Rembrandt in Southern California
Encyclopedia
Southern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
." This collaboration was launched online in November 2008 by the Hammer Museum
Hammer Museum
The Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture Center, or the Hammer Museum as it is more commonly known, is an art museum in the Westwood district of Los Angeles, California...
, the J. Paul Getty Museum
J. Paul Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum, a program of the J. Paul Getty Trust, is an art museum. It has two locations, one at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, and one at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California...
, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
(LACMA), the Norton Simon Museum
Norton Simon Museum
The Norton Simon Museum is an Art Museum located in Pasadena, California, United States. It was previously known by the names: the Pasadena Art Institute and the Pasadena Art Museum.-Overview:...
, and the Timken Museum of Art
Timken Museum of Art
The Timken Museum of Art is a fine art museum located in Balboa Park in San Diego, California, close to the San Diego Museum of Art.-History:...
.
The project was conceived because there is a significant concentration of Rembrandt paintings in the area: it is home to the third largest group in the United States, and is the major venue outside the East Coast. With thirteen paintings collected over the short span of seventy years, beginning with J. Paul Getty’s purchase of the Portrait of Marten Looten in 1938, these works together attest not only to the remarkable range of Rembrandt’s achievement across his long career, but also to the formation of five Southern California area museums, four of which were forged from private collections.
History
"A colony of the Eastern and Midwestern states, Southern California offered the longings and dreams of older American regions enhancement and recycling on the shores of the sundown sea," states historian Kevin Starr. With the steady development of the region—with real estate, a water supply, agriculture, ranching, railroads, a shipping port, the oil boom, and aviation—the desire for and interest in established American cultural pursuits also grew.Founded in 1905, the Rembrandt Club of Pomona College in Claremont, California, was an early Southern California supporter of the arts. Created for the promotion and encouragement of the arts, it predates all of the major area museums and remains active today.
Arabella Huntington
Arabella Huntington
Arabella Yarrington "Belle" Huntington was the second wife of American railway tycoon and industrialist Collis P. Huntington, and then the second wife of Henry E. Huntington...
, whose Southern California home, the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens is now open to the public, purchased Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer
Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer
Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer is an oil-on-canvas painting by Rembrandt van Rijn. It was painted in 1653, as a commission from Don Antonio Ruffo, from Messina in Sicily, who did not request a particular subject....
for her house in Paris in 1907. At her death the painting was inherited by her son Archer M. Huntington
Archer M. Huntington
Archer Milton Huntington was the son of Arabella Huntington and the stepson of railroad magnate and industrialist Collis P. Huntington...
. He sold it in 1928, the same year that the Huntington Library, Art Gallery, and Botanical Gardens was founded as an institution. Aristotle was eventually purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
, New York in 1962 for 2.3 million dollars. At the time this was the highest amount ever paid for a painting at a public or private sale.
In 1913, the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science, and Art
Los Angeles County Museum
The Los Angeles County Museum may refer to:* Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County* Los Angeles County Museum of Art...
opened in Exposition Park, Los Angeles. The inclusion of the three divisions had been determined in part by the Smithsonian's configuration, and there was very little art to display. Indeed, in order to meet the deadline of the formal dedication ceremonies on November 6, 1913, the fine arts wing was not only hung with loans from Southern California collectors, but also with a number of works borrowed from East Coast owners. The opening of the museum was timed to coincide with the completion of the Owens Valley aqueduct—it was part of the celebratory festivities. This was no coincidence: the ready availability of water made the development of Southern California possible. Soon a community interested and knowledgeable regarding culture and fine arts emerged.
During the last century, collections of art that included paintings by old masters such as Rembrandt were highly sought after by many of America's business elite, and Southern-California collectors were no exception. Considered a newsworthy event, accounts in the Los Angeles Times trumpet the earliest arrivals of professed Rembrandt paintings in the Southland in 1928 and 1932.
An Elderly Jew in Fur Cap, 1645, was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Fred E. Keeler of Hollywood
Hollywood, Los Angeles, California
Hollywood is a famous district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema...
in 1928. President and major stockholder of the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, Keeler informed the press that he and his wife hoped to build a gallery to house their pictures adjoining their home, and open it to the public. During the fall and winter of 1934-35, the Los Angeles Sunday Times published a series entitled "Southern California's One Hundred Finest Privately Owned Paintings." The Keeler's "Rembrandt" was featured in the first edition of the series. When Mary Keeler died in 1939, she left their collection of art to the County Museum of History, Science, and Art, without restrictions.
Another purported Rembrandt, Portrait of a Woman with Oriental Headdress, 1635, was acquired by Mr. and Mrs. Willitts J. Hole of Hancock Park
Hancock Park, Los Angeles, California
Hancock Park is a historic and affluent urban neighborhood in Los Angeles, California roughly bounded by Van Ness Avenue to the East, Melrose Avenue to the North, La Brea Avenue to the West, and Wilshire Boulevard to the South.-History:...
in 1932. An early twentieth century Southern California real estate developer, Hole built a private art gallery adjoining his residence, in which the collection was arranged by nationality and lit by artificial light, akin to a museum. In 1938, the Willitts J. Hole collection was donated by his daughter Agnes Hole Rindge to the University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
. Soon after, on January 8, 1940, the Hole Rembrandt and many other paintings from the collection were installed in the UCLA Library.
Supported by scholars as genuine works by Rembrandt's hand at the time, both the Keeler and Hole pictures have since been reconsidered.
German art historian Wilhelm R. Valentiner
Wilhelm Valentiner
Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner was a German art historian and critic and museum official. He was born at Karlsruhe , and studied at Heidelberg under Henry Thode, and in Holland with De Groot and with Bredius, whose assistant he was at the Gallery of The Hague...
published Rembrandt Paintings in America in 1931 with the inclusion of just one work in Southern California—in fact, only one work in the entire state of California—St. John the Baptist, 1632, owned by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father...
, Los Angeles. In 1947 when the picture was owned by Marion Davies
Marion Davies
Marion Davies was an American film actress. Davies is best remembered for her relationship with newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, as her high-profile social life often obscured her professional career....
, Hearst gave the funds to Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
(LACMA) to purchase it, along with eighteen other works, from her. No longer considered by Rembrandt, it is presently attributed to Govert Flinck
Govert Flinck
Govert Teuniszoon Flinck was a Dutch painter of the Dutch Golden Age.-Life:Born at Kleve, he was apprenticed by his father to a silk mercer, but having secretly acquired a passion for drawing, was sent to Leeuwarden, where he boarded in the house of Lambert Jacobszoon, a Mennonite, better known...
and called Portrait of a Bearded Man.
Today it is generally accepted by art historians that the earliest authentic Rembrandt acquired in Southern California was the Portrait of Marten Looten, acquired by J. Paul Getty
J. Paul Getty
Jean Paul Getty was an American industrialist. He founded the Getty Oil Company, and in 1957 Fortune magazine named him the richest living American, whilst the 1966 Guinness Book of Records named him as the world's richest private citizen, worth an estimated $1,200 million. At his death, he was...
in 1938, now in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
(LACMA).
Already a well known art world figure, Wilhelm Valentiner came to Los Angeles in 1946 to assume the directorship of the precursor of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the "Los Angeles County Museum." As described above, prior to a division in 1961, fine art was integrated with history and science in what is now the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County opened in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, California, USA in 1913 as the Museum of History, Science, and Art. The moving force behind it was a museum association founded in 1910. Its distinctive main building, with fitted marble walls and domed and...
's edifice.
In 1947, shortly after arriving in Los Angeles, Valentiner organized and curated a major loan exhibition of works by Rembrandt and fellow Dutch seventeenth-century painter Frans Hals
Frans Hals
Frans Hals was a Dutch Golden Age painter. He is notable for his loose painterly brushwork, and helped introduce this lively style of painting into Dutch art. Hals was also instrumental in the evolution of 17th century group portraiture.-Biography:Hals was born in 1580 or 1581, in Antwerp...
at the County Museum. The show featured paintings from a number of Southern California private collections such as Jacob M. Heimann of Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, J. Paul Getty
J. Paul Getty
Jean Paul Getty was an American industrialist. He founded the Getty Oil Company, and in 1957 Fortune magazine named him the richest living American, whilst the 1966 Guinness Book of Records named him as the world's richest private citizen, worth an estimated $1,200 million. At his death, he was...
of Los Angeles, Mr. and Mrs. Converse M. Converse of Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean...
, and George Huntington Hartford II
Huntington Hartford
George Huntington Hartford II was an American businessman, philanthropist, filmmaker, and art collector. The heir to the A&P supermarket fortune, he owned Paradise Island in the Bahamas, and had numerous other business and real estate interests over his lifetime including the Oil Shale Corporation...
of Los Angeles; and included works that are in Southern California museums today, namely the Los Angeles County Museum's Portrait of Marten Looten and the Hammer Museum's Juno.
Shortly after the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) had opened in 1961, critic Howard Taubman
Howard Taubman
Hyman Howard Taubman was an American music critic, theater critic, and author.-Biography:Born in Manhattan, Taubman attended DeWitt Clinton High School and then won a four-year scholarship to Cornell University, from which he graduated, as a Phi Beta Kappa member, in 1929.He then returned to New...
penned an article in the New York Times entitled "Culture Way Out West: Los Angeles Art Museum Embarks on Long Road to First-Class Status" suggesting that there was a good deal of room for improvement. "Museum leaders have calculated the cost of upgrading various areas of their collection," he states, "To achieve a No. 1 spot in Thai art...would cost only $250,000. To approach the heights of a Rembrandt repository...would cost no less than $65 million." The article also reports a rumor about a Southern California Rembrandt that is very illuminating:
While Los Angeles may resent signs of Eastern condescension, it has not lost its sense of humor. It is still capable of chuckling about a story, possibly only a rumor, involving a Rembrandt portrait owned by Howard Ahmanson, banker and patron of the arts. Some doubt has been cast on the authenticity of the painting's attribution, and the plan, the story has it, has been worked out for a test. There is a similar Rembrandt at the National Gallery, and the one here will be carried tenderly in the next month or two to Washington, where the two paintings will be hung and studied side by side. Wouldn't it be funny, remarked a cynical fellow the other day, if some expert opined that the one in Washington is dubious? Are you laughing back there in the East?
Rembrandt, Saint Bartholomew, 1661, was sold in 1962 at a Sotheby's, London standing-room only sale. Purchased by J. Paul Getty, it is now in collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum
J. Paul Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum, a program of the J. Paul Getty Trust, is an art museum. It has two locations, one at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, and one at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California...
.
In 1965, Norton Simon
Norton Simon
Norton Winfred Simon , in the United States was a millionaire industrialist and philanthropist based in California. A significant art collector, he is the namesake of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California.-Early life:...
, a Southern California businessman and major Los Angeles County Museum of Art supporter, purchased Rembrandt's Titus at a Christie's London auction. The result was a media commotion. The painting had been knocked down by the auctioneer to an English buyer, but Simon was able to reopen the bidding by producing a letter that proved that the auctioneer had overlooked his prearranged bidding signal. A natural genius at promotion and marketing, Simon arranged the Rembrandt portrait's American debut at the National Gallery of Art
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...
in Washington, where its debarkation from the plane was filmed for posterity. Stating that "the painting has such great beauty and universal appeal that the Norton Simon
Norton Simon
Norton Winfred Simon , in the United States was a millionaire industrialist and philanthropist based in California. A significant art collector, he is the namesake of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California.-Early life:...
Foundation has a special obligation to exhibit it in the most favorable circumstances for the widest possible enjoyment," Simon allowed the work to be on view there for six months, where it was seen by over 300,000 visitors. That June, Simon and the Rembrandt picture made the cover of Time Magazine. Disguised as a wrapped Christmas present and featuring a tag reading "To Mother," Titus made the plane trip from DC to Southern California in December 1965
Further reading
- Getty, Jean Paul. The Joys of Collecting. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1965.
- Marandel, J. Patrice, Mary Levkoff, Amy Walsh et al. Los Angeles County Museum of Art: European Art. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2006.
- Muchnic, Suzanne. Odd Man In: Norton Simon and the Pursuit of Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
- Schaefer, Scott ed. Online Catalogue of the J. Paul Getty Museum Paintings Collection. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, in preparation.
- Starr, Kevin. Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
- Timken Museum of Art: European Works of Art, American Paintings, and Russian Icons in the Putnam Foundation Collection. San Diego, CA: The Putnam Foundation, 1996.
- Valentiner, Wilhelm Reinhold. Rembrandt Paintings in America. New York : S.W. Frankel, 1931.
- Walsh, Amy. Northern European Paintings at the Norton Simon Museum. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, forthcoming.
External links
- Rembrandt in Southern California collaborative project
- List of early Los Angeles art galleries, clubs, museums, art schools, and teachers on the California Art Club Web site
- A biography of the artist Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn from the J. Paul Getty Museum
- Juno, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, The Hammer Museum
- Saint Bartholomew, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, J. Paul Getty Museum
- An Old Man in Military Costume, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, J. Paul Getty Museum
- The Abduction of Europa, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, J. Paul Getty Museum
- Daniel and Cyrus before the Idol Bel, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, J. Paul Getty Museum
- Portrait of a Girl Wearing a Gold Trimmed Cloak, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, J. Paul Getty Museum
- http://collectionsonline.lacma.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=29059;type=101Portrait of Dirck Jansz Pesser, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, LACMALos Angeles County Museum of ArtThe Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
] - http://collectionsonline.lacma.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=16583;type=101Portrait of Marten Looten, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Los Angeles County MuseumLos Angeles County MuseumThe Los Angeles County Museum may refer to:* Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County* Los Angeles County Museum of Art...
] - http://collectionsonline.lacma.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=32240;type=1The Raising of Lazarus, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, LACMALos Angeles County Museum of ArtThe Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
] - http://www.nortonsimon.org/collections/browse_title.php?id=F.1965.2.PPortrait of a Boy, Presumed to Be the Artist's Son, Titus, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Norton Simon MuseumNorton Simon MuseumThe Norton Simon Museum is an Art Museum located in Pasadena, California, United States. It was previously known by the names: the Pasadena Art Institute and the Pasadena Art Museum.-Overview:...
] - http://www.timkenmuseum.org/1-dutch-rembrandt.htmlSaint Bartholomew, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Timken Museum of ArtTimken Museum of ArtThe Timken Museum of Art is a fine art museum located in Balboa Park in San Diego, California, close to the San Diego Museum of Art.-History:...
] - Norton Simon and his Rembrandt, Bernard Safran