The Art of Wealth: The Huntingtons in the Gilded Age focuses on four remarkable individuals: Collis Huntington, who started out as a peddler and went on to found a railroad empire; his second wife, Arabella, a woman of great intelligence and taste; her son, Archer, who devoted his life to creating and supporting museums; and Collis’s nephew, Henry E. Huntington, who built up an extraordinary foundation, the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, and gave it to the public as an enduring legacy.

Shelley M. Bennett, an art historian by training, writes sweepingly about the Huntingtons’ construction and decoration of large and lavish homes, their evolving taste in art, their luxurious travel, and, ultimately, the desires of each of them to leave something significant behind. The Huntingtons collected art for personal reasons and for private display in their own, highly decorated, domestic interiors, yet they ultimately gave their collections to cultural institutions to fulfill a public, educational role. A meticulous examination of diaries and correspondence, invoices and accounting records, photographs and blueprints—many of these sources never consulted before—reveals personal stories of pathos and accomplishment and provides a nuanced view of the motives that shaped American art collecting and philanthropy in the Gilded Age.

Shelley M. Bennett received a doctorate in art history from UCLA and, after a brief career in academia, joined the staff of the Huntington for a thirty-two-year tenure, serving as curator of European art and then as senior research associate. She curated and supervised thirty-five exhibitions as well as contributing to and overseeing the publication of two landmark catalogues of the collections, British Painting at the Huntington and French Art of the Eighteenth Century at the Huntington. She has also taught at the California Institute of Technology for more than two decades and has published widely on British art and collecting in America.

Author photo by Lisa Blackburn. Captions for back of jacket, from top: Collis P. Huntington (detail), Hispanic Society of America, N.Y.; Arabella D. Huntington, photograph taken by Felix Nadar in Paris, 1903 (detail), Huntington Library; Archer M. Huntington (detail), Hispanic Society of America, N.Y.; Henry E. Huntington, photograph by Theo. C. Marceau, 1907 (detail), Huntington Library.

Shelley M. Bennett

The ART of WEALTH

The Huntingtons in

the Gilded Age

1234

A rigorously researched study of what must be one of America’s most

exceptional collecting families. Collis, Arabella, Archer, and Henry E.

Huntington together constituted an amazing quartet of hunters and

gatherers. Documenting their extraordinary string of art purchases,

Shelley Bennett has put together a meticulous account of their

varying tastes, cultural ambitions, multiple philanthropies, and

innovative institutions..

—Neil Harris, Preston & Sterling Morton Professor Emeritus

of History and of Art History, University of Chicago

A fascinating account of one of the great plutocratic and philanthropic

dynasties of gilded age America. Across three generations, the

Huntington family—Collis, Arabella, Henry and Archer—were

entrepreneurs and investors, conspicuous consumers and energetic

collectors. They were also munificent benefactors in New York City

and in Southern California; they were pioneering in the legal

structures they created to give effect to their generosity; and their

private lives were as complex and intricate as their finances. Here is

a true account of American riches to rival anything dreamed up by

Edith Wharton or Henry James.

—David Cannadine, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University

This thoughtful and impeccably researched volume gives new meaning

to the notion of nouveaux riches. The saga of the dynasty founded by

Collis P. Huntington, a penniless easterner who made good in the gold

rush and the “Railroad Era,” is recounted with surprising honesty but

also with a convincing sympathy for what this family accomplished as

collectors, builders, and donors. This deeply serious book will interest

anyone curious about the relation of wealth to high culture in

twentieth-century America.

—Stanley N. Katz, Director, Center for Arts and Cultural Policy

Studies, Princeton University

THE ART OF WEALTHThe Huntingtons in the Gilded Age369 pages, 240 illustrations

Ben

nett

The A

RT

of WE

ALT

H