Huntington Acquisitions Span the Globe
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| Jan Brueghel the Elder, A Still Life with a Tazza, a Garland of Flowers, a Jewelry Box, and a Floral Bouquet in a Glass Vase, about 1620. Purchased with funds from the Art Collectors' Council, with additional support from the Adele S. Browning Memorial Fund. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. |
The Huntington has announced five recent art purchases spanning Europe, Asia, and America. All were funded in part by the Art Collectors' Council. Among them is a dazzling Still Life of a Tazza with a Garland of Flowers, a Jewelry Box, and a Floral Bouquet in a Glass Vase by Jan Brueghel the Elder. It was part of the collection of Jordan and Thomas A. Saunders III auctioned at Sotheby's in May 2025. Estimated at $600,000 to $800,000, it did not find a buyer.
Set out on a luminous red table is a floral wreath in a gold tazza; a Japanese lacquer box overflowing with coins and pearls; rings and diamonds; and a bouquet in a glass vase. The picture takes satisfaction in the wealth of the Netherlandish trading empire while warning that nothing lasts. At lower left is a gold pocket watch with key on a pink ribbon.
Jan Brueghel the Elder was the son of the great Pieter Bruegel and a friend and collaborator of Rubens. He was one of the first and most innovative adopters of the still life genre in Flanders. Jan's son, Jan the Younger, was a less original artist known mostly as an assistant to his father and a copyist. Younger was very good at imitating Elder's style, however, so it is notoriously difficult to distinguish their hands. For centuries paintings in the Brueghel house style were routinely assigned to the more marketable Jan the Elder. Late 20th century art historians downgraded many such paintings to Jan the Younger. An example is a smaller, vertical format painting with a nearly identical tazza at the Norton Simon Museum. Simon bought it as a Jan Brueghel the Elder, but it's since been reassigned to the son.
Over the years, the attribution of the Huntington Still Life of a Tazza has varied from Elder to Younger to both. Sotheby's sold it as a work by both artists. The Huntington press release now gives the work to the Elder Jan Brueghel, with no mention of the son. (It may be relevant that a nearly identical composition attributed to Jan the Younger was auctioned last fall.) In any case the Huntington picture is by far the most spectacular of the few European still lifes in the collection. It will anchor the reinstalled Dutch and Flemish galleries.
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| Detail of Still Life with a Tazza |
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| Deruta Workshop, "Bella Donna" Charger, about 1505-1520. Purchased with funds from the Art Collectors' Council, with additional support from the Frances Crandall Dyke Bequest, Art Acquisition and Exhibition Endowment, and the Caillouette Acquisition Endowment for British and Continental Art. The Huntington |
The earliest of the Art Collectors' Council gifts is a Renaissance maiolica charger with a bella donna that was offered at 2026 TEFAF by Ciaroni Arte. The verse, from Petrarch, translates "a noble death honors one's entire life." The Huntington Library has more than a hundred rare editions of Petrarch's works.
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| Zhang Chenglong 張成⿓, Mount Tai, Lofty Marchmount 泰⼭喬岳, about 1600. Purchased with funds from the Art Collectors' Council, with additional support from the Art Acquisition and Exhibition Endowment, and the Art Acquisitions Fund. The Huntington |
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| Sargent Claude Johnson, Untitled (mask), 1933. Purchased with funds from the Art Collectors' Council, with additional support from Art Acquisition & Exhibition Quasi Endowment, the Connie Perkins Endowment, and the Sarah Smith Memorial Endowment. The Huntington |
Sargent Claude Johnson's gilded copper mask synthesizes African, Modernist, and Art Deco influences. It appeared in the Huntington's 2024 Johnson exhibition. The Huntington now has three works by Johnson, most notably the redwood Organ Screen for the California School for the Blind.
The Huntington has also acquired a contemporary tapestry by Indian-born London artist Raqib Shaw. Space Between Dreams—The Pragmatic Pessimist was commissioned for Shaw's 2024 exhibition and shown in the Huntington staircase. Its pendant, Space Between Dreams—The Perseverant Prophet was acquired last year.
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| Raqib Shaw, Space Between Dreams—The Pragmatic Pessimist, 2022–2023. The Huntington |
Comments
See the more easy and naturalistic placement of garland in the Elder's picture in Brussels [access that pic using the Sotheby's auction link provided] ..the 2 pictures' quality does not compare.
> This year marks the
> 32nd anniversary of
> The Huntington’s Art
> Collectors’ Council,
When the Ahmanson Foundation was working with LACMA, they'd often announce a year-end gift. So if a donation from them were listed with the Huntington's other current new acquisitions, and now that the Geffen is open, that would solidify (at least symbolically, if not technically) their estrangement from Govan's operations.
Meanwhile, the Lucas is getting way more word-of-mouth than the Geffen did. And more positive too compared with a mix of both good and bad, which LACMA received.
The Lucas has affected my impression of LACMA being overly involved in abstract/non-representational (or Hauser-Wirth-type) contemporary art. At the same time, other museums like the Huntington have been getting into the act too.
https://www.huntington.org/exhibitions/kehinde-wiley-portrait-young-gentleman
Although the Huntington's Wiley work at least isn't abstract, staffers of non-contemporary-art museums installing self-conscious hipster-ism into their galleries of older art would be analogous to LACMA installing artwork for children's books or lots of Norman Rockwell into the Geffen.
However, I do recall being uneasy when seeing paintings from Norman Rockwell or Thomas Hart Benton in the Ahmanson Gallery. But to judge very avant-garde works slotted in all over the place as comparatively okay is admittedly a double standard.
https://collections.lacma.org/object/18472
Moreover, the Ahmanson at least didn't have people involved in performance art riding around on bicycles and skateboards.
LACMA .org:
Rockwell’s association with Los Angeles was long and close, beginning in 1930, when he met his wife, Mary Barstow, on his first trip to the city. During the 1940s he wintered here and was artist-in-residence at Otis Art Institute (Los Angeles County Art Institute).