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Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) collected and carefully displayed more than 7,500 fine and decorative arts from around the world in three floors of galleries surrounding a garden courtyard in a Venetian-inspired palazzo. Located in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum opened to the public in 1903.
Dutch works of art were among the earliest building blocks of her collection. Her first major acquisition was Vermeer’s The Concert (1664, stolen in 1990), bought at auction in 1892. She dedicated a gallery in the Museum—called the Dutch Room—to works by Northern European artists,
including Rembrandt, Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Frans Pourbus the Younger. Dutch and Flemish tapestries and decorative arts are sprinkled throughout other galleries.
In 1990, the Gardner Museum was the victim of the largest property theft in history. Among the thirteen stolen objects were works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Govaert Flinck. The thieves missed Rembrandt’s early Self-Portrait, Age 23 which still hangs in the Dutch Room alongside the empty frames of the stolen paintings.
Diana Seave Greenwald, William and Lia Poorvu, Curator of the Collection (May 2024)