Suzi at the Haggin

The Haggin Museum recently acquired a watercolor by local artist Mabel McPhillips Rubin (October 10, 1899 - June 5, 1961) from her Victorian Era Home Series.   The Haggin's collection consists of 31 of Rubin's Victorian home watercolors.   In the past, I have posted some of her works on my various social media platforms however with this new acquisition I thought it would be interesting to learn more about her and some of the houses she documented.    The majority of the houses she painted are no longer standing in our city.    Mabel McPhillips was born in San Francisco, California.   She graduated from Polytechnic High School, San Francisco (1916), and was awarded a one-year scholarship to the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Institute of Art).   Her studies completed, she married Benjamin Rubin and the couple moved to New York.   Returning to San Francisco in 1920, Rubin found illustration and design work with Foster & Kleiser’s Billboard Posters, Wi

While the Haggin Museum staff is working on redesigning our art galleries, we have also been examining the stories and context that has long been attached to our core collection. Our team is specifically interested in how our new exhibit design will bring additional stories to the forefront of the Haggin collection. Through these discussions, many paintings in the Haggin collection have been deemed anchors to the Museum’s core collection and the Haggin narrative. These well-loved, historic Haggin favorites have been celebrated by our community; they have become essential to any discussion about the meaning and interpretation of the core collection. Childe Hassam’s THE CARRIAGE PARADE is one of those paintings.   Frederick Childe Hassam spent his formative years studying art in Boston. Between 1886 and 1889 Hassam lived in Paris and studied traditional academicism at the popular Académie Julian. Upon arrival in Paris, Hassam’s visually conservative techniques underwent a transformati

  Honorable Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House of Representatives The Haggin Museum’s art collection is once again receiving national attention as some of our paintings are heading to Washington D.C.  We were recently approached by the office of the Honorable Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House of Representatives, requesting that we loan a painting for his office.   The Speaker was particularly interested in borrowing a painting by Albert Bierstadt because it highlights some of the beautiful landscapes of our country.    With our current project underway of reimagining our art collection, we were unsure if we would be able to meet the request.   However, after providing the Speaker’s office with an inventory of paintings that were available for a multi-year loan, Speaker Ryan and his wife requested five paintings.    We are honored to be loaning the following works:   In the Yosemite Valley by Albert Bierstadt; Cloud Effect, Estes Park, Colorado by Albert Bi

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?   Visitors sometimes inquire about certain items they remember seeing here at The Haggin Museum years ago but are no longer on display. One of more interesting items is profiled below. THE KOMODO DRAGON From its beginning, The Haggin Museum was both an art and local history museum. It has, however, occasionally strayed from its primary foci and dabbled in Natural History. Case in point: the Komodo Dragon. A stuffed specimen of this giant lizard was presented to the museum and went on display in November of 1934. Originally brought back from Komodo Island alive, it had died in captivity and was mounted in St. Louis. It immediately drew the attention of museum visitors and newspaper columnists. The 10 foot long reptile was referred to as "Minnie" in a May 4, 1935 STOCKTON RECORD article, but two weeks later a correction was published, stating that the original owner had named the animal "Oscar."  The popular beast remained on display

The Tomato Queen, Tillie of the Valley, The First Lady of the Larder, The Duchess of Diet – were nicknames that newspapers and magazines such as Time, Life and National Geographic had given Tillie Lewis by the time her career reached its pinnacle. She was an exemplary businesswoman who made history in the 1930s during the Great Depression. She fundamentally changed the culture of food processing with her company Flotill Products, later Tillie Lewis Foods, right here in Stockton. Tillie was born Myrtle Ehrlich in a Brooklyn tenement. She changed her name, calling herself Tillie – a peppier version of Myrtle which better suited her drive and ambition. She lost her mother at a young age and reportedly disliked her stepmother so much that she dropped out of high school and got married at age 16. She had worked at various jobs since the age of 12 and now as Tillie Weisberg she worked as a clerk in her husband’s grocery store. Their grocery store sold canned goods and the Italia

Ralph Yardley, like many of his generation whose lives bridged the 19th and 20th centuries, witnessed many momentous social and technological changes in his world. He bid farewell to the horse and buggy and said "hello" to the automobile and airplane; he listened to the birth of the radio and watched the development of television; he looked on as the United States survived the Great Depression and four wars to become a global superpower; and he watched with great interest the growth and changes that time brought to Stockton - his hometown. And as an illustrator and newspaper artist for over 50 years, he complied a wonderful chronicle of his world and a fascinating legacy for succeeding generations. The son of John and Caroline Yardley, Ralph Oswald Yardley was born in his parents' home on East Sonora Street on September 2, 1878. Young Yardley attended local grammar schools where his penchant for drawing was first recognized, but it was his design of the title head for