National Gallery of Art

I was pleased to see recently that the West Building of the National Gallery of Art has reopened. As many of you know, I was fortunate enough to grow up in the Washington DC area and enjoy the many treasures there. As a young boy, my mother frequently took me to the museums and galleries and often to the National Gallery of Art, which she called the ‘Mellon Art Gallery’ after the man who made the initial contribution to the collection. I thought I would share some of the paintings that I really like there.

You will note that I have not included any recent paintings and that is simply because, due to copyright restrictions, it’s hard to get a high quality image. All of the images below are in the public domain and many are provided by the NGA as a part of their open access program.

Cuyp was one of the Dutch Golden Age painters. I love how he catches the morning light in this painting.

Vermeer was another Dutch artist who lived mostly in Delft. This is a rather small painting and is a part of the original collection donated by Andrew Mellon. Again, the light…and the expression on the girl’s face.

I like a lot of Mary Cassatt’s work. She was an American painter who lived most of her life in France and was a friend of Edgar Degas. A lot of her paintings are images of women in private and social settings and particularly with children. This painting was a part of the Chester Dale collection.

Judith Leyster was a Dutch Golden Age painter whose work was highly admired while she was alive but who was almost forgotten after her death. Most of her work was attributed, until recently, to Frans Hals. This particular work was attributed to Hals until it was acquired by the NGA in 1949. I really like the sense of closeness in this painting.

I love so much of his work. This is about the time he became most famous as an artist.

One of his many Moilin Rouge paintings.

Childe Hassam was an American Impressionist painter. He did a lot of flag paintings and I like this one. One of his others is in the White House permanent collection.

This is apparently one of many paintings of Mary Magdalene that he did, but the only one I’ve seen. I really like the chiaroscuro effect with her features brightly lit by the candle and the rest of the painting dark.

Finally, for today, this wonderful work by August Renoir. It was apparently painted at Claude Monet’s garden at Argenteuil. This just seems like a wonderful painting to me and I admired it when I was a six-year old boy. I think this is enough for now. I might do more later.