National Gallery of Art in Washington Dc a Painting Called the Wind

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Andrew Mellon donated more than than 150 artworks that would go the core of the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; he also donated money that would be used to build the museum'southward first dwelling house, today called the Westward Edifice. The formal acceptance of his gifts by the U.S. Congress in 1937 marks the founding of the National Gallery. Its drove has since grown to more 150,000 works. This list highlights only eight noteworthy paintings.

Before versions of the descriptions of these paintings first appeared in1001 Paintings You Must Run into Before You Dice, edited past Stephen Farthing (2018). Writers' names appear in parentheses.

Woman Property a Residue (c. 1664)

Woman Holding a Balance by Johannes Vermeer
Woman Holding a Residue, oil on canvas past Johannes Vermeer, c. 1664; in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Widener Collection, 1942.9.97, National Gallery of Fine art, Washington, D.C.

Held lightly betwixt a adult female's slim fingers, a frail balance forms the central focus of this painting. Behind the woman hangs a painting of Christ's Last Judgment. Hither, Johannes Vermeer uses symbolism and then that he can tell a lofty story through an ordinary scene. Woman Holding a Rest employs a carefully planned composition to express one of Vermeer'southward major preoccupations—finding life's underlying balance. The central vanishing bespeak of the painting occurs at the woman's fingertips. On the table earlier her lie earthly treasures—pearls and a gold concatenation. Behind her, Christ passes judgment on humanity. There is a mirror on the wall, a common symbol of vanity or worldliness, while a soft lite raking across the motion-picture show sounds a spiritual note. The serene, Madonna-like woman stands in the center, calmly weighing transitory worldly concerns against spiritual ones. (Ann Kay)
The Skater (1782)

The perfectly poised and polished composition with its wash of vibrant surfaces tell of an artist totally at ease with his subject matter. Gilbert Stuart was primarily a painter of head and shoulders, so his full-length skater was something of a rarity. Painted in Edinburgh, this eye-communicable picture by Stuart of his friend William Grant combines cool colors with flawless portraiture. Every bit with many of his paintings, Stuart works up from a dark mass, in this case the ice, which provides a solid foundation for the skater. The figure rises above the water ice with tilting hat, crossed arms, and an most jaunty face, in dark clothes that provide a contrast to the background whites and grays. From the age of 14, Stuart was already painting on commission in colonial America. In 1776 he sought refuge in London during the American State of war of Independence. There he studied with Benjamin Westward, the visual chronicler of early U.S. colonial history. It was West who aptly described Stuart's skill for "nailing a face up to the canvass." For his ability to capture a sitter'due south essence, Stuart was regarded by his London peers as second only to Sir Joshua Reynolds; he was far above his American contemporaries—with the exception of Bostonian John Singleton Copley. But finances were not Stuart'southward forté, and he was forced to flee to Republic of ireland in 1787 to escape creditors. Returning to America in the 1790s, Stuart apace established himself every bit the country's leading portraitist, not least with his paintings of 5 U.Due south. presidents. (James Harrison)
Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1785–87)

Mrs. Sheridan, oil on sail by Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1785; in the National Gallery of Fine art, Washington, D.C. 220 × 150 cm.
Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.92

In this bewitching portrait, Thomas Gainsborough captured a compelling likeness of the sitter while too creating an air of melancholy. This emphasis on mood was rare in the portraiture of the day, but it became an important concern for the Romantics in the following century. Gainsborough had known the sitter since she was a child and had painted her, together with her sister, when he was living in Bath (The Linley Sisters, 1772). He was a close friend of the family, largely considering they shared his passion for music. Indeed, Elizabeth was a talented soprano and had performed as a soloist at the celebrated Three Choirs Festival. She had been obliged to abandon her singing career, all the same, afterward eloping with Richard Brinsley Sheridan—so a penniless histrion. Sheridan went on to achieve considerable success, both as a playwright and as a politico, but his private life suffered in the procedure. He ran upwardly huge gambling debts and was repeatedly unfaithful to his married woman. This may business relationship for Elizabeth's wistful and somewhat forlorn advent in this film. Ane of Gainsborough'south greatest assets was his ability to orchestrate the various elements of a flick into a satisfying whole. In all too many portraits, the sitter resembles a cardboard cut-out placed against a mural groundwork. Here, the creative person has paid as much attention to the sumptuous pastoral setting as to his glamorous model, and he has ensured that the breeze, which is making the branches bend and sway, is likewise stirring the gauze drapery around Elizabeth's cervix. (Iain Zaczek)
La condition humaine (1933)

René Magritte was built-in in Lessines, Belgium. Later studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, he worked in a wallpaper manufacturing plant and was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926. Magritte settled in Paris at the end of the 1920s, where he met members of the Surrealist movement, and he presently became one of the well-nigh meaning artists of the grouping. He returned to Brussels a few years later and opened an advertising agency. Magritte'south fame was secured in 1936, afterward his first exhibition in New York. Since then, New York has been the location of ii of his most important retrospective shows—at the Museum of Mod Fine art in 1965 and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1992. La Condition Humaine is 1 of many versions Magritte painted on the aforementioned theme. The picture is emblematic of the piece of work he produced in Paris during the 1930s, when he was still nether the spell of the Surrealists. Hither, Magritte executes a kind of optical illusion. He depicts an bodily painting of a landscape displayed in front end of an open window. He makes the paradigm on the painted picture show match perfectly with the "truthful" landscape outdoors. In doing so, Magritte proposed, in one unique image, the association between nature and its representation through the means of art. This work also stands equally an assertion of the artist's ability to reproduce nature at will and proves how ambiguous and impalpable the border between exterior and interior, objectivity and subjectivity, and reality and imagination tin be. (Steven Pulimood)
The Admiration of the Shepherds (1505/10)

The Adoration of the Shepherds past Giorgione
The Adoration of the Shepherds, oil on canvas by Giorgione, 1505/10; in the Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. ninety.8 × 110.five cm.
Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.289

Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco, known as Giorgione, commanded enormous respect and influence given that his productive menstruum lasted only 15 years. Very picayune is known near him, although it is believed that he was familiar with Leonardo da Vinci's art. He began his preparation in the workshop of Giovanni Bellini in Venice, and he would afterward claim both Sebastiano del Piombo and Titian as his pupils. Giorgio Vasari wrote that Titian was the best imitator of the Giorgionesque style, a connection that fabricated their styles hard to differentiate. Giorgione perished from the plague in his early 30s, and his posthumous fame was firsthand. Adoration of the Shepherds, otherwise known every bit the Allendale Nativity from the proper noun of its 19th-century English owners, is among the finest renderings of Loftier Renaissance Nativities. Information technology is likewise widely regarded as one of the almost solidly attributed Giorgiones in the globe. (At that place is discussion, however, that the angels' heads have been painted over by an unknown hand.) The Venetian blond tonality of the sky and the large and enveloping bucolic atmosphere differentiate this Nativity. The holy family receive the shepherds at the rima oris of a dark cave; they are seen in the light because the Christ kid has brought low-cal into the world. Christ's mother Mary is clad in resplendent blue-and-blood-red drape in keeping with tradition: blue to signify the divine, and ruby signifying her own humanity. (Steven Pulimood)
Girl with the Red Chapeau (c. 1665/66)

Johannes Vermeer: Girl with the Red Chapeau
Daughter with the Red Hat, oil on console past Johannes Vermeer, c. 1665/66; in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Andrew West. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.53, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

This painting belongs to the menses when Jan Vermeer produced the tranquil interior scenes for which he is famed. For such a small-scale painting, Girl with the Ruby-red Hat has slap-up visual impact. Like his Daughter with a Pearl Earring, a girl with sensuously parted lips looks over her shoulder at the viewer while highlights glint off her face and earrings. Here, however, the girl looms larger, placed in the foreground of the motion-picture show, confronting us more straight. Her extravagant blood-red hat and luxuriant blue wrap are flamboyant for Vermeer. In contrasting the vibrant colors with a muted, patterned backdrop he increases the daughter's prominence and creates a forceful theatricality. Vermeer employed painstaking techniques—opaque layers, sparse glazes, wet-in-wet blending, and points of colour—that help to explain why his output was low and why both scholars and the public find him endlessly fascinating. (Ann Kay)
Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist) (1950)

Jackson Pollock is a 20th-century cultural icon. After studying at the Art Students' League in 1929 under Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton, he became influenced by the work of the Mexican Social Realist muralists. He studied at David Alfaro Siqueiros's experimental workshop in New York, where he began painting with enamel. He later on used commercial enamel house paint in his work, claiming information technology allowed him greater fluidity. By the late 1940s Pollock had adult the "baste and splash" method, which some critics claim was influenced by the automatism of the Surrealists. Abandoning a paintbrush and easel, Pollock worked on a sail laid out on the floor, using sticks, knives, and other implements to fling, distill, or manipulate the paint from every aspect of the canvas, while building upwards layer-upon-layer of colour. Sometimes he introduced other materials, such as sand and drinking glass, to create dissimilar textures. Number 1, 1950 helped cement Pollock'southward reputation as a groundbreaking artist. It is a mixture of long black-and-white strokes and arcs, brusk, abrupt drips, spattered lines, and thick blotches of enamel paint and it manages to combine physical action with a soft and airy feel. Pollock'south friend, art critic Cloudless Greenberg, suggested the title Lavender Mist to reflect the painting'due south atmospheric tone, even though no lavander was used in the piece of work: it is composed primarily of white, blue, yellow, gray, umber, rosy pink, and black paint. (Aruna Vasudevan)
Saint John in the Desert (c. 1445/50)

Saint John in the Desert is role of an altarpiece painted for the Church of Santa Lucia dei Magnoli, in Florence. This is the masterwork of one of the leading artists of the early on Italian Renaissance, Domenico Veneziano. Here is art at a crossroads, mixing medieval and emerging Renaissance styles with a new appreciation of light, colour, and space. The name Veneziano suggests that Domenico came from Venice, but he spent most of his days in Florence and was ane of the founders of the 15th-century school of Florentine painting. John is seen exchanging his normal clothes for a rough camel-pilus glaze—exchanging a worldly life for an austere one. Veneziano departed from the medieval norm of depicting John as an older, bearded hermit and instead displays a young man cast, literally, in the mold of ancient sculpture. Classical art became a major influence on the Renaissance, and this is one of the first examples. The landscape'south powerful, nonrealistic shapes symbolize the harsh surroundings in which John has chosen to pursue his pious path and recall scenes from Gothic medieval art; in fact, the creative person trained initially in the Gothic manner and very probably studied the northern European artists. What is likewise remarkable well-nigh this painting is its clear, open delicacy and its attention to atmospheric light effects. The space has been advisedly organized, simply Veneziano in large function uses his revolutionary light, fresh colors (achieved in office by adding actress oil to his tempera) to bespeak perspective, rather than the lines of the composition, and in this he was a pioneer. (Ann Kay)