The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino (near Pasadena) would be challenging to see in a full day, so annual memberships allowing repeat visits are appealing for those living in the area. We visited following our breakfast and hike down Mount Baldy, so we didn't arrive until almost 3 PM and tried to experience the gist of it in an hour and a half.
While many people visit the great museums and palaces of Europe, we sometimes ignore treasures close to home. We are blessed in Los Angeles County with some truly great museums, including the Getty Center and Norton Simon Museum. Like The Getty Mansion, The Huntington is very much like one of the great castles of Europe in that the palatial library and museum are surrounded by acres of gorgeous gardens, carefully planned and and meticulously maintained.
We reluctantly headed indoors within an hour, because we also wanted to see some of the art, including the museum's best known attractions, The Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough (1770) and Pinkie by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1794), to which we were directed by a helpful staff member we encountered in the garden. It is right that these pieces would represent the museum's permanent exhibits, because while there are some lovely bronze sculptures, landscapes and tapestries among the collection, it is dominated by portraits. What for me is particularly interesting about portraits is how standards of beauty evolve over time. You can assume that the artist did his best to portray his subject in the most favorable light possible to accentuate features considered beautiful within that time while at the same time keeping the subject identifiable to family and friends.
I was happy to find a beautiful painting of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart in our whirlwind tour of the Huntington Art Gallery. Another highlight for me was the paneled library featuring many of the great books in the world. Seeing leather clad, multiple volume sets like the History of Japan and the History of India, I realized how much I had never learned, but at the moment I wondered if I had read any, my eyes found Alexis de Toqueville's Democracy in America, which was required reading in a political science class long ago. As I think about it, much of the best literature I have ever read was required by college classes, and I am grateful for having been directed to them.
There are more art galleries on the grounds, and the impressive Huntington Library itself, which is an entire building separate from the small library we saw. The Huntington Library holds many great works, including an original Gutenberg Bible, the first seven drafts of Thoreau's Walden, and the manuscript of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, which I happen to have recently read without being instructed to do so by a teacher.
However, we only had time to visit the vast expanse of green lawn lined by sculptures of which we caught a glimpse through a large window before the 4:30 closing time, and we'll need to return another day to see more.
To get your money's worth out of the admission ($20 weekdays or $23 weekends), you should plan to spend an entire day there.
By the way, if you were wondering, The Huntington was founded by Henry Huntington, the same person for whom Huntington Beach is named. Huntington worked with his Uncle Collis, a railroad tycoon, eventually becoming a real estate developer in Southern California as well as coming to dominate the streetcar market, including the well-remembered Red Cars, which served to supplement heavy rail for local transportation. That he divorced his wife and married his uncle's widow, who was about the same age as Henry, I will leave to the psychologists to contemplate, but as you can imagine it outraged the highbrow Pasadena community.
