Belle of her own ball?

Introductions come in all shapes and sizes and fit all sorts of occasions. At academic conferences, junior faculty introduce senior scholars with two goals in mind: to pay homage to admired authorities while showing off their own talents. At cocktail parties, people introduce one another because it’s the polite thing to do -- and because friendly chitchat is fun.

At the Huntington Library in San Marino, a small, two-gallery exhibition combines the formality of public introductions with the casualness of personal ones. Organized by curatorial fellow Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, it’s a puzzling mix that leaves visitors wondering what sort of event they have walked into.

“The Belle of San Marino: Introducing Arabella Huntington” begins with great promise. A pair of portraits hang side by side. The first, painted in 1882 by Alexandre Cabanel, is a life-size, full-length depiction of Arabella Yarrington Worsham (1850-1924) in the prime of life and just before her marriage to Collis P. Huntington.

A plunging neckline and elbow-length sleeves reveal smooth, alabaster skin and fleshy heft. Cabanel surrounds the standing figure with a rich symphony of pinks, crimsons and burgundies. A sumptuous cascade of tapestries, bows, roses, clothing, carpets and lace -- made of velvet, silk, wool and feathers -- intensifies the embrace of aristocratic trappings.

Power and femininity fuse. So do drive and self-containment, civility and authority. You barely notice the gold, thin-framed pince-nez Huntington wears like a piece of useful jewelry.

The second portrait, painted by Oswald Birley in 1924, just months before Arabella Huntington’s death at 74, conveys an even stronger sense that she played hardball and harbored no illusions about who she was. Seated in a thickly cushioned gilt chair adorned with carved-wood beasts, she is dressed entirely in black: hat, bow, scarf, shawl, dress, lace, jacket, gloves, earrings, onyx necklaces and the thick round frames of her pince-nez, which are prominent.

Huntington’s ramrod uprightness looks as natural as most folks’ slumped shoulders. Her hands rest casually in her lap. Her wrinkled skin, again revealed by a low-cut neckline, looks ashen, suggesting a preference for hard reality over sugar-coated coverup.

Huntington’s expression conveys contentment without the smugness of self-satisfaction. Well past her prime, she is still formidable, perhaps not a force in the boardroom but someone who wants her life to live on in memory as a benchmark against which future generations might measure themselves.

Also in the first gallery are four small photographs, two by Nadar, one by Theodore C. Marceau and one by an anonymous photographer. Like the painted portraits, the studio photographs depict Huntington at various ages: as a sweet-faced twentysomething, an aspiring grande dame, a well-heeled widow and a free-thinking woman who enjoys posing.

Wall labels offer anecdotal tidbits, the most notable informing visitors that from the time Huntington’s second husband died when she was 50, she never stopped wearing black. A luxurious, 100-year-old mourning gown made of English crape is displayed next to the Nadar photograph of Huntington wearing the garment. Across the gallery stands a beautiful mirrored cabinet she owned.

A free brochure provides a bit of historical background. Huntington was born Arabella Duval Yarrington near Union Springs, Ala., in 1850. She married John Archer Worsham when she was 18 or 19 and had a son the next year. Her husband died in 1878. Six years later she married Collis P. Huntington, a 62-year-old railroad magnate who died in 1900, making her, newspapers reported, “the richest woman in the world.”

Thirteen years later, at 63, Arabella married Collis’ nephew, Henry E. Huntington, for whom she had worked for years and whose San Marino ranch and home is now the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens.

In contrast to the first gallery, which makes visitors curious to learn more about the “Belle of San Marino,” the second narrows its focus to such tedious archival materials and specialized distinctions among types of lace that Huntington all but disappears from the exhibition meant to introduce her.

Seven small photographic portraits of Huntington get lost amid 12 vitrines filled with magazines, auction catalogs, tortoiseshell hair accessories and lace scarves, cuffs, borders, flounces, fichus, lappets, bonnets, veils, a parasol cover, a cape and an overbodice.

The lace is amazing, with dazzling examples of point d’Argentan, point d’Alencon, point de Gaze and Chantilly creating complex compositions animated by naturalistic representations and geometric patterns. But it seems to belong to a different exhibition, perhaps a historical overview of lace-making and collecting. The particularities of the lace provide little insight into Huntington’s character.

Some of the pieces she owned were more expensive than gold and even more costly, by weight, than the jewelry she purchased. Unfortunately, this is where the show’s focus turns.

Although Huntington’s jewelry was sold off by her daughter-in-law, the exhibition makes up for its absence by presenting 10 photocopied receipts enlarged to the size of posters. A more ridiculous fetishization of historical research is hard to imagine.

The receipts document some of Huntington’s purchases from 1906 to 1923. They include a seven-strand, 497-pearl necklace (from Black, Starr & Frost, New York) that would cost $6.2 million today, a large macaroon brooch (from Cartier) that once belonged to Napoleon’s niece, Princesse Mathilde Bonaparte, and a sapphire and diamond necklace (from Tiffany & Co.) auctioned off to pay the debts of Portugal’s Queen Maria Pia, as well as receipts for lace, lingerie and hand-held fans.

This information may be fascinating, especially to historians and archivists. In the right hands, it could be part of a great story, an engrossing biography or captivating history. But it makes for an awful exhibition. And it sells Huntington short. A roomful of blown-up receipts provides precious little insight into the enigmatic woman whose behind-the-scenes influence made the Huntington’s art collection what it is today.

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‘The Belle of San Marino: Introducing Arabella Huntington’

Where: Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino

When: 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. Closed Mondays.

Ends: June 25

Price: $6 to $15

Contact: (626) 405-2100; www.huntington.org