Sometimes with these calendar compositions, I do a fair amount of "Research", while others I sort'a just toss together... The idea of doing a calendar based on the Blue Boy and Pinkie, is something that Walt and I had kicked around every now and again. It was a fun idea, but I was in no big rush to get involved with all the "grunt work" of prepping the various portions of the pix, and the main thing I needed, in order to do a credible job, were good quality reproductions to start with. So I'd poked around various books on paintings looking for the best plates and in doing so, I stumbled across a book about the Huntington Museum... I was a little amazed to discover that both paintings were not only part of the same collection, but a collection that was right here in greater LA! (Los Angeles for you out of towners) Armed with this bit of knowledge, I simply had to satisfy my own curiosity and peruse the paintings myself...

So I drove on out to the Huntington Museum... Actually even before even going in, I took a detour to the book store where I bought two nice reproductions of Pinkie & the Blue Boy. These were better quality than anything I'd found in books - and after returning to the car to stash the prints - my mission technically accomplished, I briefly considered not actually going in, but decided I would, - I just wanted to see the real paintings for myself - and I’m Incredibly Glad that I did..!! The Huntington is laid out on a large acreage made up mostly of botanical gardens, with various buildings spotted around the estate that have been converted into galleries. It’s probably not hard guessing where I headed first - towards the European Gallery, which is a two story building, looks like it may once have been lived in, there’s a fireplace in every room for heating (which we didn’t need today) The displays are a mixture of paintings and furniture. Turns out the Huntingtons collected a number of Thomas Lawrence and Gainsborough paintings, so their ending up with Pinkie and BlueBoy probably was no fluke... One surprise, turns out Thomas Lawrence did a painting of “Little Red Riding Hood”. As I walked into the room where its hanging, I glanced at the painting and thought to myself, “Hey, its Little Red Riding Hood” (Ha Ha some joke) Then I walked over to the painting, read the plate and it says: “Little Red Riding Hood” It really is..!! Unfortunately - other than the subject matter, its not a particularly memorable painting, just a peasant looking girl with a red hood... They don’t even have a reproduction of it in the book store.

Then at the end of the building, there’s a large room - brightly lit (unlike the other dimly lit rooms) and this is where the Blue Boy & Pinkie reside... I’d wondered if they’d be in the same gallery, and if so, if they’d be hung side by side, or even if they might be wildly mismatched sizes so that in reality the true paintings might not make a set... In actual fact, they’re hung on opposite walls of the room - directly across from one another. Pinkie’s canvas looks to be about 4 and a half feet tall - the Blue Boy’s canvas seems closer to 5 and a half or 6 feet - so Pinkie is a bit smaller but not dynamically so... Interestingly enough, both canvases are a bit smaller than other works by the two painters. (There’s an interesting display showing an Xray of the Blue Boy - it turns out the lead used in white underpainting shows up well when Xrayed and it shows that Blue Boy was painted on a reused cut down canvas. There’s the lower half of a man’s head and what seems to be a cravat around his neck, just above and to the left of the Blue Boys’. Also, there seems to have been a dog in the original composition (on BB’s left or the viewer’s right) In the finished painting there’s a couple of brown rocks painted over where the dog’s front and back feet are - but the whole dog shows up in the Xrayed underpainting. All in all, its probably a good thing that the dog was painted out, as it would’ve unbalanced the composition...

Pinkie seems to have some damage, or an indentation on her left side upper lip... Also there seems the hint of a nipple showing through the shear fabric covering her right breast (under her thumb) since both paintings are hung high on the walls, the bottom of their frames about eye level for myself, you must look up at them, not the viewing angle they were likely intended for. So I’m not certain if her nipple is really there or just a trick of light on the paint texture... Possibly the latter as it’s only apparent at certain angles...

None the less - I studied both paintings for some time and contemplated the nature of immortality... Sarah Barrell Moulton died just a few months after the painting was finished, and yet her image lives on from generation to generation. I wondered, if one could talk to her spirit, would her painting’s immortality be of any import..? If she had the choice - Would she trade her “Immortality” as art for another week of life..?

Eventually I left the gallery and wandered through the botanical gardens, marveling at their variety and design. Generally when some one mentions “Garden” to me, I think of a bunch of flowers or vegetables... But the gardens at the Huntington are nothing like that. There’s a wondrous little Japanese Garden with pools, spotted Carp and a fun little arched blidge that would make a great set for a Samurai Sword fight. There’s also a Tea House, a bell house, and Zen Rock Garden. Wandering on, there’s a Jungle Garden with standing Bamboo and foliage, a large Desert Cactus garden with bizarre cacti, an Australian sub tropical Garden, Pools, bits of Jungle, a long lane of Romanesque statuary, at the end of which is this marvelous fountain, old, stained, weathered, with lily pads growing in it, the type of fountain one might expect to find in a lost city, deep in the jungles of somewhere or other...

By 4:30 closing, I was tired and ready to leave. Unfortunately there was a long hill to climb up to get out - I thought about just sitting down 'til the guards found me and maybe they’d give me a ride out, but no one showed up, so I made the climb up the long walk - but slowwwlllyy... I only saw a small fraction of what’s there, and none of the other galleries where the rest of the painting collections are displayed. I did stop at the bookstore again on the way out, to see if there was a reproduction of the Riding Hood Painting or that Marvelous Romanesque Fountain... No luck on either. I contemplated purchasing a larger print of Pinkie to hang on my wall, but there’s something haunting about her eyes - The eyes of a dead woman who will live forever... I don’t know if I’d want to see those eyes every day... So the museum didn’t get any further cash out of me - I wandered back to the li’l car and motored on home... JQ