In 1896, Isabella Stewart Gardner hired architect Willard T. Sears to design the museum. The museum was established in 1903 by Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924), a wealthy patron of the arts. The museum now has a small collection of paintings, sculpture, furniture, textiles, ceramics, prints, drawings, manuscripts, rare books, jewelry, and Japanese screens. It is particularly rich in Italian Renaissance paintings, as well as in 19th-century works by John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler. The first Matisse to enter an American collection is housed there. |