Portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner

John Singer Sargent's 1888 portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner is one of the most celebrated and controversial portraits in American art history. Gardner — Boston's great art patron and collector, who would later found the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum where the portrait permanently hangs — was painted by Sargent at the height of his powers. The portrait's frank sensuality and unconventional presentation of Gardner against a Byzantine gold background caused scandal in Boston; her husband requested it be withdrawn from exhibition. Its permanent installation in the museum Gardner built for herself gives the portrait an extraordinary biographical completeness.

Sargent employs his signature virtuosity — the figure rendered with fluid, seemingly effortless brushwork, the black dress contrasting dramatically with the Byzantine textile and gold background behind. Gardner's celebrated pearls are treated with particular care, and the whole composition has a bold, hieratic simplicity that transforms a fashionable society portrait into something stranger and more powerful.