
Chasing Beauty
The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner
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Narrated by:
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Maggi-Meg Reed
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By:
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Natalie Dykstra
About this listen
The vivid and masterful story of Isabella Stewart Gardner—creator of one of America’s most stunning museums—an American original whose own life was remade by art.
Isabella Stewart Gardner’s museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from Boston’s Fens at the turn of the twentieth century. Its treasures encompassed not only masterwork paintings but tapestries, rare books, prints, porcelains, and fine furniture.
An extraordinary achievement of storytelling and scholarship, Chasing Beauty illuminates the fascinating ways the museum and its holdings can be seen as a kind of memoir, dazzling and haunting, created with objects instead of words and displayed per Isabella’s wishes in the exact placements she initially curated.
Born in 1840 to a privileged New York family, Isabella Stewart married Boston Brahmin Jack Gardner as she turned twenty. She was misunderstood by Boston’s insular society and suffered the death of her only child, a beloved boy, not yet two years old.
But in time came friendships, glittering and bohemian; awe-inspiring world travels; and collecting beautiful things with a keen eye and competitive pace—all these were balm for loss. Henry James and John Singer Sargent—whose portrait of Isabella was a masterpiece and a scandal—came to recognize her originality. Bernard Berenson, leading connoisseur of the Italian Renaissance, was her art dealer.
From award-winning author Natalie Dykstra, Chasing Beauty is the story of the complex and singular woman behind one of the most fascinating museums in the nation and the world—a tale of beauty and loss, grit and American self-invention.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2024 Natalie Dykstra and Zoe Pagnamenta (P)2024 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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By: Anka Muhlstein, and others
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Family Romance
- John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers
- By: Jean Strouse
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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Jean Strouse's Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers looks at twelve portraits of one English family painted by the expatriate American artist at the height of his career—and at the intersections of all these lives with the sparkle and strife of the Edwardian age.
By: Jean Strouse
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The Grand Affair
- John Singer Sargent in His World
- By: Paul Fisher
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 17 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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A great American artist, John Singer Sargent is an abiding enigma. He scandalized viewers with the frankness and sensuality of his work, while dressing like a businessman and crafting a highly respectable persona. In The Grand Affair, scholar Paul Fisher explores the enigmas of fin de siecle sexuality and art, fashioning a biography that grants the man and his paintings new and intense life.
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Not what I expected.
- By Anonymous User on 04-19-23
By: Paul Fisher
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The Dress Diary
- Secrets from a Victorian Woman's Wardrobe
- By: Kate Strasdin
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1838, a young woman was given a diary on her wedding day. Collecting snippets of fabric from a range of garments—some her own, others donated by family and friends—she carefully annotated each one, creating a unique record of their lives. Her name was Mrs. Anne Sykes. Nearly two hundred years later, the diary fell into the hands of Kate Strasdin, a fashion historian and museum curator. Using her expertise, Strasdin spent the next six years unraveling the secrets contained within the album's pages, and the lives of the people within.
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Fascinating History
- By Cpm405 on 01-09-24
By: Kate Strasdin
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Hilma af Klint
- A Biography
- By: Julia Voss, Anne Posten - translator
- Narrated by: Doria Bramante
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was forty-four years old when she broke with the academic tradition in which she had been trained to produce a body of radical, abstract works the likes of which had never been seen before. Today, it is widely accepted that af Klint was one of the earliest abstract academic painters in Europe. But this is only part of her story. Not only was she a working female artist, she was also an avowed clairvoyant and mystic.
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Ruined by narration
- By Adeliese Baumann on 11-23-23
By: Julia Voss, and others
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The Gardner Heist
- The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft
- By: Ulrich Boser
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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After the death of famed art detective Harold Smith, reporter Ulrich Boser decided to take up the case. Exploring Smith's unfinished leads, Boser travels deep into the art underworld and comes across a remarkable cast of characters, including a brilliant rock 'n' roll thief, a gangster who professes his innocence in rhyming verse, and the enigmatic late Boston heiress Isabella Stewart Gardner herself. Boser becomes increasingly obsessed with the case and eventually uncovers startling new evidence about the identities of the thieves.
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Loved it!
- By Amanda D. on 05-21-19
By: Ulrich Boser
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The Forger’s Spell
- A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century
- By: Edward Dolnick
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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As riveting as a World War II thriller, The Forger's Spell is the true story of Johannes Vermeer and the small-time Dutch painter who dared to impersonate him centuries later. For seven years a no-account painter named Han van Meegeren managed to pass off his paintings as those of one of the most beloved and admired artists who ever lived. As Edward Dolnick reveals, his true genius lay in psychological manipulation, and he came within inches of fooling the world. Instead, he landed in an Amsterdam court on trial for his life.
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Disappointing rehash of others’ work
- By Adeliese Baumann on 07-03-24
By: Edward Dolnick
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Con/Artist
- The Life and Crimes of the World's Greatest Art Forger
- By: Tony Tetro, Giampiero Ambrosi
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone, Tony Tetro, Giampiero Ambrosi
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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The art world is a much dirtier, nastier business than you might expect. Tony Tetro, one of the most renowned art forgers in history, will make you question every masterpiece you’ve ever seen in a museum, gallery, or private collection. Tetro’s “Rembrandts,” “Caravaggios,” “Miros,” and hundreds of other works now hang on walls around the globe.
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Incredibly interesting!
- By Carole Wooten on 12-07-22
By: Tony Tetro, and others
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Everything She Touched
- The Life of Ruth Asawa
- By: Marilyn Chase
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the story of a woman who wielded imagination and hope in the face of intolerance and who transformed everything she touched into art. In this compelling biography, author Marilyn Chase brings Ruth Asawa's story to vivid life. She draws on Asawa's extensive archives and weaves together many voices to offer a complex and fascinating portrait of the artist.
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Excellent story about an amazing artist!
- By Joshua G. Schultz on 04-04-23
By: Marilyn Chase
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Wild Thing
- A Life of Paul Gauguin
- By: Sue Prideaux
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Paul Gauguin's legend as a transgressive genius arises as much from his biography as his aesthetically daring Polynesian paintings. Gauguin is chiefly known for his pictures that eschewed convention, to celebrate the beauty of an indigenous people and their culture. In this work, Sue Prideaux reveals that while Gauguin was a complicated man, his scandalous reputation is largely undeserved.
By: Sue Prideaux
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The Streets of Paris
- A Guide to the City of Light Following in the Footsteps of Famous Parisians Throughout History
- By: Susan Cahill
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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For hundreds of years, the City of Light has set the stage for larger-than-life characters-from medieval lovers Heloïse and Abelard to the defiant King Henri IV to the brilliant scientist Madame Curie, beloved chanteuse Edith Piaf, and the writer Colette. In this book, Susan Cahill recounts the lives of 22 famous Parisians and then takes you through the seductive streets of Paris to the quartiers where they lived and worked: the scenes of their greatest triumphs and tragedies, their favorite cafes, bars, and restaurants, and the places where they found inspiration and love.
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I feel there should be a pdf.
- By Matthew Spinola on 09-20-21
By: Susan Cahill
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The Slip
- The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever
- By: Prudence Peiffer
- Narrated by: Melissa Redmond
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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For just over a decade, from 1956 to 1967, a collection of dilapidated former sail-making warehouses clustered at the lower tip of Manhattan became the quiet epicenter of the art world.
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The narrator mis-pronounces everones name
- By Stephanie Laffont on 12-26-23
By: Prudence Peiffer
Mrs Jack , America's greatest art collector .
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A Very Strong Woman
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The details of the portraits
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The best narrator I have ever listened to on an Audible!
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Sensory delight for fine art lovers
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A chronology
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Great story about Isabella Stewart Gardner the art collector and human
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Fascinating read
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Interesting historical aspects.
The span of generations who remained connected thru many years was an example of accomplishment .
Depth of story
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A Tour of the Gilded Age focusing on the remarkable art collector Elizabeth Stuart Gardner
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