6. Nathaniel Silver

When in Boston, make sure you include a visit to ‘The Gardner’ as it is known locally. Conveniently situated on ‘The Fenway’, close to the MFA and the Back Bay area. It is a remarkable building and an extraordinary collection formed at the dawn of the era when Americans collected European art, and in the process created something entirely personal, new and exciting.

I met with Nathaniel Silver, Associate Director and Chief Curator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, at Fenway Court, to discuss his own journey through the history of art collecting in America and the UK, and to hear about how Isabella Stewart Gardner formed and lived with her remarkable art collection, in her spectacular Venetian-style palazzo in Boston, Fenway Court. Nat is a co-author of a new biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner.

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Mrs Gardner was the first in America to buy a painting by the Florentine Renaissance master, Sandro Botticelli.

Photographs of Bernard Berenson (or ‘BB’ as he was known) and Isabella Stewart Gardner.

Rubens:

Rembrandt:

Soissons cathedral:

Titian:

After the spectacular opening of Fenway Court in 1903, Charles Eliot Norton, the Harvard art historian and friend of Mrs Gardner, wrote

“Palace and Gallery (there is no other word for it) are such an exhibition of the genius of a woman of wealth as never seen before. The building, of which she is the sole architect, is admirably designed. I know of no private collection in Europe which compares with this in the uniform level of the works it contains.” N. Silver and D. S. Greenwald, Isabella Stewart Gardner - A Life, 2022, p. 106.

Nat referred to three collections he likes to visit - all of which must have served as inspiration for Mrs Gardner’s collections and their display in Boston.

Nat’s chosen work is Pesellino’s, Story of David and Goliath, which with its pair, The Triumph of David, was included in the (very beautiful) recent exhibition at the National Gallery (December 2023-March 2024). Both panels may have been painted as decorative panels for the front of (two) marriage cassone. Prior to the exhibition’s opening, the panels were conserved at the National Gallery. The restorer Jill Dunkerton discussed their restoration here on The Art Newspaper’s podcast - (interview starts at 42:08).

See also The Isabella Stewart Gardner museum on Google Arts and Culture

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