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Los Angeles Offers Visitors the Royal Treatment

Los Angeles, CA – July 2011 – Even if you’re not part of Prince William and Catherine’s entourage this summer, you can still have a jolly good time relishing the best of British art, culture and tradition, right here in Los Angeles.

Enjoy a Royal Family Reunion
Begin your royal pilgrimage at The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in nearby San Marino. The Huntington Art Gallery (the original Huntington mansion) boasts the finest collection of full-length British portrait paintings outside of Great Britain.

In addition to the world-famous masterpieces The Blue Boy by Gainsborough and Pinkie by Lawrence, the gallery includes sumptuous portraits of Prince William’s direct maternal ancestor John Charles Spencer, Viscount Althorp, who later became Earl Spencer, as well as relatives Lady Elizabeth Spencer; Lady Caroline Spencer, later Viscountess Clifden; Lavinia, Countess Spencer; and Lord Henry Spencer and Lady Charlotte Spencer.

While in the Huntington Art Gallery, be sure to view the world-renowned portrait by Gilbert Stuart of George Washington, who after all was a British citizen until he got a few revolutionary ideas. The galleries also boast an outstanding collection of exquisite British silver, with important works from the 15th through the 19th centuries; extensive holdings of British furniture; and porcelain and pottery from the legendary British manufacturers of the industrial revolution, such as Chelsea, Derby and Wedgwood.

A Rose by Any Other Name…
Journey further back to the time of the first Queen Elizabeth with stroll through the Shakespeare Garden, noted for its stylized look of a woodland glade. It’s just one of 14 themed gardens on the 120-acre property. This garden most dramatically unifies founder Henry Huntington’s love of books and the natural world by creating a formal space for the understanding of Shakespeare’s art and its relationship to plants. (Don’t miss a rare First Folio edition of the Bard’s plays, dated 1623, in the Library Exhibition Hall.)

The Shakespeare Garden includes many plants and flowers mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays including poppies, pansies, violets, pinks, carnations, rosemary, daffodils, irises, roses, columbines and marigolds, in tribute to the Library collection of early editions of Shakespeare. A small plaque next to each of the plants quotes the relevant line or verse: “ It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierc’d the fearful hollow of thine ear; Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate-tree...