Archer M. Huntington

At the turn of the twentieth century, New York City philanthropist, arts patron, and scholar Archer M. Huntington became the foremost collector and face of Spanish art in the United States with the founding of the Hispanic Society of America. This organization, which served as a bridge between artists in Spain and wealthy patrons in the States, was the culmination of a lifetime of scholarship and passion for Spanish culture for Huntington, one he would grapple with throughout his public and intellectual life. In Archer M. Huntington: Founder of the Hispanic Society of America, Patricia Fernndez Lorenzo offers, for the first time in English, a complete biography of Huntington, tracing his enthusiasm for Spain and the arts from his childhood, to his marriage to sculptor Anna Hyatt and his crisis of conscience in the wake of the violence of the Spanish Civil War. Drawing heavily from Archers correspondence and from Anna Hyatt Huntingtons papers, housed at Syracuse University, Fernndez Lorenzo offers a full, deeply human portrait of one of the great patrons of Spanish art, giving a comprehensive look at Huntingtons role in defining Hispanicism in the United States.