Fellow Wanderer: Isabella Stewart Gardner's Travel Albums

(Hardback)

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Description

A revealing and beautifully illustrated critical edition of Gardners collaged travel albums

In 1865, art collector and philanthropist Isabella Stewart Gardner (18401924) lost her only child to pneumonia at less than two years old. In an effort to rouse her from depression, Gardner and her husband, Jack, travelled to northern Europe and Russia. It was the first of many trips abroad that would eventually take her from the Middle East to Asiatrips that she documented in exquisitely crafted collaged travel albums. Fellow Wanderer brings together nearly thirty of Gardners striking travelogues, spanning some thirty-nine countries and offering invaluable perspective on the global influences on this legendary collector and patron of the arts.

This book features beautiful facsimiles of Gardners travel albumslargely unpublished until nowalong with essays by leading scholars who place these diaries and sketchbooks within the context of the art and culture of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia in the nineteenth century. The essays explore a host of topics, such as Gardners engagement with world religions while abroad, how she incorporated designs and ideas from around the globe into her Boston museum, and the ways in which the imperial power structures of the era facilitated her travels.

Lushly illustrated, Fellow Wanderer provides a uniquely intimate look at how Gardners rich and diverse experiences abroad instilled her collecting and patronage with a truly global vision of art.

Distributed for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Exhibition Schedule
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
February 16May 21, 2023

Reviews

"An exceptionally lavish catalogue."---James Panero, New Criterion
"A glorious, large-scale, coffee table book."---Chadd Scott, Essential West Magazine

Author Bio

Diana Seave Greenwald is assistant curator of the collection at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Her books include (with Nathaniel Silver) Isabella Stewart Gardner: A Life (Princeton). Casey Riley is chair of global contemporary art and curator of photography and new media at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. She is the author (with Christina Nielsen and Nathaniel Silver) of Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: A Guide.