Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Paintings
Anne Kirke
This painting commemorates the appointment of Anne Kirke to the position of the Queen’s dresser. It is no surprise that the sitter wears the latest fashions: pearl jewelry and a jewel-adorned amber dress. Its sleeves reveal her lower arms, a provocative sight in this period. The eff ect of grandeur and monumentality that van Dyck gives sitters, seen in the portrait’s full-length format and lavish costume, was widely influential on 18th-century British portrait painters that followed.
Only four years aft er this portrait was painted, Kirke drowned in a tragic barge crash near London Bridge. The Huntington Library holds several publications that commemorate Kirke, including a poem by her niece, the artist and poet Anne Killigrew, published after Killigrew’s untimely death at age twenty-five in 1685.
Only four years aft er this portrait was painted, Kirke drowned in a tragic barge crash near London Bridge. The Huntington Library holds several publications that commemorate Kirke, including a poem by her niece, the artist and poet Anne Killigrew, published after Killigrew’s untimely death at age twenty-five in 1685.
