Page 30 - Bonhams NYC Chinese works of Art March 2019

After the turn of the century, Virginia and Charles would relocate to
Colorado Springs, Colorado. There they once again commissioned
the construction of a French-inspired mansion, a scaled-down
version of the Grand Trianon at Versailles, retaining Stanford White
to design the home. However, his untimely murder in 1906 led Mrs.
Hobart Baldwin to hire a prominent local architect, paying him to
travel to Paris to sketch Versailles for inspiration. Completed in 1908
they called their new home “Claremont”, and within the 22,000
square feet floor plan, their collection of art and antiques was
tastefully exhibited.

Virginia and Charles would travel to China and Japan in 1913-1914,
returning in time to attend the Pan Pacific exhibition in San Francisco
in 1915. Several of her Chinese objects were undoubtedly acquired
during their Asian tour. In a letter to her son dated January 29th,
Fig 1. Hobart Family Mansion, prior to 1906 1913 from Kyoto, she writes with great enthusiasm of meeting the
圖 一：1906年以前，霍巴特舊金山府邸 famed dealer Sadajiro Yamanaka and with another Chinese porcelain
dealer in Tokyo the day before.

Ella Virginia Hobart was born into a prominent San Francisco family
as the daughter of Walter Scott Hobart, a timber, gold and silver
magnate who supplied wood for the Comstock Lode, Nevada’s
first silver mine, and later revitalized the Utica mine yielding him a
vast fortune in the late 19th century. Growing up in a stately San
Francisco mansion, described in contemporaneous accounts as
“one of the handsomest in the city”, Virginia’s name was frequently
mentioned in the society pages of newspapers, noting her excellence
in sports and fine taste in fashion.
After her parent’s deaths in 1892, the teenage heiress and her
two siblings were bequeathed a sizable fortune. In 1896 Virginia
married Charles A. Baldwin, the son of a Rear Admiral. The wedding
was a grand social event, (among the guests in attendance was a
young Ethel Barrymore) and the high society affair was covered in
minute detail not only by the local San Francisco newspapers, but Fig 2. Living room of Claremont, with ten lots in situ
it was considered nationally newsworthy and the story was picked 圖 二：克萊蒙特會客室
up by the New York Times and the Boston Globe. In several of the
wedding announcements the young debutante’s artistic nature and Throughout her life Virginia treasured the art and antiques she
fine connoisseurship is noted. showcased in the grand Colorado home. Visitors to the home
would often be treated to a “surprise”- a bronze, a print, a porcelain
The newlyweds would first reside in the Santa Clara valley south or a jade- and the history and aesthetics of the object would be
of San Francisco at Mr. Baldwin’s winery known as Beaulieu, the discussed. Often visitors to Claremont would be posed with the
architecture inspired by the buildings at Versailles near Paris, France. question “and, what do you collect?”
Featuring electricity and one of the area’s first automobiles, the
residence and grounds were designed by Willis Polk and made Following Charles’ death in 1936, Virginia sold Claremont in 1949,
a grand aesthetic statement, featured in a photographic essay in and returned to her native San Francisco. Although most of the art
the December 1902 issue of House & Garden. Their first home and antiques were sold with the Colorado home, she notably kept
still stands, now on the campus of DeAnza college in Cupertino, the Chinese porcelain and jades for her return to the Bay Area.
California and currently the home to the California History Center Claremont, now known as the Trianon, is presently on the campus of
Foundation. Colorado Springs School, and was named to the National Register
of Historic Places in 1977. The collection of Chinese porcelain and
jades were handed down through the family.

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