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| Andrew Morton, John Mongo/Monro Holding a Silver-Gilt Footed Cup, 1843. The Huntington, purchased with funds from the Art Collectors' Council, with additional support from the Adele S. Browning Memorial Fund |
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| Anonymous, Scholar in Spring Garden, mid-to-late 12th century. The Huntington |
The Huntington had virtually no Chinese painting in 2020, when it opened a small gallery for just that in its new Chinese garden. 2020 seemed late to begin building a collection, with significant Chinese paintings rare on the market and selling for astonishing sums. But last year the Huntington bought
a major landscape scroll by Qiu Ying, and this year the Art Collectors Council has made its first Chinese painting acquisitions for the institution. Both build on the theme of gardens as places of contemplation. A Southern Song fan painting on silk,
Scholar in Spring Garden, is believed to be a product of the imperial painting academy and to show the royal gardens at the capital of Lin'an. Measuring about 11 inches across, the fan was later owned by a Japanese sinophile who mounted it on a hanging scroll. There is nothing like this, from this early period, in an L.A. collection.
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| Gu Qiao, Recluse in Early Spring [small detail], 1689. The Huntington, purchased with funds from the Art Collectors' Council, with additional support from the Connie Perkins Endowment |
The Council also acquired a 9-ft-long landscape scroll painting signed and sealed by Gu Qiao (1614-1700 or later). Recluse in Early Spring is accompanied by a colophon praising the artist.
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| Colophon and painted portion of Recluse in Early Spring |
Museums are trying to broaden their 21st-century relevance by adding early portraits of people of color (often by white artists who wouldn't otherwise be on anyone's wish list). The Huntington has acquired a rather interesting example of that genre, Andrew Morton's 1843 portrait of John Mongo (top of post), a Mumbai-born immigrant to Britain. Both subject and artist are documented.
Mongo worked as an artist's model in Edinburgh before launching a culinary career. It was probably in Edinburgh that Andrew Morton (1802–1845) painted him. Though scarcely registering in art history, Morton had a successful career depicting the worthies of his age. His conservative style looked back a generation to Thomas Lawrence.
John Mongo/Monro Holding a Silver-Gilt Footed Cup is an exercise in Orientialism (a movement that still had a lot of mileage, as it turned out). The 30 by 25 inch painting showcases Morton's skill at capturing character and texture. The gilded cup is not Indian but resembles one by Gothic Revival architect A.W.N. Pugin in the Huntington collection. Thus the portrait may tell us less about Mongo than about the influence of South Asia on the Victorian imagination. John Mongo is now on view on the upper floor of the Huntington gallery.
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| William De Morgan (designer) and Frederick Passenger (painter), Vase, late 1890s. The Huntington, purchased with funds from the Art Collectors' Council, with additional support from the Adele S. Browning Memorial Art Fund |
A glazed earthenware vase by William De Morgan also looks east. The composition of flowers and leaves, painted by Frederick Passenger, was based on Turkish designs that were termed "Persian" at the time. The Vase is a bit over 13 inches high. The Huntington's Arts and Crafts holdings include painted tiles by William De Morgan and pastel figure studies by his wife Evelyn.
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| Richmond Barthé, Stevedore, 1937, cast 1986. The Huntington. © Richmond Barthé. Photo courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY. |
Richmond Barthé was the pre-eminent sculptor of the Harlem Renaissance. He moved in the circles of Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Paul Cadmus, where his male figures were appreciated as both socially conscious and homoerotic. Barthé's art career was more fabulous than lucrative. After years in Harlem, Jamaica, Switzerland, and Florence, he landed nearly broke in Pasadena. Artist Charles White helped Barthé find an apartment, and this cued an improbable Hollywood ending. Actor Ivan Dixon (
Hogan's Heroes) introduced Barthé to James Garner (
The Rockford Files), and Garner funded editions of Barthé's early bronzes
, providing a financial lifeline. Museums that had ignored Black artists in the 1930s had another chance to acquire Barthé's work, and
Pasadena named a street for him.
The Huntington Stevedore is one of the late (1986) editions, measuring 31-3/4 inches high with marble base. It was in this year's Whitney Biennial as part of Isaac Julien's installation Once Again… (Sculptures Never Die), a work revisiting the paradoxes of Barthé's life and art.
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| Helen Pashgian, untitled, about 1965. The Huntington |
The physically smallest Art Collectors Council buy is a 6-inch polyester capsule by Helen Pashgian. From about 1965, it's one of her first sculptures in industrial resin. A central rod refracts light as the viewer moves around the piece. Pashgian is seemingly everywhere now, but she didn't get her first solo museum show (at Pomona College Museum of Art) until 2010. This untitled piece becomes the first Light and Space work in the Huntington collection.
Comments
> relevance by adding early portraits of
> people of color (often by white artists
> who wouldn't otherwise be on anyone's
> wish list).
In order to promote a social-ideological agenda, I dislike when politics shortchange quality.
As for the Huntington and its involvement with the Ahmanson Foundation, if LACMA is able to resume a relationship with them, I wonder how that will affect the Huntington? I see both institutions as playing an important role locally, although LACMA is legally-operationally a more public-oriented museum and generally caters to a wider audience.