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Huntington Library, Art Collections,

and Botanical Gardens

American Galleries

Audio Tour

2 Huntington American Galleries audio tour/© Huntington Museum and Antenna Audio

VOICES:

Jessica Todd Smith, the Virginia Steele Scott Curator of American Art

Kevin Murphy, the Bradford and Christine Mishler Assistant Curator of American Art

Hal Nelson, Guest Curator of American Decorative Arts

Jim Folsom, the Marge and Sherm Telleen Director of the Botanical Gardens

Mark Leonard, Senior Conservator of Paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum

Debra BurchettLere, Director of the Sam Francis Foundation

Phaedra Leadbetter, Owner, the Robinson House, Pasadena

Nancy Berman, former Director of the Skirball Museum and member of the Art

Collectors Council

Steve Martin, Writer, Actor, Art Collector


300 Introduction

Room 1 301 John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Pauline Astor 302 Mary Cassatt, Breakfast in Bed 303 Bessie Vonnoh, Young Mother

Room 2 304 William Merritt Chase, The Studio 305 Tiffany Silver 306 Herter Brothers Secretary 307 William Michael Harnett, After the Hunt

Room 3 308 Harriet Hosmer, Zenobia in Chains

Room 4 309 Robert Henri, Portrait of an Irish Girl 310 Edward Hopper, The Long Leg 311 Clemens Friedell 312 Rookwood

Room 5 313 Herman Dudley Murphy, Landscape 314 Byrdcliffe 315 Frank Lloyd Wright furniture 316 Ceramics

Room 6 317 Sam Francis, Free Floating Clouds 318 Studio Ceramic Movement 319 Allan Adler Silver 320 Sam Maloof

Room 7 321 Chauncey Ives, Pandora 322 John Frederic Kensett, Rocky Landscape 323 Gillinder Glass

Room 8


324 Frederic Church, Chimborazo

Room 9 325 George Caleb Bingham, In a Quandary 326 Raphaelle Peale, Still Life 327 Asher B. Durand, Strawberrying

Room 10 328 Robinson House dining room

Room 12 329 Marble Silver Collection

Room 13 330 After C.W. Peale, Washington; Charles Peale Polk, Washington; Gilbert Stuart, Washington 331 Order of the Cincinnati 332 Benjamin West, Lear and Cordelia

Room 14 333 Ammi Phillips, Hannah Bull Thompson

Room 15 334 John Singleton Copley, Mrs. Inches 335 Gerritt Duyckinck, Portrait of a Man 336 Delft ware

Erburu Loggia 337 Paul Manship, Times of Day


300 Introduction

NARRATOR—Hello, I’m Jessica Todd Smith, the Virginia Steele Scott Curator of

American Art here at the Huntington. I’m delighted to welcome you to our American

Art collection.

For this audio tour, we invited different people to come and look at the paintings,

sculptures, and decorative arts right here in the galleries. You’ll hear about our huge

Sam Francis painting from the head of his foundation. You’ll look at plant motifs with a

botanical expert. You’ll hear from the current owner of a fabulous Greene and Greene

house, and a woman who grew up with the beautiful Robert Henri portrait. And you’ll

hear from curators, a conservator and even a famous collector whose name you may

know. We all have stories to share about these works of art, and we’re excited to look at

them with you.

Along the way, we hope you’ll get some insights into our collection. And most of all, we

hope you’ll be inspired to create your own connections with these works of art, and

make them close friends that you visit again and again.

So let’s get started. For instructions on how the tour works, and how to use your player,

press number 98 now. Thank you.


Stop 98 Player Instructions

NARRATOR—As you walk through the American galleries, look for audio icons with

numbers in the 300s next to some of the works of art. Just enter the number onto your

player’s keypad, and wait a moment for a message to begin.

Press the red button to pause the player, and the green button to resume play. Every

now and then, I’ll invite you to press the green button to hear some extra information.

Use the volume controls to raise or lower the volume.

If you’d like to tour the American galleries chronologically, find your way to Room 15.

Otherwise, begin here. To hear these instructions again, press 98.


Room 1

301 John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Pauline Astor, ca. 1898

NARRATOR—Here’s a monumental painting by the brilliant portraitist John Singer

Sargent.

JESSICA SMITH—There’s wonderful, fun looking to be done in this painting.

NARRATOR—Curator Jessica Smith:

JESSICA SMITH—So here we have this beautifully, elegantly dressed figure in an autumnal

landscape which is quite loosely brushed, almost impressionistically brushed. It gives a feeling of

the scene and the movement of the branches. There’s reference to water in the background…

juxtaposed by the incredibly rendered fabric of her shawl, which is this beautiful blue, shimmery,

satiny fabric that you can just picture feeling lush and silky.

NARRATOR—Notice the detail of the face, against the much sketchier background.

JESSICA SMITH—And that leads to the story of the sitter, which I think is quite interesting.

The subject is Pauline Astor, who’s the daughter of the financier William Waldorf Astor. And

she, while only in her late teens at the time this portrait was painted, was mistress of her father’s

estate Clivedon, because of the death of her mother. …So I think Sargent’s very nicely captured

the poise and dignity of somebody who was in charge of a grand estate, while still suggesting the

freshness and beauty of youth.

NARRATOR—This portrait is linked to one of the most famous paintings in the

Huntington’s collections. To hear about it, press the green PLAY button now.


3012 Sargent, second level

NARRATOR— Sargent is painting in the socalled “grand manner” here. Pauline

appears almost larger than life, surrounded by indications of her wealth and status.

Sargent deliberately set out to rival the great English grand manner portraitist Thomas

Gainsborough. Sargent may have looked at Gainsborough’s masterpieces, like The Blue

Boy, which hangs in our European galleries. Pauline’s forthright gaze, her blue silk, and

the landscape behind her echo those in The Blue Boy. So this painting is a wonderful link

between England and America, and between our European and American collections.

Be sure to visit The Blue Boy, in the Huntington Art Gallery.


302 Mary Cassatt, Breakfast in Bed, 1897

NARRATOR—A painting like this draws us into an intimate world. The artist, Mary

Cassatt, captures its mood with the light, feathery touch of her Impressionist technique.

Curator Jessica Smith.

JESSICA SMITH—The Impressionists used individual brush strokes of color to create different

effects of light … and an area I really like to look at in this particular painting is that great,

chubby little leg of the baby and the wonderful arms of the mother just above. If you look closely

at the painting, you can actually see strokes of blue paint. And you don’t think of skin as being

blue but …when you step back and look at the painting as a whole, you get this wonderful,

luminous skin tone.

NARRATOR— It wasn’t easy being a woman artist in the nineteenth century.

JESSICA SMITH—When you think of the French Impressionists, you think of all men, for the

most part. She was one of the few exceptions. And American, who had, through her connections,

become really accepted…with this group of male artists. …And I think she, in a way, created a

niche for herself by doing these domestic scenes, looking at mothers and children with this level

of intimacy that distinguishes her work from that of her male colleagues.

NARRATOR—Look at all the different whites in this painting. Press PLAY to hear

Jessica Smith talk about them.


3022 Cassatt, second level

JESSICA SMITH—…That is one of the things, aspects, that make this painting so brilliant.

You have the white of the cup and the ceramics to the side of the bed, you have the white of the

baby’s clothing, the white of the mother’s nightgown, and then the pillow and the sheets. And

while it’s all white, there’s such a subtle range of color all throughout, and you’re still able to

pick out the different materials that are supposed to be represented by what reads to the viewer as

white although there’s blue and pink and green and yellow, and the whole spectrum of colors

included.


303 Bessie Vonnoh, Young Mother, 1899

NARRATOR —Here and there in our American galleries, you might have noticed some

depictions of women by women. Here’s an example. This bronze sculpture, Young

Mother, is the work of Bessie Vonnoh.

Maternal themes were popular in the late nineteenth century, and Vonnoh could be

sure of appealing to a wide public with this timeless subject. But take a close look at the

details—the woman’s hair and face, or her clothes, for example. Vonnoh was interested

in expressing something that was universal and eternal. But she also wanted to create an

image that was modern and present in 1899.

This sense of a contemporary person captured during a moment of her day is a

hallmark of Impressionism. On a trip to France in 1895, Vonnoh saw the work of Mary

Cassatt, whose Impressionist painting Breakfast in Bed is also in this gallery. Vonnoh was

captivated by Cassatt’s fresh, spontaneous handling of her materials. On her return to

America, Vonnoh applied that Impressionist technique to her sculpture. As you look at

it, look for signs of that sense of immediacy she was after. For instance, the mother is

lithe and youthful, giving her a modern air unlike classical sculptures. And Vonnoh’s

fluid, animated surface conveys a sense of motion and liveliness.


Room 2

304 William Merritt Chase, The Studio, 1882

NARRATOR—William Merritt Chase painted this picture of his studio in 1882. The

studio was crammed with exotic objects. They advertised that Chase was a man of the

world who had experienced every kind of beauty.

The painting serves another purpose, too. Here’s Kevin Murphy, the Bradford and

Christine Mishler Assistant Curator of American Art.

KEVIN MURPHY—He has every kind of material under the sun—wood, metal, glass,

paintings… porcelain, ceramics, paper. There’s almost every kind of object you could imagine in

here, and he’s saying ‘Look, look what I can paint.’ … These were almost like diploma pieces for

him, these studio pictures.

NARRATOR—The studio was on Tenth Street in New York.

KEVIN MURPHY—This studio building… was a place where a lot of artists lived, … This was

almost a cauldron, a crucible for the development of American art, because you had people like

Chase working in a more Impressionistic style, people like Bierstadt who are members of the

Hudson River School, all meeting, and living together in this one space. …So it was almost like

the dormitory of American art at that time.

NARRATOR—A lot of paintings have a little mystery to them. To hear Kevin Murphy

talk about this painting’s mystery, press PLAY.


3042 Chase, second level

KEVIN MURPHY—What’s really interesting about this is that there’s a figure, a male figure,

in the center of the painting who actually looks to be painting. There are brushes to his left, and

he holds what could be a palette. It also could be an outer coat, an overcoat. It’s very mysterious.

The person does not look like William Merritt Chase, … but that begs the question of who is it,

then? Who is this person with these spats on, and this short haircut, who appears to be poring

over this painting? …So while it has to remain a mystery, it’s a very tantalizing one, and I

think, you know, great art is mysterious.


305 Tiffany Silver, c. 18801895

NARRATOR—The name Tiffany and Company evokes American luxury and elegance,

even today. Hal Nelson, Guest Curator of American Decorative Arts, looks at these

Tiffany silver pieces.

HAL NELSON— In this case, we have the perfect reflection of the socalled Gilded Era. … We

have a table setting, …and we have these two absolutely magnificent gourd candelabra …that

have wisteria vines climbing up the surface of them, that become the supports for the candles

NARRATOR— All of the pieces here were created by hand by Tiffany’s artisans. The

coffee and tea service was a wedding gift from Arabella Huntington to Henry’s sister.

Jim Folsom, the Marge and Sherm Telleen Director of the Botanical Gardens, looks at

their famous chrysanthemum pattern.

JIM FOLSOM —The way that the artist decided to depict chrysanthemums is really stylized.

NARRATOR—Chrysanthemums belong to the daisy family.

JIM FOLSOM—They’ve selected a form that is more of a normal daisy form, which allows it to

step across a lot of motifs. It to some extent looks like a thistle, which is also a daisy. It to some

extent looks like a sunflower, and of course it’s still a chrysanthemum.

NARRATOR—Tiffany and Company was founded by Charles L. Tiffany. He was the

father of Louis Comfort Tiffany, whose art glass is a mainstay of the Arts and Crafts

style. You can see examples in Room 5.


306 Herter Brothers, FallFront Secretary Cabinet, ca. 1878

NARRATOR—See if you recognize the flowers on the panels of this secretary. Here to

help is the Director of the Huntington Gardens, Jim Folsom.

JIM FOLSOM—In looking at this secretary, there are two panels, inlays of cloisonné, that to

me, as a botanist, reflect garden plants or some knowledge of illustrations of plants from Asia,

because almost all the plants represented look to be Asian plants that we’ve adopted for our

gardens.

On the right panel, the most easily identifiable plant is the chrysanthemum. You see a really nice

representation of a whiteflowered chrysanthemum and an opening flower. … To the left of that

is a plant that’s even more noble in Asian lore, and that’s the peony.

On the left panel, … there’s a lovely vine with white flowers weaving through the cloisonné, and

I would have to say that it’s jasmine, once again Asian and European in origin, but a wonderful

plant that suggests fragrance. …In the center of the lefthand panel, there’s another set of white

flowers that’s one cluster of flowers that clearly represents a hydrangea or a viburnum.

NARRATOR—The secretary was created by Herter Brothers. To hear a little about

them, press PLAY now.


3062 Herter Brothers, second level

NARRATOR— By the 1870s, Herter Brothers was America’s leading furniture and

design firm. Their work reflected the American fascination with Asian motifs. Here,

we see Japanese influence in the cabinet’s molding, the ebonized finish, and the

cloisonné panels.


307 William Michael Harnett, After the Hunt, 1883

NARRATOR—A painting like this might tempt you to compare it with a photograph.

It’s so exact, as if it’s purely an imitation of life. But let’s look a little closer. Could a

photograph be as persuasive as this? Or as tactile? Can’t you just imagine how every

surface feels, from the waxy duck feathers to the rusted hardware on the weathered

door? Even the green binding on the hunting horn looks like it’s been touched

thousands of times. The painting is really a sensual delight.

This style is called trompe l’oeil, a French phrase meaning “fool the eye.” The artist is

William Michael Harnett, and he was a master of trompe l’oeil. When he painted this

picture, he was studying art in Munich, and it seems as if he fell in love with these

traditional hunting implements.


Room 3

308 Harriet Hosmer, Zenobia in Chains, 1859

NARRATOR—This stately woman is Zenobia, a strong and effective ruler. Her

successful empire building led to a war with the Romans, in which she was eventually

captured. Curator Jessica Smith.

JESSICA SMITH—So what we see in this sculpture, in this composition, is Zenobia, Queen of

Palmyra, being led into Rome with her hands in shackles, with her hands in chains. … Although

she’s a prisoner, she’s very dignified, extremely stoic. She’s very lavishly attired with great

jewels and fine robes and, while her head is tipped down just a little bit, she’s very erect in her

posture and maintains a bearing of tremendous stoicism and dignity. …While one of her hands

is by her side, with the other she’s holding her chains, so it’s almost as if she’s taking possession

of her captivity. It’s a very empowered image of the woman.

NARRATOR—It was a bold choice for a woman artist in the mid 19 th century.

JESSICA SMITH—Harriett Hosmer herself was bucking convention by being a sculptor at this

time period, and particularly by being such a successful one.

NARRATOR—Look at how finely the marble is carved.

JESSICA SMITH—Marble is an amazing material in that you’re taking a huge hunk of rock

and you’re making it look like fabric, like hair, like jewels. And it’s a testament to the skill of the

people who are doing the carving that they were able to get such exquisite detail as the links of

the chain.


NARRATOR—In fact, some people doubted Hosmer had really carved it. To hear that

story, press PLAY.


3082 Hosmer, second level

NARRATOR—Hosmer showed this sculpture at the Great Exhibition in London in

1863.

JESSICA SMITH— …and the sculpture of Zenobia garnered a great deal of attention, but also I

think a fair amount of jealousy on the part of male colleagues and some critics. So some of the

things that were written about it at the time suggested that it was so good that it couldn’t

possibly have been done by a woman, that she must have relied on Italian artisans.

So this was a great source of distress to Harriet Hosmer as one could imagine, and she eventually

brought a case of libel and was able to exact an apology and print a retraction, and had to really

work hard for quite some time to defend her honor as the sculptor responsible for this piece.


Gallery 4

309 Robert Henri, Portrait of an Irish Girl, 1927

NARRATOR—Now, we’ll hear from someone who grew up with this portrait by

Robert Henri.

NANCY BERMAN—My name is Nancy Berman. …I was about 10 years old when this

painting arrived, and it was pretty sensational to have such an eyepopping, beautiful, brilliant,

probably 10yearold girl enter the house in this form. …And she’s so bright, shiny, she’s so

present in her skin color, you know, the bright red cheeks, the very meditative but piercing blue

eyes.

Another thing I do, now that I’m older, is I tend to think about what she would have looked like

either grown up or maybe in a different social situation as she grew.

I’m very happy to see it here. It’s in a beautiful space with very wonderful companions, in fact,

paintings of Henri’s real companions in life, and part of a room that’s showing artwork that

really bespeaks his philosophy and the, I would say, revolution he made in the arts in America.


310 Edward Hopper, The Long Leg, ca. 1930

STEVE MARTIN—Hi, I’m Steve Martin. This is a painting by Edward Hopper, one of my

favorite American artists and someone whose paintings I’ve had the pleasure to live with. Here,

he’s showing us a little sailboat known as a knockabout sloop. It’s zigzagging through

Provincetown Harbor on Cape Cod, headed for the open sea. There’s a brilliant afternoon sun

lighting up the sails and the side of the light house, and it seems like a good day for the beach.

But wait. We can’t see anyone on the deck of the boat, and no one is swimming or strolling on

the shore.

So although what Hopper pictures here might at first make us think of a happy summer outing,

curiously it’s one of the emptiest vacations you could imagine. He has managed to turn a simple

image of summer into something almost eerie. It’s as if he couldn’t paint fun without his own

imposing sense of loneliness setting in.

Hopper had a genius for creating spare, provocative paintings like this. They’re realistic, but they

also evoke an unsettling mood of solitude and isolation. That’s what made Hopper a modernist in

his time, and it’s what always keeps me enjoying his paintings.


311 Clemens Friedell, Silver pieces

NARRATOR—The silver bowl and silver coffee and tea service here were hand

wrought by Clemens Friedell. Look at the bowl first, towards the top of the case. It’s a

fine example of Friedell’s Art Nouveau style, which is characterized by stylized organic

forms. The blossoms open outward, expansive and luscious. The bowl seems to

celebrate the abundance of nature.

For the coffee and tea service, below, Friedell drew on a different design vocabulary.

The rectangular shapes echo the stepped design of Aztec temples, and the spouts are

finished with fabulous serpent heads. Friedell created the service in 1936 for a Pasadena

client. In the 1930s, Southern California was just emerging as a major urban cultural

center. Artisans like Friedell looked around the world for design inspiration, especially

southward, to Central and South America.

Friedell apprenticed with a master in Vienna. Back in America, he worked for the

Gorham Company in Rhode Island. In 1910 he moved to Los Angeles, then settled in

Pasadena in 1911, where he became one of our most highly regarded silversmiths.


312 Rookwood, 19071928

NARRATOR—In this case, you can see examples of what is called “art pottery.” The

term means ceramics that were intentionally created as art, rather than functional ware.

Art pottery arose in the period just after the 1876 centennial and continued into the

nineteenteens. This was a time when the new culture of massproduced furniture and

household goods left many people hungry for handcrafted objects.

Art pottery was produced in singlepotter studios or in larger factory environments,

such as Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati, Ohio. You’ll notice that most are decorated

with natural motifs.

Let’s look at some Rookwood pieces. Find the daffodil vase at lower left. It was

decorated by Clara Christiana Lindeman, one of Rookwood’s principal painters. This is

one of the most naturalistic of her designs. To the right is a slightly later vase, made

about 1920. Its design is more abstract, but it still includes leaf and flower shapes. And

finally, look at the bookends. They’re in the shape of birds eating berries off of a tree.


Room 5

313 Herman Dudley Murphy, Landscape, ca. 1903

NARRATOR—Herman Dudley Murphy painted this landscape in the Catskills near

Woodstock, New York. Jessica Smith looks at it with us.

JESSICA SMITH—Well, it’s so subtle, I think it benefits from close looking because of these

subtle gradations of tone. And one of the things the artist was trying to accomplish was to create

a mood about the atmosphere, create a sense of the time of day.

NARRATOR—This interest in suggesting atmosphere through shifts in color was called

Tonalism.

JESSICA SMITH—One of the things Murphy is trying to do in this painting is create these

harmonies, creating juxtapositions of tones that are very close to one another. …So rather than

being dissonant and abrasive, …they’re close and mellow.

NARRATOR—Murphy created the frame for this painting himself.

JESSICA SMITH—Murphy’s really part of this idea, related to the Arts and Crafts movement,

that painting should be part of the whole environment. And the closest part of the environment

to the painting is its frame. …So this painting’s in the original frame, and rarely does one find a

painting with a frame designed by the same artist, so that makes this quite special.


314 Byrdcliffe, Tulip Poplar cabinet, ca. 1904

NARRATOR—There’s a quiet simplicity to this cabinet. It was made around 1904 at the

Byrdcliffe Colony in Woodstock, New York. Here’s Guest Decorative Arts Curator Hal

Nelson.

HAL NELSON—The panels were designed by a woman named Edna Walker, and she was an

amazing artist who had a great love of nature. …They depict …tulip poplars—the branches, the

leaves and the blossoms in a tulip poplar tree.

NARRATOR—The Byrdcliffe Colony was the inspiration of a husband and wife, Ralph

and Jane Whitehead.

HAL NELSON—They said that they wanted to provide an alternative to the slavery of our too

artificial and too complex life. And they did that at this marvelous artist's colony called

Brydcliffe. …The whole concept was developed as a way also of promoting awareness of

…individual artistdesigned objects and marketing them.

NARRATOR—The Whiteheads loved this cabinet, and kept it in their own home. When

they sold the home, the cabinet descended through the family until it was acquired by

the Huntington.


315 Frank Lloyd Wright furniture

NARRATOR—We’ve devoted the center of this room to furniture created by one of

America’s most influential architects, Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright emerged from the

Arts and Crafts Movement, which stressed a comprehensive design philosophy. That

meant that design included not only a building itself, but interior details, furniture,

even light fixtures.

Take a look at the dining room set first. Wright designed these tall, slatback chairs and

the table for the home he designed for Joseph W. Husser in Chicago. Their tall backs

enclose the table, making for an intimate space. These are early pieces, dating to around

1899. That’s interesting, because the table features an unusual checkerboard pattern that

you can see carved on the sides, a motif that wouldn’t appear in Wright’s work again

until the 1950s.

Now look at the chairs on the lower platforms. Here you’ll see a dining room armchair

that Wright designed for another house. It looks a lot like the Husser house furniture,

with its tall, spindle back extending almost to the floor. You’ll also see two reclining

chairs and a side chair, each designed for a different client. The beautiful grain in all

these pieces attests to Wright’s deep appreciation for wood and his profound respect for

nature.


316 Ceramics

NARRATOR—You may already have come across a case full of art pottery in Room 4.

Here is another. Art pottery was mostly created between about 1876 and the end of

World War One. As its name implies, it was ceramic ware created as art.

Art pottery grew out of an aesthetic philosophy, one that tried to return beauty and the

human touch to things people lived with every day. Some also had a social agenda, and

you can see a few examples in this case. In the left case, the large vase in the center and

the bowl on the far left were made at Arequipa Pottery in Fairfax, California. A socially

conscious physician founded Arequipa as a sanatorium for young working women

with tuberculosis. He invited British ceramist Frederick Hurton Rhead to come and

design forms that the women could decorate. Rhead moved to Santa Barbara and

established his own studio. Between the Arequipa pieces, you can see one of his bowls.

In the righthand case, the beautiful pitcher with an artichoke decoration, was created at

Newcomb Pottery in New Orleans. Newcomb Pottery was founded in 1894 at

Newcomb College, the women’s branch of Tulane University. Women could take

vocational classes there, to help them find meaningful and gainful employment.


Room 6

317 Sam Francis, Free Floating Clouds, 1980

NARRATOR—This painting by Sam Francis is called Free Floating Clouds. We’ll look at

it with someone very close to the artist.

DEBRA BURCHETTLERE—I’m Debra BurchettLere, and I’m Director of the Sam Francis

Foundation. …Sam was a very intuitive painter. Obviously he was very affected by everything

going on around him, but this basically captures a period of time. And actually, Sam would

always say that he was … a conduit for painting time.

He would lay out a big piece of canvas on the studio floor …and he would go in and he would

literally walk on the canvas and the painting image would appear as he was walking through it.

And so basically, he became part of the work, the work became part of him.

This painting reminds me a lot of Monet’s water lilies. And I think it makes perfect sense that

it’s here at the Huntington because you have this incredible water lily garden out here. And so

when you see this, … I think … you’ll be struck by how much this is a natural landscape

painting.

NARRATOR—Of course, we are free to see whatever we want—clouds, a grid, or even

our own thoughts.

DEBRA BURCHETTLERE—Sam always said that the center of the painting …is reserved for

you. And you bring to it just as much as he brought to it.

NARRATOR—To hear more about Sam Francis’s working style from Debra Burchett

Lere, press PLAY.


3172 Francis, second level

DEBRA BURCHETTLERE—For Sam, color was the key thing. … With this large canvas, for

example, he would do a really thin wash like a grid form, first, … just to sort of get him going,

and then he would go in and he would keep applying, he would pour it, he would pool it, he

would take different kinds of brushes, he would use different sorts of sponges possibly, and he

would start building and building and building until it was done in his mind.


318 Studio Ceramic Movement

NARRATOR—This case features work by the leading figures in the studio ceramic

movement in Southern California, a movement that started after World War Two.

At the bottom, the largest vase is an early piece by Peter Voulkos. Its form is grounded

in traditional pottery, and yet its surface design shows the beginning of Voulkos’s

interest in abstract expressionism. Voulkos led the way in raising functional ceramic

ware to the level of sculpture.

Just above the vase are two ceramic pieces and one slumped glass piece by Glen

Lukens. Lukens was an early and influential teacher at the University of Southern

California in the thirties and forties. He is known for his highly experimental work, in

which he focused on a vessel’s mass while innovating with glazes and textures.

Some of these pieces were lent by furniture builder Sam Maloof. You can see several of

his handbuilt, custommade pieces nearby in this room.


319 Allan Adler Silver

NARRATOR—Guest Curator Hal Nelson.

HAL NELSON—All of the work in this case is by the Southern California silversmith, Allan

Adler. And he was one of the premier silversmiths in Southern California in the period

immediately following World War II. He was very strongly influenced by Scandinavian forms

and by modernist style. So the simplification that you see in his work— the beautiful sweeping

lines that you see in the coffee and tea service at the bottom of the case, the very elegant curving

lines that you see also in the flatware, the salad servers and the vegetable servers—are very much

from that influence.

NARRATOR—Look at the two pieces at the top of the case. One is turned up and the

other down.

HAL NELSON—…and when the silver is silversideup, it's used as a candlestick. …And

when the silver is silversidedown, it's a compote. …And then there's the wonderful little bird

at the very top, that was really just a whimsical item, that was intended to be placed on the table

as a display item, as almost a centerpiece on a tabletop.


320 Sam Maloof, Double Music Stand and Musician’s Chair, 1972

NARRATOR—Furniture builder Sam Maloof created these two pieces of furniture in

1972. They are a double music stand and a musician’s chair. Their graceful pairing of

function and simple, sculptural shapes is typical of Maloof’s work.

The pieces were commissioned by Jan Hlinka, who for many years was principal violist

with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.

NARRATOR—Maloof designed the chair to give Hlinka lower back support while

maintaining his freedom of movement. It’s a rare piece, because its design is one of a

kind. When Hlinka passed away, his wife returned it to Maloof.

Maloof is a native Californian, born in Chino. He started out as an architectural

draftsman and graphic designer. After serving in World War Two, he began creating

custombuilt, handmade furniture, and soon became a leading figure in the studio

furniture movement. For the last sixty years, Maloof has maintained his studio in

nearby Alta Loma. One of his rocking chairs was the first piece of contemporary

furniture to be selected for the White House collection, in 1982. 1

1 http://americanart2.si.edu/search/artist_bio.cfm?ID=6166


Room 7

321 Chauncey Ives, Pandora, 1858

NARRATOR—All the evils of the world are about to escape from the small box this

graceful woman holds. The only thing that will be left inside is hope. This is Pandora, in

a sculpture by Chauncy Butler Ives. Here again is Kevin Murphy.

KEVIN MURPHY—It was very common for American sculptors in the mid19th century to

base their subjects on classical themes, and in fact Ives and other American sculptors went to live

in Italy because they had all the marble that they wanted… and they also of course had all of the

models. They had Greek and Roman and Renaissance sculpture to look at when they made their

own sculptures.

So her head for instance, the way that the artist has depicted her hair and her face and

particularly areas such as her nose are directly related to …ancient Greek sculpture. The

proportions of her body are based on canons of proportions that the Greeks used.

There’s a softness about the way that, particularly her torso is, and the flesh under her chin is

carved, that she seems to be really filling it from within, rather than being something that was

carved from the outside.

NARRATOR—Neoclassical works like this were meant to be beautiful, but also to

convey a moral message. To hear about that from Kevin Murphy, press PLAY.


3212 Ives, second level

KEVIN MURPHY—What Ives has done is chosen the moment just before she opens the box. As

she’s sort of contemplating it, she still has choice. And I think that the idea here is that we as

viewers of this are supposed to contemplate maybe choice in our own lives and the notion of free

will and the notion of making right decisions.


322 John Frederic Kensett, Rocky Landscape, 1853

NARRATOR—Here’s a stunning view of the White Mountains, in New Hampshire.

Hudson River School painter John Frederick Kensett presents it as an unspoiled

wilderness. Assistant Curator Kevin Murphy.

KEVIN MURPHY—What’s wonderful about a lot of Hudson River School paintings is that they

look as if they’re photographic. …We feel like we could go to the White Mountains, and we could

stand on this spot, and we could see exactly what Kensett saw, when in fact of course we can’t.

…He’s taking a rock from here, a tree from there, and developing a painting.

NARRATOR—Kensett’s composition is a perfectly balanced series of zigzags. From the

birch trees in the right foreground, they carry us deftly back and forth through the

landscape, into the glorious sky. This is an intentionally picturesque view.

KEVIN MURPHY—Sometimes for curators and art historians, half the fun about researching a

painting is finding out what should be there…, but isn’t. … The White Mountains was settled,

it was a big tourist destination …and you should see people, you should see hotels, there were

huge, grand hotels in the area…

NARRATOR—In fact, Kensett’s image of the wilderness was so alluring, it brought

hordes of tourists to the area.


323 Gillinder Glass, c. 18751880

NARRATOR—These glass pieces were created around 1875 or 1880 by Gillinder Sons

Glass Company of Philadelphia. Look at their decorations, and you’ll find American

motifs, like acorn finials and log feet. At the bottom, the covered compote dish features

a crouching Native American and a log cabin. Here’s Hal Nelson, Guest Curator of

American Decorative Arts.

HAL NELSON—And this is at a point where we're kind of approaching the end of the 19th

century, where the frontier, the wilderness, is closing to a certain extent, and all areas of this

country, or nearly all areas of this country, have been explored. And this piece, in the image of

the house in the wilderness, is looking back somewhat nostalgically at the first step into the

wilderness, the log cabin in the woods in the clearing.

NARRATOR—Artists freely combined these American motifs with European designs

and figures from Greek and Roman myths.

HAL NELSON—And what to me is interesting about it is that …the images on the surface of

the glass reflect American artists looking outward to the world and …looking at the history of

their own country.


Room 8

324 Frederic Church, Chimborazo, 1864

NARRATOR—This painting takes us to a small coastal dwelling in Ecuador. The artist,

Frederic Church, has placed Mount Chimborazo in the far distance, although it’s not

actually visible from the coast.

The painting is full of trees and plants, so we asked our Chief Botanist to come talk

about it.

JIM FOLSOM—Hi, I’m Jim Folsom, Director of the Botanical Gardens at the Huntington.

…What we love about it in the Gardens is how beautifully the plants are portrayed and how

realistically. …When you look at them, they’re convincing.

NARRATOR—Like the bamboo just to the left of the palmleaf house.

JIM FOLSOM—The bamboo is clearly bamboo, and it has the arch and the proper placement

and the proper presentation.

NARRATOR—And the trees above the house.

JIM FOLSOM—You see large trees which are very convincing from the viewpoint of looking

like big tropical trees with lianas, with vines, draping from them. You can’t identify the species,

but you get the sense that the painter was looking at real trees when he drew them. They’re not

made up. …On the far right of the painting we have another beautiful stand of palms that are

just perfectly portrayed and could make a painting all on their own. …It’s an incredibly,

botanically realistic painting.


Gallery 9

325 George Caleb Bingham, In a Quandary, 1851

NARRATOR—In the first half of the 1800s, travelers on the Mississippi and Missouri

rivers would have been familiar with this sight. Rafts men carried a variety of raw

materials and manufactured goods, including cotton and livestock, downstream to New

Orleans. They wiled away the time playing cards, singing, dancing, and drinking.

The Mississippi and Missouri marked the westernmost edge of America then. The artist,

George Caleb Bingham, grew up there, in what was called the Missouri Territory. The

raw and makeshift way of life and the colorful characters there left a deep impression

on him. He taught himself to paint and was the first to portray typical events and

people from that frontier setting. Later, he received formal training in Philadelphia.

That may be why he borrowed poses from Italian Renaissance paintings and adapted

them here. The seated man at right is from a Raphael painting, and the standing figure

from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling.

In the years before the Civil War, the public liked scenes of Americans engaged in

everyday activities. These genre scenes, as they’re called, celebrated American labor and

farming, and the frontier spirit that was expanding the nation westward.


326 Raphaelle Peale, Still Life, 1819 [

NARRATOR— This quiet painting is by Raphaelle Peale. It speaks to the moderation

that Americans valued in the early 1800s. Here’s Kevin Murphy.

KEVIN MURPHY—This isn’t a sumptuous dessert. This is a very modest dessert. And in fact,

it’s not even a dessert that we might think of that’s associated with sugar and sweets. There is

this iced cake in the center called a queen’s cake, but other than that it’s nuts, and a donut.

…There’s one small glass of Madeira.

I love that it is this very modest, that there are very few objects there. And there’s a real balance

to the composition, which I love. The lefthand side …has circular objects—the rim of the glass,

and the nuts—and that’s balanced on the righthand side by the circular form of the donut,

…while the center of the composition is anchored by the iced cake cut into sections and the leafy

foliage that emerges from behind the table.

NARRATOR—Each element has its place in Peale’s composition. Imagine it without

the donut or the glass, and the painting loses its subtle drama.

KEVIN MURPHY— It’s almost as if these objects have a life of their own, because they’re so

precisely rendered. …There’s almost this painstaking, loving quality to the way that

everything’s been delineated, particularly the icing on the cake, …and I love also the

transparency of the wine in the crystal glass. …You can almost taste what that would taste like.


327 Asher B. Durand, Strawberrying, 1854

NARRATOR—It would be hard to imagine a more idyllic scene than this one. The sky’s

a soft blue touched with cloud. The trees are stately and still. Sheep graze on the grass,

and cows drink in the placid river. In the distance, the village is watched over by its

church spire. In the center foreground, a young woman picks strawberries in a

strawberryred dress.

The artist is Asher B. Durand, and he painted this pastoral scene in 1854. By that time,

America was on its way to becoming an industrialized nation. A plume of smoke from a

factory chimney or a steam engine would hardly be out of place. But Durand spares us

any hint of the present. Instead, he looks back with nostalgia on a purer time.

Durand was among the founders of the Hudson River School. This group of artists

sketched from nature in the Hudson River Valley, the Adirondacks, and the Catskills.

They found the landscapes of their own country poetic and inspiring. They created

paintings like this, where reality and romanticism mix.


Room 10

328 Robinson House dining room

PHAEDRA LEADBETTER—My name is Phaedra Leadbetter, I’m married to Mark

Leadbetter, and…we’re living in the Robinson house. …You’re looking into almost an exact

replica of my dining room. …So where you’re standing now and looking into the dining room is

where I would be coming in from the butler’s pantry. …And on your left is a large glass sliding

door that goes into our entrance area. …And if you were in my dining room, I’d invite you to

step in and have a seat, and hopefully have one of the best meals of your life!

NARRATOR—The Robinson house was designed in 1906 by internationally renowned

Arts and Crafts designers Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene. When the

Robinson’s moved, they gave the Huntington the dining set you see here.

PHAEDRA LEADBETTER—If you were a guest at the Robinson house and sitting in our

dining room you’d be able to look out and see a pergola covered with wisteria on your right. If it

was sunset, you’d be able to see the sun setting over the arroyo, with the Colorado Street bridge

in the distance.

And just sitting at the table and looking up at this incredible chandelier that is hung with leather

straps, ebony pegs, cantilevered wooden blocks that allow the light fixture to be raised up and

down, and to look at the beautiful cherry tree that’s depicted in 3,500 pieces of mosaic in curved

panels just brings Goosebumps to me, it’s so magnificent.

I think the wood gives it a lot of warmth, too. One of the most interesting experiences living in

this house is on a very rainy day. It’s the coziest house to be in.


NARRATOR—If you’d like to stay longer and hear more about the Leadbetter’s home,

press PLAY.


3282 Greene and Greene, second level

NARRATOR—It took Mark and Phaedra Leadbetter six years to restore the Robinson

house.

PHAEDRA LEADBETTER—Every detail in this house, you think it’s symmetrical, but you

look at it and there’s a little bit of asymmetry. And I could look at elements of the house, and look

at it every day, and find something new.

My original sense of style is much more modern, but I have learned from the Greenes that you

can have a modern home, yet still use wood and use it with integrity and respect for the original

form of the wood. And to be able to use wood to make such beautiful furniture has been an

inspiration to me as a designer as well.


Room 12

329 Marble Silver Collection

NARRATOR—This small room holds a collection of silver created between about 1710

and 1850. This is the Marble Silver Collection, the gift from the family of Mrs. John

Emerson Marble. The gallery looks at how silver was crafted, marked, and used, and

what it tells us about daily life in America in the early years.

You’ll see a case with teapots, coffeepots, and cream pots, reflecting those exotic, new

beverages, which Americans were just beginning to enjoy. We know that people drank

tea at home in the afternoon, and then the men went out to local clubs to drink coffee.

They also drank alcohol, and in another case in this room you’ll find punch bowls,

tankards and ladles for beer, wine, and ale.

Other cases include techniques for making silver pieces and work by some of the most

prominent silversmiths in America at that time. Among them is Paul Revere, famous for

his midnight ride to warn that the British were moving on Boston. Revere was one of

America’s preeminent silversmiths, and you’ll see several pieces by him here.


Room 13

330 After C.W. Peale, Washington, after 1779; Charles Peale Polk, Washington,

179093; and Gilbert Stuart, Washington, 1797

NARRATOR—General George Washington stands confidently surveying the battlefield

at Princeton in this fulllength portrait. His hand rests on a canon, and he wears the blue

sash of the commanderinchief. Captured enemy flags lie at his feet. His victories at

Princeton and Trenton had just turned the tide of the Revolutionary war. Congress

commissioned Charles Wilson Peale to paint his portrait, to honor the general and

inspire other patriots. Peale’s portrait shows him vigorous and bold, at the height of his

military power. The painting was in high demand, and many copies were made. This is

one of them.

We’re fortunate to have three portraits of Washington at the Huntington. Let’s look at

the one on the left, where Washington is dressed in his uniform with buffcolored lapels

and vest. This is by Charles Peale Polk, the nephew of Charles Wilson Peale, who

trained him. Polk made copies of his uncle’s portrait, but added his own touches. Here,

Washington looks patrician, composed, even sage.

And now, let’s turn to the third portrait, on the far right. This is perhaps the most

famous of them all, painted by Gilbert Stuart. Stuart focuses in closely on Washington

here, creating a new model for historical portraits in the process. Washington is a

statesman now, and still as quietly commanding as on the battlefield. Washington first

posed for the portrait in 1795, but Stuart made many copies over the years. This one

dates to 1797. This iconic image served as the model for the president’s face on the

dollar bill.


331 Order of the Cincinnati, 17851790

NARRATOR—The pieces in this case are part of a 302piece porcelain service produced

in China. It’s called the Society of the Cincinnati Service, after an honorary society of

military leaders who served General George Washington during the Revolution.

HAL NELSON—We wanted to have a connection between the decorative arts and these

marvelous portraits that we're showing in this gallery. And we have been fortunate to find two

examples of a dinner service that was commissioned for, given to, and owned by George

Washington.

NARRATOR—So it’s tempting to imagine that Washington once drank soup out of this

soup bowl.

HAL NELSON— It's also fascinating to me, in that it came to this country on the very first

ship that traded with China. …So … this service has a very illustrious history in its association

with George Washington. But also it represents the very beginning of a cultural interchange

…between China and the United States.

NARRATOR—By the way, if you want to know where “the Society of the Cincinnati”

got its name, press PLAY.


3312 Order of the Cincinnati, second level

NARRATOR—The Roman general Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus left his farm to lead

an army against the Aequians. After he defeated them, he immediately relinquished his

power and returned to his farm. George Washington was once called the Cincinnatus of

the West, because he was a Virginia planter who led his country to freedom, served as

its first president, and then returned to his plantation.


332 Benjamin West, Lear and Cordelia, 1784

NARRATOR—King Lear lies dying in this painting, with his faithful daughter Cordelia

holding his hand. This work by Benjamin West was once in bad shape. We asked its

conservator to talk about it.

MARK LEONARD—I’m Mark Leonard, Senior Conservator of Paintings at the J. Paul Getty

Museum.

NARRATOR—The painting was sent to the Getty’s restoration studio in 1992.

MARK LEONARD—…and we spent a long time simply living with it, as we often do with

paintings that come into the studio. It’s a kind of gettingtoknow period.

NARRATOR—Mark Leonard needed to perform various assessments.

MARK LEONARD—…take an Xray, look at it with ultraviolet illumination, look at it with

infrared reflectography, really try and get a sense of what the original was going to be like

underneath all of that over painting.

NARRATOR—Then he began removing clumsy over painting and mending a badly

repaired tear.

MARK LEONARD—So the first challenge was to undo everything that had been done. Take off

that old canvas, take apart the mends that were in place, take out all the fills and the over paint.

The real challenge in terms of time was the retouching. Because whereas the past restorers had

simply chosen to over paint millions and millions of little pinpoint losses of paint, I couldn't do


that. I had to go in and retouch each and every little pinpoint of paint to make those areas that

had been abraded read again.

NARRATOR—That was necessary because all conservation has to be reversible.

MARK LEONARD—Fortunately, when you’re working with a picture of this quality it’s also a

joyful process, and it’s wonderful to see the picture emerge again.

NARRATOR—Mark was especially moved by something that emerged in King Lear’s

face. Press PLAY to hear about it.


3322 West, second level

MARK LEONARD—There was a moment where I was struck with how different the two eyes

are. His proper left eye is the eye of an exhausted old man. …The right eye, on the other hand, is

tensed in terror. And it’s that contrast between absolute exhaustion and absolute terror, even

though he’s blind at this point so …he’s not really seeing, but we know that there’s still that

expressive quality in the eyes. That’s a brilliant way of communicating the depth and the

complex emotions that are really going on.


Room 14

333 Ammi Phillips, Hannah Bull Thompson, 1824

NARRATOR—In 1822, a prosperous farmer named Alexander Thompson won a prize

for having the most improved farm in Thompson Ridge, New York. Around this same

time, he commissioned portraits of himself and his wife. We have one of them here,

Hannah Bull Thompson. She wears a wonderfully mild expression, looking at us with

what might be the beginnings of a smile creasing her eyes.

You may notice that a handful of paintings in our galleries are the work of selftaught

artists. That’s the case with this artist, Ammi Phillips. He was born in 1788, and spent

his life as an itinerant portrait painter in rural Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New

York. This portrait reflects his style in the 1820s. He set his figures against a dark

background, and painted details with a conscientious exactness. Look, for instance, at

the border on Hannah’s shawl, or her transparent lace bonnet and collar.

Phillips’s career spanned more than fifty years, and may include as many as two

thousand portraits. His work is one of the most important bodies of American folk

painting from the nineteenth century.


Room 15

334 John Singleton Copley, Sarah Jackson, ca. 1765

NARRATOR—In Boston, in the mideighteenth century, wealthy colonials liked to

advertise their status by posing for their portraits. The lady pictured here is Sarah

Jackson. Everything about the portrait is meant to make sure we understand that Sarah

has every right to her high social status. Her confident expression seems to say, “I know

who I am,” while her great swags of silk advertise the abundance of her wealth and

taste.

Sarah has a slight smile on her face. That may be because, at the time, she was being

courted by the Revolutionary statesman John Hancock. But Hancock withdrew, and

instead Sarah married a Boston merchant, Henderson Inches. Just a year later, she died

in childbirth.

The artist is one of colonial America’s greatest portraitists, John Singleton Copley.

Copley trained as an artist in Boston, far from the artistic centers of London and Europe.

But he studied prints of great works of art, borrowing poses and attitudes, gestures and

accessories, until his portraits equaled those of his European counterparts. During the

American Revolution, Copley and his family remained loyal to the British Crown. In

1774, he fled the colonies to settle permanently in England.


335 Gerritt Duyckinck, Portrait of a Man, c. 1690

NARRATOR—This portrait of a colonial man is striking for its freshness. Kevin

Murphy.

KEVIN MURPHY—It looks like it could have been painted yesterday. And I love it because it’s

the oldest portrait in the American collection. It was done probably about 1690, and having that

freshness, it really does sort of communicate across time, like I think a lot of great art can do. So

it’s as if this person is sort of looking at us from his time into ours.

NARRATOR—The artist is Gerrit Duyckinck, a DutchAmerican. The brown tones and

the interplay of light and shadow are typical of Dutch portraiture.

KEVIN MURPHY—There aren’t very many paintings that are still around from before 1700.

There’s a handful, really. So these paintings are very important in giving us glimpses into the

way these people lived.

He’s sort of a very commanding presence. He’s sitting very upright, with his shoulders set

square, and is directing his gaze very confidently out towards the viewer. And you get a sense of

the personality of this man as being a merchant or somebody that was very secure in his own

class and place in colonial society.

I also like that he’s wearing the equivalent of a bathrobe… It’s a garment called a banyon. It was

worn by men when they were inside, usually in their homes, as kind of a dressing gown.


336 Delft Ware

NARRATOR—Here’s a selection of English and Dutchmade, tinglazed earthenware.

It was tremendously popular in England and Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth

century. People carried it with them when they immigrated to America, or imported it

after they moved here. Today we call it Delftware, because a lot of it was produced in

the Dutch city of Delft.

You’ll notice that many of these pieces look like Chinese porcelain. Delftware

corresponds to a time when trade with the Far East was on the rise, and Asian designs

were popular. European craftsmen borrowed the designs, and applied them to their

own ware.

The ceramics here are the oldest displayed in the Huntington’s American galleries, and

they can tell us things about life in colonial America. Let’s just take one example. On the

lower right, that’s a possett pot. Possett is beer, wine, or ale mixed with warm milk to

produce a clotted drink. You would pass the pot around, and people would take turns

drinking the liquid whey from the spout and eating the curds with a spoon.


Erburu Loggia

337 Paul Manship, Times of Day, 1938

NARRATOR—The sculptures here in the loggia are by Paul Manship.

JESSICA SMITH—I love these sculptures. We have three of the four times of day, the Morning,

Day, and Evening.

NARRATOR—Curator Jessica Smith.

JESSICA SMITH—And how clever Manship was in suggesting the times of day through the

various attributes. In Morning, there’s this little cock, rooster, and the trumpet, which are

heralding the morning, and the figure is sleepily yawning and brushing off the veil of night. And

in Day, the main figure is rushing toward the sun with the horses, which are attributes of

Apollo, below. …And there’s this great horizontal thrust as the figure’s reaching towards the

sun with the drapery around his neck flowing behind him, giving a tremendous sense of

movement. And then in Evening, the woman is descending into sleep, and it’s as though the

owls …have picked up the drapery and are covering her.

NARRATOR—The dynamism reflects America’s passion for engineering and

technology in the thirties.

JESSICA SMITH—These pieces in particular capture that Art Deco sense of streamlining and

motion. They were studies for sculpture he did for the …New York World’s Fair of 1939 and

were actually plumbed as fountains with sprays of water that emitted from them, emphasizing

that horizontal sense of movement, as though the figures are chasing time.

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and Botanical Gardens - Huntington Libraryhuntington.org/uploadedFiles/_Files/PDFs/Volunteer_Academy/VSG... · and Botanical Gardens ... I’m Jessica Todd Smith, the Virginia Steele