CASH AND lNvESTMENTS MUSEUM PROPERTY RESERVE FOR FEDERAL INCOME TAXES

$10,777,207 4,532,058 (24,000)

$4,009,145

$14,786,352 4,532,058 (24,000)

BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1970 Excess of investment income over operating expenditures Net non-operating expenditures Provision for Federal income taxes Realized capital gains on investments, net Net increase in quoted market price of investments

$15,285,265

$4,009,145

$19,294,410

BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1971 Balance consists of: Cash and investments Museum property Advances toward special project (Note 6) Reserve for Federal income taxes BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1971 Excess of investment income over operating expenditures Renovations Provision for Federal income taxes Realized capital gains on investments, net of tax Net increase in quoted market price of investments BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1972 Balance consists of: Cash and investments Museum property Advances toward special project (Note 6) Reserve for Federal income taxes BALANCE, DECEMBER 31, 1972

147,533 (116,259) {26,500) 1,193,899

147,533 {116,259) (26,500) (1,193,899) 1,515,870

1,515,870

$16,483,938

$4,331,116

$20,815,054

$11,799,641 4,532,058 179,892 (27,653)

$4,331,116

$16,130,757 4,53 2,058 179,892 (27,653)

$16,483,938

$4,331,116

$20,815,054

50,232 (74,364) (25,500) 726,468 $17,160,774 $12,213,090 4,532,058 470,579 (54,953) $17,160,774

50,232 (74,364) (25,500) (726,468) 1,208,609 $4,813,257 $4,813,257

$4,813,257

The accompanying notes are an integral part of these statements.

1,208,609 $21,974,031 $17,026,347 4,532,058 470,579 (54,953) $21,974,031

NOTES TO STATEMENTS DECEMBER 31, 1972

Investments Investment securities held in the general fund are stated at cost, less amortization of bond premium, if acquired subsequent to December 24, 1936. If held on that date they are carried at market values shown in the Trustee's inventory.

1.

Museum Property The Museum land and buildings, together with all the shares of The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the Fenway, Incorporated (representing the contents of the Museum building, lot and greenhouse) are stated at appraised values as shown in the Trustee' s inventory as of December 24, 1936.

2.

3. Restriction upon Surplus in Operating Fund The Trustees are directed under the Will of Isabella Stewart Gardner to pay to certain named hospitals any surplus of income which, in the opinion of the Director and Trustees, will not be needed for the proper and reasonable maintenance of the Museum.

These amounts, if any, are payable at the end of successive five-year periods, the next of which ends in 1974.

4. Pension Fund The Museum has no formal pension arrangements with employees. The Trustees made discretionary payments of $36,657 to certain retired employees during the year ended December 31, 1972. These payments were allocated to the Pension Fund. The Fund is replenished from time to time on vote of the Board of Trustees.

5. Non-Operating Income (Expenditures) During 1971, the Museum received approximately $52,000 from the consignment sale of certain artifacts which were not on exhibit at the Museum, and approximately $10,700 from the Ford Foundation for the cataloging of its collection. It also incurred expenses in connection with an appraisal made of certain objects in the Museum. The net of these items of income and expense ($45,306) was allocated to the General Fund.

6. Advances Toward Special Project Construction was begun during 1971 for a new greenhouse adjacent to the Museum which will replace the present greenhouse complex in Brookline.

Construction was virtually completed in 1972 and the Trustees are in the process of negotiating the sale of the old greenhouse.

7. Federal Income Taxes During 1971 the Museum was classified as a Private Operating Foundation with the Internal Revenue Service. Based on said classification, the Museum is required to pay a Federal excise tax, at the rate of 4 %, on its "net investment income" as defined by the Internal Revenue Code.

REPORT OF INDEPENDENT PUBLIC ACCOUNTANTS

To the Trustees, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Incorporated, Trustee Under the Will of Isabella Stewart Gardner: We have examined the statement of assets and fund balances of THE ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM, INCORPORATED (a Massachusetts corporation, not for profit), TRUSTEE UNDER THE WILL OF ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER as of December 31, 1972, and the related statements of income and expenditures, allocation to funds, fund balances, and changes in financial position for the year then ended. Our examination was made in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards, and accordingly included such tests of the accounting records and such other auditing procedures as we considered necessary in the circumstances. We have previously examined and reported on the statements for the preceding year.

The accounts of the Museum are maintained on the cash basis, except for Federal income taxes, and the accompanying statements have been prepared on this modified basis. The Museum has consistently followed the practice of charging to expense capital assets acquired subsequent to December 24, 1936, and of making no provision for the depreciation of Museum property. Allocations to the maintenance and depreciation fund are credited thereto when authorized by the Trustees.

In our opinion, the accompanying statements present fairly the assets and fund balances of The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Incorporated, Trustee Under the Will of Isabella Stewart Gardner as of December 31, 1972, and its income and expenditures, allocation to funds, fund balances, and changes in financial position for the year then ended, in accordance with the method of accounting specified above, applied on a basis consistent with that of the preceding year.

ARTHUR ANDERSEN & Co.

Boston, Massachusetts, January 24, 1973.