National Gallery of Art, Washington: One Thousand Masterpieces in Full Color

by John Walker (Editor)

Other authorsJ. Carter Brown (Foreword)
Hardcover, 1977

Call number

708 W

Collection

Publication

Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (1977), Edition: First Edition, 696 pages

Description

A history of the gallery from its inception in the 1930s accompanies more than one thousand reproductions of the nation's art treasures housed in the great museum.

User reviews

LibraryThing member gbill
Happiness is finding a great deal at a library book sale. I was quite pleased to pay $5 for this giant book of art from the National Gallery in Washington DC. It features 1,120 illustrations, almost all of them color, and many of them at the full page size of 9.5 x 11.5 inches. And what a
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collection it is, featuring paintings from the early Italian and Northern masters to those of the 20th century, as well as sculptures and drawings. It was interesting to read about the shrewd way the collection was acquired, and the commentary on the pieces, while a bit uneven and ‘old school’ (calling to mind some of the points Berger made in ‘Ways of Seeing’), sometimes revealed some interesting facts.

It’s very hard to pick favorites, but here are 25 paintings and a handful of sculptures and drawings which were at the top for me (as there were 40+ other works that were under consideration, so at least parts of this list could easily change in another frame of mind). Upon looking up a few of these on the museum’s website to compose a ‘virtual tour’, I find some of the titles have changed slightly since 1974, when this edition was first published. It’s also too bad more of these weren’t on the National Gallery’s ‘Intimate Impressionism’ tour, which reached San Francisco in 2014.

1. Leonardo da Vinci - Ginevra de' Benci 1480
2. Raphael - Bindo Altoviti 1515
3. Titian - Venus with a Mirror 1555
4. Gentileschi - The Lute Player 1612/20
5. Murillo - A Girl and Her Duenna 1655/60
6. Hals - Balthasar Coymans 1645
7. Rembrandt - The Mill 1645-48
8. El Greco - Laocoon 1610
9. Boucher - Venus Consoling Love 1751
10. de Goya - Dona Teresa Sureda 1805
11. Raeburn - Miss Eleanor Urquhart 1793
12. Turner - Mortlake Terrace 1826
13. Manet - Flowers in a Crystal Vase 1882
14. Renoir - Odalisque 1870
15. Degas - Four Dancers 1899
16. Cezanne - House of Pere Lacroix 1873
17. van Gogh - Farmhouse in Provence, Arles 1888
18. Redon - Evocation of Roussel 1912
19. Rousseau - Rendezvous in the Forest 1889
20. Fantin-Latour - Mademoiselle de Fitz-James 1867
21. Homer - Breezing Up 1876
22. Cassatt - The Boating Party 1893-94
23. Modigliani - Chaim Soutine 1917
24. Feininger - Zirchow VII 1918
25. Hartley - Mount Kitadhin 1942

1. Rodin - The Evil Spirits 1899
2. Tassaert - Painting and Sculpture 1775-78
3. Lehmbruck - Seated Youth (The Friend) 1917
4. Bernini - Self-Portrait 1614-15
5. Picasso - Self-Portrait 1902
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Pages

696

ISBN

0810903369 / 9780810903364
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