The vivid and masterful biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner—creator of one of America’s most stunning museums—an American original whose own life was remade by art. Includes archival photos of Isabella’s world, museum, and the art she collected. 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 narrative nonfiction 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 this Gilded Age art patron found 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 essential art collector biography 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.   This definitive work of women’s history reveals the story behind the legend: Boston History: How a privileged New York transplant, misunderstood by Boston’s insular society, carved out a life of daring originality on her own terms. - A Gilded Age Circle: The glittering, bohemian friendships with Henry James and John Singer Sargent, who captured her originality on canvas in a portrait that became a masterpiece and a scandal. - Beauty Forged from Loss: The profound personal tragedy that shaped her pursuit of beauty, and how collecting art became a balm for the devastating loss of her only child. - The Making of a Museum: The creation of the iconic Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum as a form of memoir, with every object and its placement telling the dazzling and haunting story of the woman who collected them. “Isabella Stewart Gardner has found the ideal biographer in Natalie Dykstra, who gives Gardner, her nerves of steel, her expert eye, and her singular curiosity their due in this wise, sparkling book.” - Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams and Cleopatra: A Life “Natalie Dykstra has written an absorbing, deeply researched biography that is also a travelogue, Edwardian period drama, and art history primer, with a supporting cast that includes Henry James, John Singer Sargent, Edith Wharton, and Henry Adams. In these pages, Isabella Stewart Gardner comes to life as a feminist pathbreaker finally given her due—and an artist in her own right.” - Heather Clark, author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath “[A] thrilling new biography.”  - Town & Country "A sympathetic, impeccably researched biography." - Wall Street Journal “Thoroughly researched . . . the author captures the sweep and energy of [Gardner’s] life . . . A richly detailed biographical portrait.” - Kirkus Reviews “An elegant depiction of a larger-than-life trailblazer.” - Publishers Weekly “The complex, magnificent life of Isabella Stewart Gardner pours through the pages of Natalie Dykstra’s wonderful, definitive biography. Gardner left an incomparable legacy; at long last, she has found a biographer who can match her in range, profundity, and eye for detail. It is thrilling to watch the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum rise again in this powerful, timely book.” - Rachel Cohen, author of A Chance Meeting: American Encounters “Dykstra’s deeply researched biography reveals the complex modern woman behind Isabella Stewart Gardner’s trademark gauzy veils. It’s such a compelling tale, how a woman born into a Victorian world of privilege and propriety stepped outside the dos and don’ts of her social set to become an incomparable entrepreneur and cultural visionary.”  - Wanda M. Corn, author of Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern “A lifelong friend of Henry James, Gardner inspired some of his fictional heroines yet surpassed them all in her psychological complexity, the magnificence of her vision, and her zest for experience. Dykstra tells a captivating story of an artist and her time.”  - Linda Leavell, author of Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore “Copiously research