Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840 - 1924). Isabella Stewart Gardner was a leading American art collector, philanthropist, and patron of the arts. She founded the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Gardner possessed an energetic intellectual curiosity and a love of travel. She was a friend of noted artists and writers of the day, including John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, Dennis Miller Bunker, Anders Zorn, Henry James, Okakura Kakuzo and Francis Marion Crawford. Gardner created much fodder for the gossip columns of the day with her reputation for stylish tastes and unconventional behavior. The Boston society pages called her by many names, including Belle, Donna Isabella, Isabella of Boston, and Mrs. Jack. Her surprising appearance at a 1912 concert wearing a white headband emblazoned with Oh, you Red Sox was reported at the time to havealmost caused a panic, and remains still in Boston one of the most talked about of her eccentricities. Isabella Stewart was born in New York City on April 14, 1840, the daughter of wealthy linen-merchant David Stewart and Adelia Smith Stewart. Tradition traces her Stewart ancestry to the legendary King Fergus of Del Riata. She grew up at 10 University Place in Manhattan, sometimes playing at her namesake grandmother Isabella's farm in Jamaica, Long Island. From age five to fifteen she attended a nearby academy for girls where she studied art, music, and dance, as well as French and Italian. Attendance at Grace Church exposed her to religious art, music and ritual. At age 16, she and her family moved to Paris where Isabella was enrolled in a school for American girls. Classmates included members of the wealthy Gardner family of Boston. In 1857 Isabella was taken to Italy and in Milan viewed Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli's collection of Renaissance art arranged in rooms designed to recall historical eras. She said at the time that if she were ever to inherit some money, she would have a similar house for people to visit and enjoy. She returned to New York in 1858. Shortly after returning, her former classmate Julia Gardner invited her to Boston, where she met Julia's brother John Lowell Jack Gardner. Three years her senior, he was the son of John L. and Catharine E. Gardner, and one of Boston's most eligible bachelors. They married in Grace Church on April 10, 1860, and then lived in a house that Isabella's father gave them as a wedding gift, at 152 Beacon Street in Boston. They would reside there for the rest of Jack's life. Jack and Isabella had one son, John Lowell Gardner 3rd, born on June 18, 1863. He died from pneumonia on March 15, 1865. A year later Isabella suffered a miscarriage and was told she could not bear any more children. Her close friend and sister-in-law died about the same time. Gardner became extremely depressed and withdrew from society. On the advice of doctors, she and Jack traveled to Europe in 1867. Isabella was so ill that she had to be taken aboard the ship on a stretcher. The couple spent almost a year traveling, visiting Scandinavia and Russia but spending most of their time in Paris. The trip had the desired effect on Isabella's health and became a turning point in her life. It was on this trip that she began her lifelong habit of keeping scrapbooks of her travels. Upon her return, she began to establish her reputation as a fashionable, high-spirited socialite; though she had not yet determined her later life's focus. In 1875 Jack's brother, Joseph P. Gardner, died, leaving three young sons. Jack and Isabella adopted and raised the boys. Augustus P. Gardner was 10 years old at the time. Isabella's biographer, Morris Carter, wrote that in her duty to these boys, she was faithful and conscientious. In 1874, Isabella and Jack Gardner visited the Middle East, Central Europe and Paris. Beginning in the late 1880s, they traveled frequently across America, Europe and Asia to discover foreign cultures and expand their knowledge of art around the world. Jack and Isabella would take more than a dozen trips abroad over the years, keeping them out of the country for a total of ten years. The earliest works in the Gardners' collection were accumulated during their trips to Europe especially. In 1891, she started to focus on European fine art after inheriting $1.75 million from her father. One of her first acquisitions was The Concert by Vermeer, purchased at a Paris auction house in 1892. She also collected from other places abroad such as Egypt, Turkey, and the Far East.