Collection

Anders Zorn, Isabella Stewart Gardner in Venice, 1894. Oil on canvas, 91 x 66 cm. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Left
  • Anders Zorn, Isabella Stewart Gardner in Venice, 1894. Oil on canvas, 91 x 66 cm. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
  • Anders Zorn, In my Gondola, 1894. Zornsamlingarna, Mora, Sweden
  • The artist Anders Zorn, and his wife (left) sharing a gondola ride on the Grand Canal with Mr. and Mrs. Gardner (right), about 1894. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
  • John Singer Sargent, Café on the Riva degli Schiavoni, 1880–82. Private collection
  • Ralph Curtis, Drifting with the Tide, 1884. Keny Galleries, Columbus, Ohio
  • Claude Monet, The Grand Canal, Venice, 1908. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Bequest of Alexander Cochrane
  • John Singer Sargent, Head of a Gondolier, 1880–82, , Marquess of Cholmondeley
  • Detail: John Singer Sargent, The Rialto, 1911. Philadelphia Museum of Art, The George W. Elkins Collection
  • John Singer Sargent, A Venetian Interior, 1898. Royal Academy of Arts, London
  • John Singer Sargent, Woman in a Gondola, 1880–82. Private collection
Right
 

Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle

April 21-August 15, 2004

The Grand Canal. Mrs. Gardner and John Singer Sargent. Henry James. James McNeill Whistler. Sexy gondoliers. Local color and cosmopolitan society. Dinner parties and Tableaux Vivants. Gliding on the waters, painting in the campos, searching out the Tintorettos and Carpaccios. Experience the enchanting atmosphere of late 19th-century Venice at the Gardner Museum this spring at the special exhibition, Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle.

The Palazzo Barbaro, a palace on the Grand Canal in Venice owned by the Curtis family from Boston, became a gathering place for a remarkable group of artists, writers, and socialites in the late 19th century. Isabella and John Gardner traveled to Venice beginning in 1884, and usually stayed at the Barbaro. John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, James McNeill Whistler, Henry James, Robert Browning, and Claude Monet all visited the Palazzo. As the Gardner Museum commemorates its Centennial, this exhibition will present the artistic products of this fascinating time and place, and will present the Barbaro as the source of inspiration for the Gardner, which in many ways came to represent the Palazzo Barbaro — Boston's own Venetian palace: a Venetian gothic structure, with flowering gardens, full of paintings and objects, but also enlivened by working artists, poets, musicians, and thinkers.

Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle is made possible by the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. Additional support is provided by JPMorgan Private Bank and media sponsor Museums Boston.