Van Gogh & Friends: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism from the Hammer Museum

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 take up temporary residence at The Huntington, offering visitors the unprecedented opportunity to enjoy masterpieces from both collections in one place.  The exhibition contains three haunting works by Vincent van Gogh, including Hospital at Saint-Rémy (1889) and The Sower (ca.1888), as well as Claude Monet’s View of Bordighera (1884), Alfred Sisley’s Timber Yard at Saint-Mammès (1880), and Camille Pissarro’s Boulevard Montmartre, Mardi Gras (1897). Also included are such startling images of modern life and the fin de siècle avant-garde as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Study for “In the Salon on the Rue des Moulins” (1894), Paul Cezanne’s Boy Resting (ca. 1887), and Paul Gauguin’s Bonjour Monsieur Gauguin (1889). Gustave Moreau’s theatrical Salome Dancing before Herod (1876), a seminal work of French Symbolist painting, joins its compatriots.

In addition to "Van Gogh and Friends,"  American-British artist John Singer Sargent’s striking portrait of Doctor Pozzi at Home (1881)—painted in Paris—is installed in the ground-floor Thornton Portrait Gallery, where Thomas Gainsborough’s Blue Boy hangs. Sargent’s painting, also on temporary loan from the Hammer, represents the culmination of British grand manner portraiture as exemplified in the gallery by such 18th-century masters as Gainsborough, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and George Romney.