The Norton Simon Art Foundation, the culmination of several foundations founded by Norton Simon’s companies, was established in 1954 as The Hunt Foods Charitable Foundation. In July 1965 the Art Foundation made its first art purchases—two large bronze figures by Alberto Giacometti. Today, the Art Foundation owns some of the most renowned artworks in the world, including Raphael’s Madonna and Child with Book, c. 1502–3; Jacopo Bassano’s The Flight into Egypt, c. 1544–45; Vincent van Gogh’s Portrait of a Peasant (Patience Escalier), 1888; Edgar Degas’s Dancers in the Rotunda at the Paris Opera, 1895; and Amedeo Modigliani’s Portrait of the Artist's Wife, Jeanne Hebuterne, 1918. Since 1974 the majority of the Art Foundation’s collection has been on loan to the Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena.