Picturing Isabella

Through a lifetime of photographs, Picturing Isabella traces Isabella Stewart Gardner’s complicated and evolving relationship to her public persona and legacy.

How do you picture Isabella Stewart Gardner? The Museum’s founder came of age alongside photography, but as her celebrity rose, Isabella hid from the camera. She began to curate images of herself as carefully as the galleries of her Museum.

Through a lifetime of photographs, we can trace Isabella’s complicated and evolving relationship to her image, fame, and legacy. As a young woman, she was photographed in the formal style typical of her time. As she grew older, she deliberately cultivated a public persona that was both dramatic and enigmatic. When she did agree to be photographed, she worked only with collaborators she knew and trusted, and frequently appeared veiled or turned away from the camera, just an impression.

Picturing Isabella collects girlhood and travel photos, candids with friends and pets, posed studio images, newspaper clippings, and other archival materials to create a sketch of Isabella Stewart Gardner, whose camera-shy behavior guaranteed her Museum as her most enduring portrait.