Goya fever in California: the city of Pasadena buys a valuable painting and hosts an exhibition by the Spanish painter

Railways were Henry Huntington’s life, but not his passion. Owner of the Pacific Electric Railway, at the beginning of the 20th century his famous red streetcars provided public service to Southern California, but he was more of a lover of books and art, and he gave them everything he had: his time, his house, his magnificent fortune. His legacy was a huge museum named after him in Pasadena, a picturesque city half an hour north of Los Angeles, which continues to draw funds from his estate and that of his donors. Now he has managed to get hold of an exceptional piece: a painting by Francisco de Goya from 1807. Portrait of José Antonio Caballero, second Marquis de Caballero, secretary of Grace and Justice It hangs alone in what used to be Mr.’s office. Huntington.

Both the acquisition, at the end of 2023, and the expectations placed on the attraction capacity of the goya They surprise. Even more so if you add that another museum in the same city, the Norton Simon, known for having one of the main private art collections in the world, opens this Friday an exhibition with 200 engravings by the Spanish painter. The passion for Goya is evident in California.

The Huntington is a giant in the region, receiving a million visitors a year; It has a library with 12 million objects, including one of the 12 remaining original Gutenberg Bibles, about Canterbury Tales from the 15th century and documents of presidents such as Lincoln, Washington and Jefferson; an art collection with 45,000 objects, including paintings by Turner and Constable; some gardens of more than 52 hectares… and now a painting by Goya, of which they do not clarify how much it cost. It is only known that it has been financed by the Ahmanson Foundation, created in the mid-20th century by the wealthy owner of an insurance company. Some specialized portals estimate it at at least six million dollars, and consider it to be a low price.

In front of the wooden paneled walls on which the painting rests, at the Huntington they explain that a goya It was a decades-long desire that dates back to the museum’s family tradition. Henry married Arabella Huntington, who was the wife of his uncle and who had a son from another previous marriage, a young man named Archer. And precisely Archer was a lover of Spanish culture, of its art. “He came to speak Spanish, traveled there and became friends with King Alfonso . Archer loved Spain so much that he wanted his fellow citizens to appreciate that unknown country. He respected him so much that he decided not to buy works in Spain because he wanted to preserve what he had and not import it, although he did not hesitate to buy them from other collectors around the world. He eventually founded the Hispanic Society in 1904 in New York. “Buying is reconnecting with that root,” reflects Zonno.

“We have many documents that Archer bought from Spain, maps, documents from the empire and the Spanish-speaking world…,” he explains. They have 80 of Whims by Goya and 10 from the series Bullfighting. There are also donations from the sixties of The disasters of war and three Disparates: “But we didn’t have any paint.” And they have not stopped until they found this painting, of exceptional quality and with José Antonio Caballero as the protagonist, a powerful minister who carried out a great university reform and managed the first major global smallpox vaccination campaign. “It is the first of four copies,” Zonno clarifies of the work, which comes from a private collector in Miami who auctioned it at Sotheby’s. “There is a second one in Budapest, the most similar, from the same 1807. A third in Houston, unfinished, and it seems to have come from his workshop. And a fourth in Madrid, after Goya, in the Lázaro Galdiano”, but smaller and less detailed. The painter also portrayed Caballero’s wife, María Soledad Rocha y Fernández de la Peña, a painting in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, Germany. Would you like to bring them together? “It would be extraordinary,” she admits excitedly.

Goya’s paintings in the United States may not be the most valuable in Zaragoza, but they do not fail to show that the taste for his brush continues to reach far and move millions. As a renowned Spanish conservator explains, Goya’s work is “very extensive and highly valued for many years.” Specifically, Caballero’s portrait dates from the months prior to the Napoleonic invasion, which according to this conservator—who prefers to remain anonymous: his union is “very reticent to express itself about specific works, because their words can be used to revalue or devalue them.” —represented a “disruption” of the heritage. “A good part could be recovered over time. Especially the most official, paintings taken to France for Napoleon or those that King Joseph I took in his luggage when he fled, rescued by Wellington after the battle of Vitoria. But there was a lot of looting by the French military, as well as by dealers who were after works by well-known Spanish painters, such as Murillo, one of the most sought-after,” he points out.

“These exits, and the sales made before the drafting of the heritage law, explain why there are works by Spanish authors in international museums… Once there they already have, so to speak, a life of their own, and their avatars depend on their owners. ”. Now the laws are much stricter than 200 years ago, when Goya’s portrait began its journey and left Spain to, it is believed, go to France and at some point cross the pond and reach Miami, where it was last exhibited. time, they estimate at the Huntington, 50 years ago.

The Norton Simon in Pasadena is also dedicated to Goya. On April 19 it opens I Saw It: Francisco de Goya, Printmaker), an exhibition with more than 230 works, including 80 from the series the Whims82 of Disasters of War33 Bullfighting y 22 Disparatesall property of the museum, which has works by Zurbarán, Picasso, Degas, Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet, Cézanne, Ingres, Kandinsky, Warhol… Gloria Williams Sander, the curator in charge of the project, explains that they have been “year and half working on the exhibition”, which will be arranged in two wings of the center.

The Norton Simon, which receives around 160,000 visitors a year, is confident that this exhibition will appeal to “a very wide audience, including those who know Goya’s work (artists, printers and collectors) and people interested in history.” , particularly in the themes of his engravings, which continue to generate noise.” “I think there’s something that almost everyone will connect with in the show,” Sander reflects. A century ago, Archie Huntington saw it coming.