Last weekend I visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum with my husband. The museum is perhaps best known as being the site of the largest theft of private property ever. That's sad, because it is a beautiful, relatively small museum filled with art treasures.
The photo above shows part of the garden in the enclosed central courtyard. The glass-roofed enclosure was the first of its kind in America.
Here's a picture of the patron (by John Singer Sargent). It's on display at the museum.
In 1990, the museum was robbed of several valuable paintings by two thieves dressed as Boston cops. They stole a large Rembrandt (Storm on the Sea of Galilee), a Vermeer, 5 Degas drawings and several other works. They did leave some more valuable artwork behind.
Here's the Rembrandt they took and I remember it very well from seeing it before it was stolen. It was the kind of artwork you don't forget, and it's terrible that criminals have taken it from the public (and possibly harmed it).
The museum decided to leave the blank frames (the pictures were cut out) right on the wall where they had been displayed, and it's really poignant to see them there. For 25 years they've been missing.
Of course, the museum is still well worth a visit, with many, many treasures. Here's another view of the courtyard. (They don't allow photos to be taken anywhere else in the museum.)
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2 comments:
How beautiful but sad! I love artwork, especially from those painters you mentioned. I hope the stolen paintings are eventually found.
Me too, Vonda. The authorities say they know who took them, but they have no proof. Right now, the search seems dead, but who knows what might be going on behind the scenes.
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