European Art Gallery

The Huntington Art Gallery is situated in the villa built in San Marino by Henry Huntington in 1911 and opened to the public in 1928, only a year after Henry’s death, as he wanted. The north façade is reflecting Arabella’s affinity for Paris architecture, while the south façade is in the Mediterranean style of early 20^th century California. Inside, there is a big scale, wanted by Arabella too. The entry of the house is modest, with a space for welcoming the visitors and for putting their coats and their luggage. The house contains a hall, a library, a drawings room, a dining room, a terrace… Actually, there is no more bathrooms and kitchen (it’s not useful now that is an art gallery). 

The Huntington's house in San Marino.

The interior has been designing by Arabella and Duveen Brothers (a art dealer). The residence was described by Edwin E. Flynn, special London correspondent of the San Francisco Examiner in 1909 : “The Duveens are planning the entire interior decoration of the new Huntington mansion, which is destined to be an art palace… The library in which the [Beauvais] tapestries are to be hung will be of the Louis XIV period, the drawing room a Louis Seize example while the dining-room and corridor will purely Georgian. The Duveens are now collecting pieces of painting and sculpture and objects of art to harmonize with the various rooms”. Actually, all the walls and the rooms of the house are decorated with European paintings, sculptures, objects of decorative art, prints and drawings, from the 15^th to the early 20^th century. Some of those artworks were found when Henry and Arabella were honeymooning in Europe in 1913.

A part of this art collection consists of British paintings of the 18^th and early 19^th century by the most important English artists of the period : Thomas Gainsborough, Thomas Lawrence, Joshua Reynolds, George Romney, William Turner, John Constable, William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones... Anyway, the two masterpieces of the Art Gallery are Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough and Pinkie by Thomas Lawrence (but we will see more about those paintings later). Henry began to concentrate on British portraits in 1908 ; Arabella bought her first significant 18^th century British portraits for San Marino collection when she was in Paris in July 1911 (ex : Thomas Gainsborough, Penelope, Viscountess Ligonier and Juliana, Baroness Petre). One of the last English artworks bought by Huntington, in 1922, is The Grand Canal : Scene – A Street in Venice by William Turner (or Marriage of the Adriatic). After Arabella’s death, Henry continued to purchase British art.

Thomas Gainsborough, Penelope, Viscountess Ligonier,

1770.

William Turner, The Grand Canal: Scene -

A Street in Venice, c. 1837.

In the French collection, the Barbizon paintings were bought by Arabella, for example Hauling in the Net (Twilight) by Camille Corot bought in 1907. But the French art of the collection is mostly from the 18^th century, represented by artists such as Antoine Watteau, Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Jean-Baptiste Greuze. The collection includes a group of Sèvres porcelain and a set of Beauvais tapestries.

Camille Corot, Fisherman Hauling in the Net,

Twilight, c.1870.

Sevres Porcelain Manufactory, Lidded Vase, 1781.

Old Master paintings of the Huntington came from the Rodolphe Kann collection (Kann was a mining magnate and banker who assembled an art collection in the 1880s). It’s the case of Aristotle with a Bust of Homer by Rembrandt, today exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, Portrait of a Little Girl by Diego Velazquez, and the Virgin and Child by Roger Van der Weyden. Some decorative artworks, like vases or ewers, came from the Kann collection. But the most important part of the Kann collection bought by Arabella and Henry Huntington is still certainly the set of five Beauvais tapestries (18^th century), including The Noble Pastoral designed by François Boucher, and already mentioned in the French collection.

Roger Van der Weyden, Virgin and Child,

c.1460.

Regarding Italian Renaissance art, we can name Domenico Ghirlandaio with Portrait of a Man and Portrait of a Woman, or a later Venitian artist : Antonio Canaletto.

Domenico del Ghirlandaio, Portrait of a Man and

Portrait of a Woman, c.1490.