AKU-2006-011

Attributed to the Studio of Diego Rivera, Mexican-American, c. 1930

Portrait of William Randolph Hearst at San Simeon, c. 1930

1930

Oil on canvas

200 × 155 cm

Acquisition

Purchased, 2006

Curator’s Note

William Randolph Hearst built San Simeon — a 90,000-square-foot castle on 250,000 acres of the California coast — between 1919 and 1947, importing 20,000 works of European art to fill it. He ran twenty-eight newspapers with a combined circulation of 20 million and pioneered the editorial practice later called yellow journalism. In 1941, Orson Welles released Citizen Kane. Hearst spent considerable resources attempting to suppress it. He did not succeed. The film was voted the greatest American film ever made in the 1998 AFI poll. San Simeon is now a California State Park. The admission fee is $25 for adults.

Exhibition

gilded-age-digital-age