one
of the most rewarding places
to visit in Los Angeles is the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. The Library's rare books and manu-scripts are famous internationally and are one of the most exten-sively used collections in America outside of the Library of Congress. But this is the part you won’t necessarily see. Once the home of Henry Huntington and his wife, Arabella, the main house sits on 120 acres of botanical gardens, which include a dizzying array of varieties of gardens—the cactus garden alone is one of the largest in the world. Like aliens from outer space, the plants are massed into colorful beds on either side of broad walkways. Hardly the place to find French art of the eighteenth century—but this is the title of a large new book produced by the Library together with the Yale University Press.

In her introduction to French Art of the Eighteenth Century at The Huntington, Shelley M. Bennett writes, “ In the early years of the twentieth century Henry and Arabella Huntington formed an outstanding collection of eighteenth-century French art for their residence in Southern California, in addition to a celebrated col-lection of eighteenth-century British art…Their story illustrates the evolving relationship between patron and art dealer and provides fascinating insights into the growing power of the inter-national art dealer at the end of the nineteenth century.”

huntington’s money was made in railroads;

his uncle Collis P. Huntington was one of the Big Four who had linked the nation by rail in 1869. After he retired, he started to obsessively collect, spending what were vast sums in those days on primarily European and British art, furniture and scul-pture. Arabella was passionate about French eighteenth-century decorative art, and visited France yearly—not quite the easy journey it is today—eventually furnishing three residences, two of which were in Paris, plus a chateau near Versailles. As they lived in a dry and dusty corner of Southern California, Bennett logically asks, “But why were Arabella, and later Henry, infatuated with collecting eighteenth-century French art?”

mostly
it can be attributed to the
fashion of the times—in the first years of the twentieth century, there were many international expositions and museums that documented this elegantly aristo-cratic period of French taste. “The fashion for the eighteenth-century French style spread to a broader, more popular consumer market through reproduction furniture sold by department stores such as Bon Marche, Kreiger, and Marshall Field & Co.” writes Bennett. A new kind of art dealer emerged, one that mixed in the society of those he sold to. The most prominent was Joseph Duveen, whose family company, Duveen Brothers, had offices in London, Paris, and New York. He was a major influence on major American art collectors, including Andrew Mellon, Henry Frick, and the Huntingtons themselves. The book quotes Edmond de Gon-court “ I am very surprised to see the revolution suddenly taking place in the habits of the new generation of bric-a-brac dealers. Yesterday they were scrap merchants…Today they are gentle-men dressed by our tailors, buying and reading books, and hav-ing wives as distinguished as the wives of our society; some of these gentlemen give dinners served by servants in white ties…”

the book
is divided up into seven chapters,
each written by a different expert, dealing with a separate aspect of the collections. They include furniture, gilt bronzes and clocks, porcelain, textiles, paintings, snuff boxes and sculpture — all of exceptional quality.

Martin Chapman, the curator of European Decorative Arts from the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco describes the gilt bronzes of the museum in his chapter A Quest for Refinement: The Taste for Gilt Bronzes in the Huntington Collection. He explains “ Gilt bronzes were essential in decorating and furnishing the luxury Parisian interior in the eighteenth century.” Colin Bailey, from the Frick Collection, Florian Knothe from the Metropolitan, Odile Madden from the Smithsonian, and Carolyn Sargentson from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, are some of the other contributors to this accomplished and scholarly book, which admittedly is for the enthusiast— but the museum is for everybody. When you are next in Los Angeles, make the journey out to San Marino, and take in the stunning $20 million renovation of the original Huntington mansion, which houses the collections described in this book.