"This book takes you through the collection gallery by gallery, illuminating the art and installations in each room"--From preface.

Extensively researched and richly detailed, this biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner is the first to vividly portray the extraordinary life and times of one of the 19th-century's most fascinating and eccentric women--muse and mentor to the likes of Henry James, John Singer Sargent, and George Santayana. 40 photos. Full-color insert.

Isabella Stewart Gardner was a force to be reckoned with. She routinely went toe-to-toe with major museums and titans of industry to purchase masterpieces, she created a museum unlike any other, and she was famous for flouting the social conventions that governed women of her time. This book, however, shows another side of Isabella that readers may not expect: her love of dogs. Featuring black-and-white images from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum archives, this volume allows readers to meet Isabella's favorite dogs (Kitty Wink and Patty Boy), see the litters of puppies she bred, and discover how her dogs were a source of comfort to her toward the end of her life. Usually stern in photographs, Isabella--like many people--could not help grinning when posing for photos with puppies. Whether it was collecting Renaissance masterpieces or raising Fox Terriers, this book shows that Gardner approached all aspects of life with enthusiasm and dedication.

In 1916, John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) met Thomas Eugene McKeller (1890-1962) a young African American elevator attendant at Boston's Hotel Vendome. McKeller became the principal model for Sargent's murals in the new wing of the Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, among the painter's most ambitious works. Sargent's nude studies and sketches from this project attest to a close collaboration between the two men that unfolded over nearly ten years. Featuring drawings given by Sargent to Isabella Stewart Gardner and published in full for the first time, a portrait of McKeller, and archival materials reconstructing his life and relationship with Sargent, this book opens new avenues into artist-model relationships and transforms our understanding of Sargent's iconic American paintings. Essays offer the first biography of Thomas McKeller and a window into African America life in early 20th century Roxbury. They address the artist's sexuality, his models, and consider questions of race and gender.

To judge by the dictum of al-Ja~i?: (d. A.D. 869), 'Wisdom has descended upon these three: the brain of the Byzantine, the hands of the Chinese, and the tongue of the Arab', in the great age of the