The Huntington Art Collections

Huntington Art Gallery

The historic residence will re-open
May 28, 2008 after extensive renovation

Once the home of Henry E. Huntington (1850–1927) and his wife, Arabella (1850–1924), the Huntington Art Gallery opened in 1928 as the first public art gallery in Southern California, displaying what had been considered to be the greatest collection of 18th-century British art in the country, including the celebrated Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) and View on the Stour near Dedham by John Constable (1776–1837), as well as a valuable collection of French decorative arts.

When it reopens on May 28, 2008, after a $20 million renovation, the gallery will offer visitors an enhanced experience with one of the finest collections of European art in the nation as well as a more accurate sense of the lifestyle of one of the most prominent millionaires of the early 20th century. In addition to a thoroughly updated infrastructure, the refurbished mansion will include 5,300 additional square feet of public space, new interpretive components, and new gallery presentations of approximately 1,200 objects of European art from the 15th to the early 20th century. The renovation also will bring to light original architectural features that previously had been obscured. learn more about the renovation...

The Main Gallery, a 1934 addition, contains the most famous paintings in the collection. They are probably the finest group of full-length British portraits existing anywhere, and provide an unrivaled opportunity to study this form of English art.

Most of the portraits date from the last quarter of the 18th century. Although many of them were commissioned by the people depicted, and eventually hung in their houses, most of the pictures were shown initially at the annual exhibitions at the Royal Academy in London. These grand and stately portraits were conceived with public display in mind.

Selections from the Huntington Art Gallery

Jonathan Buttall: The Blue Boy (c 1770)
Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88)
oil on canvas, 70 5/8 x 48 3/4 inches
21.01

The best known painting at the Huntington, Gainsborough's The Blue Boy, portrays Jonathan Buttall, the son of a successful hardware merchant, who was a close friend of the artist. The work was executed during Gainsborough's extended stay in Bath before he finally settled in London in 1774. The artist has dressed the young man in a costume dating from about 140 years before the portrait was painted. This type of costume was familiar through the portraits of the great Flemish painter, Anthony van Dyck (1559-1641), who was resident in England during the early 17th century. Gainsborough greatly admired the work of Van Dyck and seems to have conceived The Blue Boy as an act of homage to that master. Mr. Huntington purchased the painting along with Gainsborough's The Cottage Door and Reynolds's Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse from the Duke of Westminster.

Sarah Barrett Moulton: Pinkie (1794)
Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830)
oil on canvas, 58 1/4 x 40 1/4 inches
27.61

Pinkie, facing The Blue Boy in the Main Gallery of the museum and often paired with it in popular esteem, is by Thomas Lawrence, one of the great portrait painters of his generation. It was painted about 25 years after Gainsborough's masterpiece and had no association with that work until they both were displayed in the Huntington in the late 1920s. Executed when the artist was only 25 and shortly after his election to the Royal Academy, Pinkie is an extraordinarily fresh and lively performance with the sitter standing on a hill, her dress blown by the wind. The movement of her dress in conjunction with her frank gaze gives a sense of immediacy to the composition and expresses the animation of the sitter. The young girl was the daughter of a wealthy plantation family in Jamaica, who came to England for her education. Called "Pinkie" by her grandmother who commissioned the portrait, she was only eleven when her likeness was taken. Sadly, Sarah died within a few months of the portrait's completion, probably of tuberculosis. Her younger brother Edward was the father of the poetess Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Pinkie was the last painting purchased by Mr. Huntington, who did not live to see it installed in the house.

Clavering Children (1777)
George Romney (1734-1802)
oil on canvas, 62 x 49 1/2 inches
Adele S. Browning Memorial Collection
78.20.35

Romney's Clavering Children portrays Thomas John and Catherine Mary, children of George Clavering of Greencroft, in Durham. The Huntington has thirteen works by Romney, and this is one of the finest from a phase in that artist's career otherwise unrepresented. In this lyrical composition of pastel tones, the youngsters and their dogs move gently through an undefined landscape. When he painted it, Romney had just returned from a period of study in Rome and the graceful poses of the figures reflect his familiarity with classical sculpture. The attitudes of the children also effectively capture their adolescent state as well as their gender roles as master of animals and nurturer. This painting was one of forty-two pictures--Dutch, French, Italian as well as English--bequeathed to the Huntington by Mildred Browning Green and Judge Lucius Peyton Green in 1978 in memory of Mrs. Green'smother, Adele Browning.

Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse (1784)
Joshua Reynolds (1723-92)
oil on canvas, 94 1/4 x 58 1/8 inches
21.02

One of the great actresses of the Georgian stage, Sarah Siddons was also one of the most frequently portrayed. Here, Reynolds, who was then the President of the Royal Academy, employs a variety of visual effects and references to convey the dramatic power of this tragedian. Painted in rich but somber tones that contribute to the sublimity of the image, Siddons is shown seated in a grand chair that seems to float on a cloud. She looks upward, as if divinely inspired. Her pose is borrowed from one of Michelangelo's prophets in the Sistine ceiling. In the background, behind the seated actress, stand shadowy figures, representing Pity and Terror who hold the attributes (dagger and cup respectively) of Melpomene, the muse of tragedy.

View on the Stour near Dedham (1822)
John Constable (1776-1837)
oil on canvas, 51 x 74 inches
25.18

The Stour Valley was a constant source of inspiration for Constable, who was born a few miles from the scene of this painting. As a portrait of a specific place, it is rich with details about the life and activity of an area he knew and loved. Large in scale, View on the Stour was one of a series of "six-foot" canvases, all representing his native land, produced for exhibition at the Royal Academy between 1819 and 1825. Constable rightly felt these works would secure his reputation as a landscape painter. View on the Stour together with The Hay Wain was also shown in Paris in 1824, where their truthfulness to nature had an immediate impact on French artists of the period such as Eugene Delacroix, who repainted one of his works upon seeing Constable's pictures. The work was purchased by Mr. Huntington in 1925.

The Grand Canal, Venice (c 1837)
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)
oil on canvas, 59 1/4 x 44 1/4 inches
22.52

In this depiction of Venice's Grand Canal flooded with light, Turner displays the chromatic brilliance that made him one of the leading artists of his day and a key figure in the Romantic movement. Like many of his contemporaries, he was drawn to this magical city of extraordinary light and exotic buildings. When this work was shown at the Royal Academy in 1837, it was simply called "Scene--a Street in Venice" in the catalogue. However, it was exhibited with a quotation from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (Act III, scene iii):

Antonio: Hear me yet, good Shylock.
Shylock: I'll have my bond.

That text suggested there was a narrative element to the subject. In fact, at the lower right edge, Shylock, a paper, knife and scales in hand, leans over to confront the viewer. His action and those of the other figures in this crowded scene of pageantry are difficult to interpret. The narrative, however, is less important that the sheer beauty of the picture and the display of Turner's painterly talents. The painting was acquired by Mr. Huntington in 1922.

Madonna and Child (c 1460)
Rogier van der Weyden
oil on panel transferred to canvas and relaid on panel,
19 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches
26.105

Rogier was one of the leading Flemish painters of his time. His sophistication and subtlety as an artist are particularly evident in the delicate handling of the Virgin's face, which projects an air of maternal concern as well as tranquility. A fine example of Rogier's treatment of the subject, Madonna and Child is one of the few paintings by this master in America. It is believed that this work was once part of a diptych with a portrait of the patron who commissioned the work as the facing image of a double, hinged panel. In this century, the picture has undergone several conservation treatments, having been transferred from its original wood support to canvas and then laid on panel. It was acquired by Arabella D. Huntington in 1907, six years before her marriage to Henry E. Huntington. It came to the institution two years after her death in 1924 and has been on display ever since in a memorial gallery established by her husband.

Satan, Sin, and Death: Satan Comes to the Gates of Hell (c 1806)
William Blake (1757-1827)
pen and watercolor with gold highlights on paper,
19 1/2 x 15 7/8 inches
000.3

The Huntington's collection of works by William Blake, a leading artist and poet of the Romantic period, is one of the finest in the world. The institution owns two versions of this illustration to the passage in John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost (Book II) in which Satan (left) on his way to tempt Adam and Eve is confronted by Death, whose insubstantial nature is indicated by his transparent form. Sin, the daughter of Satan in the center, is depicted as half-woman and half-serpent. Separating the warring figures, she reveals that Death is the offspring of her and her father. This larger version is part of a series, now dispersed. The Huntington owns the entire second set, done in a smaller format.

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