Vincent van Gogh, Dutch, 1853-1890, Hospital at Saint-Rémy, 1889, oil on canvas, 36 5/16 x 28. The Armand Hammer Collection, gift of the Armand Hammer Foundation. Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
Henry Huntington and Armand Hammer never met each other, but the two businessmen had at least one thing in common: they both established great art collections that form the core of major museums in Los Angeles.
In an exciting “meet-up” of sorts, 15 important works from the Hammer Museum have taken up temporary residence at The Huntington, offering visitors the unprecedented opportunity to enjoy masterpieces from both collections in one place. Van Gogh & Friends: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism from the Hammer Museum is on view in the Huntington Art Gallery through January 2, 2017.
The Hammer collection is particularly strong in late 19th-century French painting, and this loan exhibition includes a selection of spectacular works by such luminaries as Van Gogh, Cezanne, Gauguin, Monet, and others. Installed in a second-floor gallery in the former Huntington residence, these paintings not only represent significant achievements in modern painting to be relished individually but also resonate with The Huntington’s own collection of British art. It was Englishman John Constable’s innovative landscapes, replete with shimmering light and shadow, that inspired French artists to bring a particularly vivid and radical form of his plein air painting into the modern era. Constable’s View on the Stour Near Dedham (1822), is among the artist’s finest works and one of the most important paintings in The Huntington’s permanent collections.
In addition to the French Impressionist paintings, visitors can see the Hammer’s dramatic full-length portrait of Dr. Pozzi at Home (1881), by John Singer Sargent. The American artist was greatly influenced by the earlier works of Gainsborough and other British 18th-century painters, so his striking portrait of the Parisian physician in a scarlet dressing gown is appropriately displayed alongside The Huntington’s most famous grand manner portraits, including The Blue Boy, in the Thornton Portrait Gallery.
