When I mentioned to Steve,
our Art Deco guide in DTLA, that we had tickets for the gardens at the
Huntington, he brightened immediately. "Make sure you see who they've paired the Blue Boy with."
You see the iconic Gainsborough work hanging at the far end of the Thornton Portrait Gallery, mostly filled with the ghosts of long-forgotten 18th century British aristocrats.
Needless to say, they look nothing like colorful bloke at the opposite end.
The curatorial staff deserves a shout-out for commissioning
Wiley to shake up the
Huntington in a way that perfectly complements the artist's own vision of elevating African Americans.
That said, you have to wonder what Henry and Arabella would have thought about the pairing. Henry, born into a family with a railroad fortune, made his own pile by connecting Los Angeles with a 24/7 street car system in the early 20th century and investing in the subsequent real estate boom.
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| Henry E. Huntington (1850-1927) |
After divorcing his first wife, Henry wed his wealthy uncle's widow, a former gold digger of mysterious origins who already had inherited a Vermeer and a Rembrandt. Instead of having children together, they collected art.
We'd come to see the botanical gardens which left us no time to visit the free-standing library, one of the world's largest private collections. But the portrait gallery is housed in the couple's former home which had floor-to-ceiling bookcases in several rooms.
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Laurence Sterne by Joseph Nollekens (after 1766)
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Eighteenth-century England isn't a place where my time machine would make a stop, but some of the furnishings in what is now called the European Gallery were lovely.
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| Green Jasper Plaque with the Discovery of Achilles (partial, 1788) |
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| Medusa Head |
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| British Music Cabinet Decoration (ca 1895) |
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| Portrait Bust of Nero (Italian, 17th Century) |
More recent additions included a dozen plates called "The Autobiography of a Garden," created by
Andrew Raftery from 2009-2016. They reminded me of
Randy.
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| "Reading Seed Catalogs" (January) |
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| "Planting Seeds" (February) |
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| "Watering the Cold Frame" (March) |
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| "Edging the Beds" (April) |
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| "Cultivating Lettuce" (May) |
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| "Training a Passion Vine" (June) |
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| "Fertilizing" (July) |
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| "Deadheading" (August) |
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| "Mowing" (September) |
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| "Bringing in Chrysanthemums" (October) |
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| "Digging Dahlia Tubers" (November) |
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| "Contemplating the Snow" (December) |
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