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Class of Summer 1924   

John Hubbard Rich
b. Boston, Massachusetts, 1876
d. Los Angeles, California, 1954
The Brass Bowl (or Señorita Lusoriaga), 1922
Oil on canvas
40 x 30 inches

Around the time John Hubbard Rich’s The Brass Bowl entered the GHS collection, it was in an exhibition of the Group of Eight, a Los Angeles-based modernist group focused on creative experimentation. In the painting, a young woman gazes downward, her many-colored dress merging with the background. The impressionistic mosaic of color signals Rich’s former study with leading American Impressionists, who specialized in lusciously painted portraits of women of leisure. Here Rich has created a synthesis of these influences, presenting a quietly exotic and iconic figure lost in thought, while suggesting a possible ritual quality of the brass bowl. The painting’s inclusion in an important exhibition and its reflection of regional culture and the large Hispanic community in Gardena most likely prompted the students’ selection.


GIFTED: Collecting the Art of California at Gardena High School, 1919-1956 is organized by the GHS Art Collection, Inc, in association with the Gardena High School Student Body and curated by Susan M. Anderson.