Los Angeles' Goya

The Los Angeles County Museum is the West Coast's largest, but until recently its shortcomings have given Los Angeles a reputation in the art world as the city of lost opportunities. Rich art collectors bypassed the museum in their bequests; in 1951 the famed Arensberg collection of modern paintings was snatched from under its nose by the Philadelphia Museum. This week the Los Angeles County Museum had something worth crowing about. Up on the wall of its softly lighted Spanish Gallery went a handsome new acquisition with a resounding title and glamorous history: Portrait of La Marquesa de Santa Cruz as Euterpe, Muse of Lyric Poetry by Spain's famed Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes (see color page). For generations in the hands of the Dukes of Wellington, the Muse is also a handsome tribute to the scholarship, energy and tenacity of bustling 41-year-old Richard Fargo Brown, who in three years as head of the museum's art division has brought it new vitality and stature.

Prime Catch. Goya's Muse is not only one of his best, but for years was also his least-known painting. He painted the young Marquesa about 1804, when she was one of the leading lights of proud Spanish intellectual circles and a member of the group that welcomed the Duke of Wellington as a national hero when he arrived to drive out Napoleon's troops. The victorious Wellington returned to London in 1814, carrying hundreds of gifts showered upon him by the grateful Spanish. Among them was the Muse. For generations it hung almost forgotten in impressive Strat-field Saye House, the Wellington family seat near Reading, In 1952 Spain's Duke of Alba visited Stratfield, and spotted the painting, told Ric Brown, then a Harvard Ph.D. studying in Europe, about it.

For five years Brown kept tabs on the painting, in January of this year got his board of governors to pay a Manhattan dealer $270,000 for it--the biggest sum spent by the museum in years. Says Brown, enthusiastically, "It's the second-best Goya this side of the Atlantic.* It's a major painting, monumental, beautiful and appealing. Goya's handiwork shows in every stroke."

The Big Time. Brown has given Los Angeles museumgoers a taste of the excitement a hard-driving director can give art. By originating such outstanding shows as T'ang Dynasty Art (TIME, Jan. 14, 1957), Brown has put Los Angeles back into the big time, has just staged the U.S.'s most comprehensive Degas show in two decades. One of Ric Brown's few misses was the Edward G. Robinson collection. Brown rounded up $2,500,000 to buy it, only to have Greek Shipowner Stavros Niarchos raise the bid to more than $3,000,000 (TIME. March 11, 1957). But under Brown's quarterbacking, new pieces have come pouring in (including Fragonard's Mademoiselle Colombe as Venus from Marion Davies, an early Rembrandt and four outstanding Gobelin tapestries from Oil Tycoon J. Paul Getty). Attendance has swelled to over 1,000,000 a year.

Says Brown, who already has more than $1,000.000 pledged toward a new art museum building: "The best way to describe the interest Los Angeles has in art is to say it's vehement. More fine private collections are being made, more important galleries are being operated, and more art is being shown publicly than in any other city but New York. This is clearly the No. 2 art center in the U.S. today,, and in 20 years or so, Los Angeles may even overtake New York."

*The best: Goya's The Forge in Manhattan's Frick Collection.

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