GIOVANNI BATTISTA TORRIGLIA | ADMIRING THE BABY

Lynn W. Van Vleet, Denver (acquired circa 1935)  

Thence by descent through the family (and sold, Sotheby's, New York, October 23, 2008, lot 84, illustrated)

Acquired at the above sale 

Giovanni Battista Torriglia was one of the most skilled genre artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His paintings, which celebrated multi-generational bonds and family values, were often set in humble domestic interiors. In Admiring the Baby, Torriglia portrays three generations of a rural family, from siblings to parents to grandparents, each focused on a swaddled infant, the happy group's newest member. His works were particularly appealing to American collectors and a significant portion of the artist’s production entered collections in the United States.

Admiring the Baby made its way from Italy to Denver, Colorado as part of the collection of Lynn William Van Vleet (1893-1961). He built his fortune as one of the biggest wholesale bean sellers of the twentieth century—earning the moniker “The King of Pinto Beans”—as a supplier to Lipton and Campbell’s Soup. He is best remembered, though, for his contribution to and innovation in the world of Arabian horse breeding in America. Soon after he purchased the Tucker Ranch in Netherland, Boulder County, Colorado, Van Vleet realized that he would need a very special horse to help tend his cattle across the rocky terrain of the 2,800 acre farm. His search for a horse who could thrive in mountain plains 9,000 feet above sea level led him to Egypt and the Middle East, where he selected superior Arabians, some from royal families, to bring back to Colorado. Van Vleet went on to build one of the most important Arabian breeding operations in the United States, and founded the Arabian Horse registry. His horses and farm became a popular tourist destination, with visitors such as Ernest Hemingway and Gypsy Rose Lee, and were the setting for three Warner Brothers documentaries, including Arabians in the Rockies (1945). The great Nebraskan writer of prairie life, Mari Sandoz, posthumously published the novel Foal of Heaven, which told of the unique community of the ranch "family" and the bond they shared—a bond not unlike that captured in Torriglia's Admiring the Baby.