After the Huntington opened as a public art gallery, among its first major acquisitions was Gilbert Stuart's 1797 portrait of Washington. It all went together with the library's exceptional collections of British and American literature and manuscripts.
So in the face of the Huntington's largely British artistic identity, the new Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art are not really an anomaly. But neither are they quite up to snuff. The 14 handsome rooms combine the former Scott Gallery and the relatively new Erburu Gallery to encompass more than 16,000 square feet of space -- double what was available for American art before. (Robert F. Erburu is retired chairman of Times Mirror Co., former parent of The Times.) The collection, though, doesn't yet warrant all that room.
More than 500 works are on view. Most are decorative arts -- furniture, silver, glass, ceramics, etc. -- plus 122 paintings, 33 sculptures and 14 works on paper. Among the most charming is an 1817 needlepoint sampler by young Anne Moulton, age 10, in which her neatly stitched repetition of the alphabet, plus a row of Roman numerals, is framed by a paradise garden populated by rural farm animals.
Her stitchery includes this prayer: "How blest the Maid, whom circling years improve / Her God, the object of her warmest love. / Whole useful hours, successive as they glide, / the Book, the Needle and the Pen, divide." Bible study, handicraft and writing constitute the orderly education of a productive young woman, sewn into precise and tidy stitches.
The sampler is on loan to the museum. So are more than one-quarter of the works on view. (Lenders include private collectors and area museums.) Most of the loans are in decorative arts, consistently the strongest area in the nearly 250-year span of the Huntington presentation.
High-end Paul Revere and Joseph Richardson silver and middle-class Boston and Sandwich glass are at the early end of the chronological decorative spectrum. Frank Lloyd Wright furniture and post-World War II Otis clay by artists Peter Voulkos and Paul Soldner are at the other. In between is the great Arts and Crafts furniture by architects Charles and Henry Greene, including a 1905-06 dining room ensemble from Pasadena's Laurabelle Robinson house.
