Release Date: October 15, 2004

PAINTINGS BY FRIEDRICH, DE WITTE, AND MANGOLD, WHITEREAD SCULPTURE, MANTEGNA ENGRAVING, AND RODCHENKO PHOTOGRAPHS
AMONG NEW ACQUISITIONS ANNOUNCED BY NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

Washington, DC– Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art, announced that approximately fifty new acquisitions were recently approved by the Gallery’s board of trustees, bringing the Gallery’s holdings to nearly 108,500.

"This diverse group of acquisitions, which includes important works by such masters as Caspar David Friedrich, Emmanuel de Witte, Mantegna, Robert Mangold, Rachel Whiteread, and Aleksandr Mikhailovich Rodchenko, enables us to begin closing some gaps in such areas as northern European landscape paintings and 20th-century expressionism, as well as increase depth in others, such as Renaissance engravings and avant-garde photographs," said Powell.

Acquisition highlights follow:

PAINTINGS

Caspar David Friedrich, German, 1774–1840
Northern Landscape, Spring, c. 1825
oil on canvas, 14 x 19 in. (35.3 x 49.1 cm)

Caspar David Friedrich’s Northern Landscape, Spring, recently discovered in Germany, is the Gallery’s first German romantic painting and the second work by this artist to enter the collection. The Gallery owns an important late sepia drawing by Friedrich, Moonrise on an Empty Shore (1837/1839), acquired in 1992. The painting, in pristine condition, represents a sparse northern landscape with blades of grass pushing through the snow in the foreground. While it is typical for Friedrich, the stark and empty composition was radical for its time. The painting is highly refined, subtle in its light and its cool tonalities.

Made possible by the Patrons’ Permanent Fund.

On view in West Building, Main Floor, Gallery M-92.

Emmanuel de Witte, Dutch, 1616/17–1692
The Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam c. 1660–65
oil on canvas, 31 1/4 x 39 3/4 in. (80.5 x 100 cm)

Emmanuel de Witte and Pieter Saenredam are the most important 17th-century painters of church interiors, a genre of great significance in Dutch art. The Interior of the Oude Kerk, Amsterdam is the first work by De Witte to enter the Gallery’s collection. It is one of his most imposing works, due to its unusually large scale and the dramatic view down the nave of a church. It is boldly executed, with dramatic light effects streaming across the composition. Its well-conceived figures, including a funeral procession, a mother nursing a baby near a freshly dug tomb, and a dog relieving itself, are symbolic of life and death and enliven the space.

Made possible by the Patrons’ Permanent Fund.

On view in West Building, Main Floor, Gallery 58.

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

(Note to press: See special press release for announcement of the acquisition of Rachel Whiteread’s sculpture Ghost)

Robert Mangold, American, b.1937
Yellow Wall (Section I + II), 1964
oil on plywood and metal, 96 x 96 in. (246 x 246 cm)

The addition of Yellow Wall (Section I + II) to the Gallery’s contemporary collection continues the Gallery’s effort to acquire works by major conceptualist and minimalist artists such as Richard Serra, Robert Ryman, Dan Flavin, and Mel Bochner. The Gallery has a sizeable holding of Robert Mangold’s work from the Vogel Collection acquired in 1991, but Yellow Wall stands out as a rare, important, large-scale example from the artist’s early breakthrough period. The piece consists of painted panels constructed from standardized four-by-eight-foot construction plywood covered with masonite and sprayed in matte paint. Rectilinear notches and cutouts allude to the spaces of windows and doors, while moldings replicate the architectural features of an actual wall. Yellow Wall belongs to the artist’s early series--Walls and Areas--which were exhibited together in 1965 at the Fischbach Gallery in New York. Yellow Wall, which was in the collection of the artist and hung at the contemporary art space in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, for many years, appeared in the recent survey exhibition of minimalism at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.

Made possible by the Nancy Lee and Perry Bass Fund.

On view in the East Building, Concourse Galleries.

SCULPTURES AND MEDALS

Edward Francis McCartan, American, 1879–1947
Isoult, 1926
bronze, 83 in. high (213 cm) (including integral plinth)

Edward Francis McCartan, who was recognized as one of America’s leading sculptors in the 1920s, created this critically acclaimed bronze figure of a woman with a doe for the formal garden of Mr. and Mrs. Junius Morgan’s new house in Locust Valley, New York. Isoult, whose title refers more to a popular turn-of-the-century romance than to Arthurian legend, is one of McCartan’s three or four finest works, as well as his most ambitious. Slightly larger than life-size, it appears to be the only one of his bronzes which is a unique cast. The clarity of silhouette, the eloquent voids, and the delicate balance owe much to Paul Manship’s sculpture, but Isoult retains more of the reality of the life model. As part of the Gallery’s expanding collection of sculpture, the modern American Isoult joins the Gallery’s great Renaissance and baroque garden statues.

Made possible by the Patrons’ Permanent Fund.

Location to be announced.

Pierre-Jean David d’Angers, French, 1788–1856
Uriah P. Levy (1792–1862), 1833
bronze, 7 in. (18 cm)

A leading Romantic sculptor, David d’Angers reintroduced the art of the cast medal with an extensive series of portrait medallions of his great contemporaries. He modeled the portrait of Levy, the first Jewish officer to serve in the United States Navy, whose tenure was made possible by President Jefferson’s end to religious discrimination in the military. The medal of Levy is the first one by David d’Angers to show its subject full face. Its rarity, unusual composition, and subject make it the most important medal by the artist in the Gallery’s collection.

Made possible by the Eugene L. and Marie-Louise Garbaty Fund.

Location to be announced.

PRINTS

Mantegna or School, Italian, 1431–1506
Battle of Naked Men (after Antonio del Pollaiuolo), 1460s
engraving, 14 1/2 x 21 5/8 in. (37 x 55 cm)

Battle of Naked Men is one of the major early monuments in the Italian Renaissance renewal of focus on the human figure, especially the nude and the anatomy of the nude in action, with muscles tensed and seen from various angles. This is the earliest example in the Gallery’s entire collection of this important moment in art history. Battle of Naked Men is crucial to its central Renaissance theme, as well as to the origins of Italian engraving. At the Gallery this work joins the finest known impression of Mantegna’s engraving of the Entombment (1465/1470), and two of the most outstanding of his Battle of the Sea Gods (c.1485) and The Virgin and Child (c.1490), as well as two impressions of Pollaiuolo’s own engraving of the Battle of Naked Men (c. 1470).

Giovanni Battista Piranesi (c. 1720–1778)
The Aqueduct of Nero, 1775
etching: unrecorded artist’s proof before letters and further work in the image, with Piranesi’s manuscript title
plate size, 19 3/8 in. x 27 7/8 in. (49 x 71 cm)
sheet size, 21 5/8 in. x 31 ¾ in. (55 x 80.6 cm)

This powerful composition from late in Piranesi’s life is one of his running series of 135 large Views of Rome, created over the course of 30 years, from 1747 until his death. The series embodies his visionary understanding of the magnificence of Roman architecture. He prepared these impressive views with great care, but disposed of nearly all his preparatory drawings and working proofs. Of the 135 Views, only 15 working proofs or proofs before the letters survive. The Gallery has the world’s finest collection of prints and illustrated books by Piranesi, and this Aqueduct of Nero now gives the collection three of the 15 rare artist’s proofs of the Views of Rome.

The two acquisitions listed above, as well as the finest known impression of Jan van Scorel’s imposing woodcut, The Deluge (c.1530), and a complete set of unique artist’s proofs, printed on gold silk satin, of Cherbino Alberti’s series of five engravings, The Rape of the Sabine Women (after Polidoro da Caravaggio) (c.1600), are from Samuel Josefowitz’ important collection of old master and modern prints.

All four acquisitions were made possible by the Patrons’ Permanent Fund.

They will be on view in the West Building exhibition, Six Centuries of Prints and Drawings: Recent Acquisitions, November 14, 2004 through May 30, 2005.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Aleksandr Mikhailovich Rodchenko, Russian, 1891–1956
eight gelatin silver prints

Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1924
9 x 7 in. (23. x 17.5 cm)

Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1924
22 x 14 in. (57.5 x 34.9 cm)

Columns of the Museum of the Revolution, 1926
15 x 10 in. (37.8 x 26.9 cm)

Mosselprom Building, 1930
9 x 6 in. (23.8 x 15.9 cm)

Pioneer, 1930
14.9 x 11 in. (38 x 29.2 cm)

Pioneer with a Bugle, 1930
9 1/2 x 8 in. (24.3 x 19.8 cm)

Male Pyramid, 1936
23 x 24.6 in. (59.8 x 24.6 cm)

Russian avant-garde painter and photographer Aleksandr Mikhailovich Rodchenko abandoned painting in 1921, considering it to be corrupted by bourgeois values, and embraced the applied arts, including photomontage. Among his most important photographs are his studies of the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. The Gallery acquired two prints from this series; the earlier one depicts the poet with an unadorned directness that was without precedent in the art of photography. The monumental size of the second print reflects the poet’s glorified stature after his death and after Stalin had proclaimed him a hero of the revolution. Two other vintage prints--The Columns of the Museum of the Revolution and The Mosselprom Building--illustrate the innovative photographs Rodchenko made after 1925 that explored radically new ways of depicting the world. In the late 1920s and 1930s, as he came under criticism from the communist leadership, Rodchenko sought to make his photographs conform more closely to the dictates of Stalinism. The Gallery acquired three photographs from his series celebrating the youthful vigor of the Pioneers, organized groups of young people who were to be groomed to be the leaders of the new society.

Made possible by the Patrons’ Permanent Fund.

When not on view, photographs may be seen by appointment by calling (202) 842-6144.

General Information

The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden are at all times free to the public. They are located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, and are open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The Gallery is closed on December 25 and January 1. For information call (202) 737-4215 or the Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) at (202) 842-6176, or visit the Gallery's Web site at www.nga.gov. The Gallery is now on Facebook—become a fan at www.facebook.com/NationalGalleryofArt.

Visitors will be asked to present all carried items for inspection upon entering the East and West Buildings. Checkrooms are free of charge and located at each entrance. Luggage and other oversized bags must be presented at the 4th Street entrances to the East or West Building to permit x-ray screening and must be deposited in the checkrooms at those entrances. For the safety of visitors and the works of art, nothing may be carried into the Gallery on a visitor's back. Any bag or other items that cannot be carried reasonably and safely in some other manner must be left in the checkrooms. Items larger than 17 x 26 inches cannot be accepted by the Gallery or its checkrooms.

For additional press information please call or send inquiries to:

Press Office
National Gallery of Art
2000B South Club Drive
Landover, MD 20785
phone: (202) 842-6353 e-mail: pressinfo@nga.gov

Deborah Ziska
Chief of Press and Public Information
(202) 842-6353
ds-ziska@nga.gov

If you are a member of the press and would like to be added to our press list, click here.

PAINTINGS BY FRIEDRICH, DE WITTE, AND MANGOLD, WHITEREAD SCULPTURE, MANTEGNA ENGRAVING, AND RODCHENKO PHOTOGRAPHS AMONG NEW ACQUISITIONS ANNOUNCED BY NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

PAINTINGS BY FRIEDRICH, DE WITTE, AND MANGOLD, WHITEREAD SCULPTURE, MANTEGNA ENGRAVING, AND RODCHENKO PHOTOGRAPHS
AMONG NEW ACQUISITIONS ANNOUNCED BY NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART