Huntington’s finest pack up

“The BLUE BOY” and “Pinkie” are on the move, with an entourage of 18th century British aristocrats and landed gentry. Sumptuously dressed and elaborately coiffed, the cast of characters includes the Viscount and Viscountess Ligonier, he with his horse, she with her art supplies; Jane Fleming, who became the Countess of Harrington, posing as a classical sculpture; composer Karl Friedrich Abel penning a musical score with his viol de gamba at his side; the Duke of Marlborough’s children, acting out a morality play about a fortuneteller.

Paintings of all these people still adorn the main portrait gallery at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens -- but only until the end of the year. After that, “The Blue Boy” and “Pinkie” will take up residence in an adjacent gallery in the mansion, and their compatriots will go into storage.

Upsetting as that may be to people who like things exactly as they are at the stately institution in San Marino, the changes are only temporary, in preparation for a major renovation of the mansion built almost a century ago as the home of railroad magnate Henry E. Huntington. The portrait gallery and the entire second floor of the house will be closed Jan. 3. The whole mansion will be shuttered about five months later, but not before some of the artwork is moved to a new wing of the Virginia Steele Scott Gallery of American Art on the Huntington grounds.

The new wing -- to be called the Lois and Robert F. Erburu Gallery, in honor or the Huntington trustee emeritus and former Times Mirror chairman and his wife -- will be inaugurated May 26 with an installation of British and European paintings and sculptures customarily displayed in the mansion. When the mansion’s renovation is complete, a project expected to take about three years, those works will return to their traditional home and the Erburu will begin its life as a showcase for American art.

The impending move puts a spotlight on an ensemble of paintings largely acquired through Joseph Duveen, the celebrated art dealer who played a crucial role in forming America’s greatest collections in the early 20th century. A tenacious competitor with a golden tongue and child-like charm, he had an extraordinary talent for persuading impoverished British and other European collectors to sell their cultural legacies to wealthy Americans. As Duveen’s client, Huntington was in a league with J. Pierpont Morgan, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Samuel H. Kress.

Huntington’s second wife, Arabella, cemented his relationship with the dealer, says Meryle Secrest, author of the new biography “Duveen: A Life in Art.” An astute collector who had fallen under the spell of Duveen, Arabella married Henry E. Huntington in 1913 -- after the death of her first husband, Collis P. Huntington, who was also Henry’s uncle. Sensing an opportunity, Duveen helped Henry and Arabella with their wedding and honeymoon arrangements, then supplied the artwork that would establish Henry as a leading collector of British paintings.

“Huntington was no match for Duveen plus Arabella,” Secrest says.

He made his first big purchase of British paintings from Duveen in 1911, paying $775,000 (about $14 million when adjusted for inflation) for three portraits. By 1926, Huntington had paid Duveen about $10 million (roughly $150 million in today’s dollars) for 38 British pictures, including 20 full-length portraits. The collection has grown enormously since then, but the 18th century British “grand manner” portraits are its heart.

Including prime examples of the work of Thomas Gainsborough, Thomas Lawrence, Joshua Reynolds and George Romney, the collection is renowned for its aesthetic quality and dazzling brushwork.

One after another, the portraits celebrate the artists’ ability to arrange figures in space and render silks, satins, velvets, lace and feathers while buffing up the physical attributes of their clients and confirming their social standing.

And indeed, the subjects of these paintings were real people. “British Paintings at the Huntington,” a hefty catalog by researcher and writer Robyn Asleson and Huntington curator Shelley M. Bennett, is packed with art history and technical information -- and juicy personal insights for art lovers who want to know something about the folks in the fancy outfits.

Gainsborough’s 1770 painting of Jonathan Buttall, known as “The Blue Boy,” depicts the teenage son of a London ironmonger. When he grew up and took over the family business, Buttall was thought to be rich, but he fell deeply into debt. A creditor forced him into bankruptcy in 1796, when he auctioned his property and personal effects, including his portrait and other works by Gainsborough.

“The Blue Boy” passed through several private collections, including that of British painter John Hoppner. Duveen bought the painting on behalf of Huntington from the second Duke of Westminster in 1921.

Buttall never laid eyes on Sarah Goodin Barrett Moulton, the 11-year-old girl portrayed in “Pinkie.” Lawrence immortalized her 24 years after Gainsborough painted “The Blue Boy.” They also rose to fame individually -- “The Blue Boy” through praise from artists at its inaugural exhibition, “Pinkie” by being reproduced on a Cadbury’s chocolate tin. Huntington purchased “Pinkie” six years after acquiring “The Blue Boy” and didn’t display them together, but the two images have long since merged as his art collection’s trademark couple.

If Buttall’s life story is sad, Moulton’s is tragic. The child of a British couple who lived in the Caribbean and divorced when she was young, Moulton was raised by her mother in Jamaica and sent to school in England with two brothers. Her portrait was commissioned by her maternal grandmother, who missed the little girl and would never see her again. Moulton died the year after her portrait was painted, probably of tuberculosis.

Many of the Huntington portraits depict upstanding citizens -- men of professional accomplishment and women said to be pillars of virtue -- but some of the most eye-catching works portray people whose flaws were well documented.

Georgiana Spencer Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire, painted by Reynolds in 1775-76 with ostrich plumes in her hair, was known as a great beauty. But, as the catalog notes, her mother boasted that she worked her magic “without being handsome or having a single good feature in her face.” The duchess triumphed in social circles, and Reynolds perpetuated the fiction of her good looks, but she had a dreadful marriage and amassed ruinous debts through an addiction to gambling.

One of Romney’s frequent subjects, Emma Hart, was the daughter of a blacksmith and worked as a servant before attracting the attention of wealthy men with her beauty. In one portrait, she wears a white dress and strikes a coy pose, her sweet face framed by a straw hat. But she wasn’t as innocent as she appeared. What the catalog calls her “habits of gambling and luxury” exhausted the bequests of two men and landed her in debtors’ prison from 1913 to 1914. She died a year after her release.

Some of the children didn’t fare much better. A little boy in a ruffled white dress who appears to have bumped his head is comforted by his mother, the Countess Spencer, in a painting by Reynolds. But the catalog reveals that his “early education was neglected while his mother devoted herself to social engagements and his father pursued politics.” We learn that the countess was “a woman of many enthusiasms, but child-rearing was not among them.”

Whether Huntington aficionados value these paintings for their aesthetic delight and historical importance or the personalities of the subjects, even the most familiar images will probably look different in the Erburu gallery, Bennett says.

The portraits will be temporarily deprived of their domestic setting while installed in the modern gallery, designed by architect Frederick Fisher. “But visitors will be able to focus on the paintings as individual works of art and really engage with them,” she says. “This will give each work an immediacy that it doesn’t have in the traditional setting. It’s a tradeoff, but this is a way to celebrate the paintings as masterpieces.”