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Eighteenth-Century Drawings from the Collection of Mrs. Gertrude Laughlin Chanler

June 20 – September 6, 1982
East Building, Ground Floor, Northeast, Pod I (2,000 sq. ft.)

Antoine Watteau, Italian Comedians Taking Their Bows, c. 1718, red chalk and graphite on cream laid paper, Gift of Gertrude Laughlin Chanler, 2000.9.27

This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.

Overview: Among the 25 drawings were 6 by François Boucher, 6 by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and others by their contemporaries. Also included were 4 books. Between 1912 and 1935, Irwin Boyle Laughlin (1871-1941), prominent Washingtonian and former ambassador to Spain, had assembled a collection of drawings that passed to his daughter Gertrude Laughlin Chanler in 1958. Selections had been shown at the Gallery in 1944, and the same collection in 1967.

Organization: The exhibition was coordinated by Margaret Morgan Grasselli.

Attendance: 161,871

Catalog: Eighteenth-Century Drawings from the Collection of Mrs. Gertrude Laughlin Chanler, by Margaret Morgan Grasselli. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1982.