The Huntington: Last Visit

This return to the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens will be my last, at least for quite a while, as my annual membership expires at the end of the month. The conclusion was commemorated with the delightful company of Marianne on her very first visit to this special place. I was honored to be able to share it with her.

Our day consisted of meandering the various gardens, gazing at amazing art, dining al fresco, pondering statuary, and just enjoying our longest outing together, ever.

I hope the images give you a glimpse of all we saw and experienced.

We both loved the name of this gorgeous Iris, Blankety Blank, a tall bearded rebloomer.

The Landmark (2016) by Enrique Martínez Celaya had an interesting write up. "The closed eyes of this head suggest the process of reminiscing and imagining. Everything that surrounds it is either a memory or will soon become one. The title refers to the sculpture as a marker on the landscape. Although the artist's son served as the model, the head also evokes both universality and monumentality."

There were certain musts for an initial visit here. The Japanese Garden is always spectacular.

The Chinese Garden features a stunning lake, graceful pavilions, teahouse and tea shop, stone bridges and waterfalls set against a wooded backdrop of mature oaks and pines. If I lived closer, I would spend many an afternoon here.

Our lunch was at the consistently delicious 1919 Café which serves a selection of grilled items, house-made soups, hand-crafted sandwiches, salads, tacos, tostada bowls, and house-made salsas.

This was my first visit to the Desert Garden, described as a "Celebration of Succulents".

This is one of the largest and oldest assemblages of cacti and other succulents in the world. Over 100 years old, it has grown from a small area on the Raymond fault scarp when in 1907-1908 William Hertrich brought in plants from local nurseries, private residences, public parks, and from collection trips to the Southwest and Mexican deserts. Today the two dozen families of succulents and other arid- adapted plants have developed into a 10-acre garden display, the Huntington's most important conservation collection, a vital mission and challenge.

The only exhibits we perused were those in the early 20th-century Beaux-Arts residence, once the winter home of Henry E. and Arabella Huntington.

I loved this explanation of furniture mounts, bits of cast metal attached to vulnerable areas of a piece of furniture. They are designed to provide protection to the corners, feet, and keyholes, and to create sturdy drawer handles.

Highly skilled 18th-century French craftsmen designed and produced these elaborate gilt-bronze mounts to appeal to the taste of the day.

Thomas Gainsborough’s (1727–1788) iconic painting was first shown in public in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1770 as A Portrait of a Young Gentleman, where it received high acclaim, and by 1798 it was being called “The Blue Boy”—a nickname that stuck.

I am always amazed at the fact that this masterpiece was on a repurposed canvas. X-rays have revealed that The Blue Boy was painted over an incomplete painting of an older man. Further, Gainsborough had originally painted a dog to go alongside the boy that was covered up by a pile of rocks.

I know I previously read the background of Thomas Lawrence's Pinkie (1794) but for some reason, her story hit me harder this time. Judith Barrett commissioned this painting of her granddaughter to ease the pain of the child's absence. Sarah, known to her family as Pinkie, was raised in the British colony of Jamaica before being sent to England for schooling. Mrs. Barrett requested that her granddaughter be depicted "in an easy, careless attitude." Pinkie's brilliant hat ribbons flutter in the breeze, while a gust of wind picks up her lustrous white skirts. Lawrence's use of a low horizon heightens the monumentality of this portrait of a young girl, who died shortly after the painting was completed. His idealized portrayal of childhood led to Pinkie's international fame and iconic status.

Oh man, I was thoroughly impressed by Snake Amongst Flowers (1895). Designed by Charles Francis Annesley Voysey, an architect by training, C.F.A. Voysey was encouraged to create designs for wallpaper and fabrics by his friend A.H. Mackmurdo, founder of the Century Guild of Artists. Like other proponents of Arts and Crafts philosophy, Voysey advocated simplicity in design. This embroidery, featuring a brightly colored snake entwined in a field of poppies, derives from two of his wallpaper patterns. It was made as a purely decorative item for hanging or framing.

The stitching was breathtaking.

These three panels depicting the Virgin and Child in Glory, Saint Ansanus, and Saint Anthony Abbot, all belong to the same altarpiece produced by Cosimo Rosselli in the 1470s. During the late 18th century, the altarpiece was cut down to produce seven panels that could be sold more easily.

I loved this figurine by Barthélemy Prieur. In the second half of the 16th century, Prieur worked as court sculptor to Duke Emanuel-Philibert of Savoy and to King Henry IV of France. In addition to the celebratory and monumental bronzes he produced for these important patrons, he created a number of small figures of men and women engaged in domestic and other informal activities. These intimate bronzes must have appealed to a wide range of collectors, who would have appreciated their tactile charm. This is one of a group of the finest and largest of Prieur's small bronzes (1600), which Henry Huntington acquired in 1917 from the collection of J. P. Morgan.