Washington DC Page 3

July 2012

All Pages of This Report

Washington DC visit, page 3:

Day 3 and day 4 - National Gallery of Art. This is not part of the Smithsonian Museums, but also has free admission and is on the mall. There are 2 buildings, the West, which is the older one, and the East, which is newer and houses much of the more recent art. We did 2 tours Thursday morning, both led by the same volunteer docant. "Early Italian to Early Modern: An Introduction to the West Building Collection", and then "1900 to Now: An Introduction to the East Building Collection". To be a tour leader, you have a year of training and then have to create your own tours based on the topics. The tours were very good. For the 1st one, she selected representative works from different eras or regions and described some of the evolution of art. For the 2nd tour, she talked a lot about the very interesting building, as well as some of the drivers for the art work to change from one movement to another in the 20th century.

The talks took us until 12:30 on Thursday. We spent the rest of that day plus most of Friday at the museum. There is a lot there.

With a museum of this size and quality, there are of course many works that we could point out. I will limit myself to a very few.

Paul was on his game, and recognized a couple paintings from our visit to the Frick Museum in NYC last year. John Constable's The White Horse is actually a full-size oil sketch of the final version, which is at the Frick. Another John Constable painting, Salisbury Cathedral, is an earlier version than the similar one at the Frick.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Four Seasons in One Head. The Surealist Movement had nothing on Arcimboldo, who painted this over 300 years earlier. This has to be one of Anne's favorite paintings from the visit.
Canaletto, The Square of Saint Mark's, Venice. This is one of a few versions of St Mark's Square that Canaletto did, and of course it was a very popular subject with other artists. Since tourists could not take pictures back then, artists painted the famous views for sale to them as souvenirs.
We think pointillism is a fascinating style of painting. It mimics (but predates) ink-jet printers that use dots of color to create the over-all image. They had Seurat's lovely Seascape at Port-en-Bessin, Normandy on exhibit, along with a few others of this style.
Many works are so much nicer in person than in pictures. One of these is Andrew Wyeth's Wind from the Sea. And of course the ones that look 3-dimensional, like Harnett's The Old Violin. (You can expand the image to get an idea of how great this work is in person.)

Anne discovered a favorite sculptor: Paul Manship. He was even from Minnesota!

Bronze Paul Manship sculpture of a mermaid poised on a globe against a stone wall

Bronze Paul Manship sculpture of Actaeon with two hounds displayed on a pedestal

Georgia O'Keefe, Jack in the Pulpit: they had a very nice arrangement of 3 of her Jack in the Pulpit pictures, arranged in order of getting closer to the flower. #3, #5, #6.

Three Georgia O'Keeffe Jack-in-the-Pulpit paintings displayed together on a gallery wall

Here is Paul looking at one of the early Italian pieces.

Man standing and studying an early Italian painting in the National Gallery

Here is Anne in the pretty East Garden Court. You can see the entrance to the George Bellows special exhibit behind me. Bellows is most famous for his boxing paintings, but was actually an extremely varied artist. Some of his interests were the social underclass, politics, family, coastal scenes, city life, and human rights. Some examples are The Lone Tenement, commenting on the side effects of modernizing and building a new bridge, causing housing losses. Blue Snow The Battery, with the enticing winter scene in the early light of day. Forth and Back, showing the motion of the ocean. Sea in Fog, a more impressionistic take on the ocean. The White Horse, which is at the Worcester Art Museum. We really like how that one draws your eyes down the path to the little house in the distance, even though the horse is the focal point. And one last one that I will mention: Mrs. T. Unlike some of his early portraits, and even some of his contemporary with this one, he really shows details of her face and hands.

Woman standing in the East Garden Court of the National Gallery with the fountain and plants behind her

We arrived early in the day. The museum definitely filled up as the day went on. Even so, it never got as packed as some of the other museums, such as the Natural History. Here is a picture of the rotunda early in the morning, and then later in the day.

The rotunda fountain in the National Gallery early in the day with few people around it

The rotunda fountain later in the day with many visitors gathered around it

Friday after leaving the art museum we went over to the American History Museum. Paul had done an in-depth report in college on the revolutionary gunship USS Philadelphia. During that same internship mentioned earlier, he visited this museum and was very surprised to see the recovered ship on display! The Battle of Valcour Island is considered to be a turning point; although the US revolutionary forces lost, they delayed the British and enabled the subsequent victory at Saratoga.

Recovered Revolutionary War gunboat USS Philadelphia displayed in the museum