Introduction | 1907–1939 | 1941–1959 | 1961–1979 | 1980–1999
1980
Paul
Mellon gives the Gallery sixteen drawings and works of sculpture, including
Théodore Gericault's Flayed
Horse III and Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier's A Horseman in a Storm.
There is no intellectual or emotional substitute for the experience of confronting an original masterpiece. Paul Mellon, 1983
1981
With Paul Mellon's leadership, the Patrons' Permanent Fund is launched
to raise funds for an endowment for art acquisition.
1983
In
January, Paul Mellon gives the Gallery ninety-three works of art by nineteenth-
and twentieth-century artists, collected by Mr. and Mrs. Mellon over a
thirty-year period. Included are Vincent van Gogh's Flower Beds in
Holland, Mary Cassatt's Child in a Straw Hat, Paul Gauguin's
Breton
Girls Dancing, Pont-Aven, and ten works by Eugène Boudin.
Bunny and I—and I think I can also speak for my sister, Ailsa Mellon Bruce—have always loved the out-of-doors. Perhaps this explains our affinity for the impressionists. For never before or since in the unfolding pageant of art have painters so brilliantly captured the poetry of the countryside. Paul Mellon, 1967
On 20 December, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funds a new program for fellowships for advanced conservation training.
1985
Paul Mellon retires from the National Gallery's board of trustees after
more than forty years of service, is named the Gallery's first honorary
trustee, and receives the first Andrew W. Mellon medal.
This evening we recognize the very special contributions of Paul Mellon....This National Gallery that your father founded and that you and your sister have done so much to develop and preserve will live on for generations as a cherished part of our national and cultural heritage. President Ronald Reagan, 1985
On April 23, 1985, Paul Mellon is named one of the first recipients of the new National Medal of Arts, established by President and Mrs. Reagan for distinguished contributions to American culture.
In December, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon give 186 works of art to the National Gallery, including important American paintings by Winslow Homer, George Bellows, and Thomas Eakins, and impressionist and post-impressionist works by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Auguste Renoir, and Henri Matisse.
As we look to its future, I hope that you will consider the National Gallery as your gallery, for as Americans, its collections and resources belong to each of you. Paul Mellon, 1983
1986
Gifts to the Nation: Selected Acquisitions from the Collections of Mr.
and Mrs. Paul Mellon, an exhibition of eighty-five works of art selected
from works donated by the Mellons since 1964, goes on view in July.
While owning these pictures, in addition to the daily pleasure they gave us, there was also the subliminal pleasure of knowing that someday they would be seen and loved by many, many people in these classically serene surroundings. Paul Mellon, 1986
1991
In honor of the Gallery's fiftieth anniversary, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
give and promise to give Paul Cézanne's Boy
in a Red Waistcoat, Degas' wax sculpture Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, and thirty other Degas waxes, as well as paintings by Vincent
van Gogh, James McNeill Whistler, Edouard Manet, and Fitz Hugh Lane, among
other works of art. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation establishes a professorship
for a senior scholar in the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts,
in honor of the Gallery's fiftieth anniversary and of its founder.
1994
Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon give the Gallery more than thirty paintings and
watercolors, including eight major works by Winslow Homer, as well as
prints and bronzes.
1995
Paul
Mellon gives an additional eighty-five works of art, including Paul Gauguin's
Still Life
with Peonies, Edgar Degas' The
Dance Lesson, and other paintings, watercolors, drawings, and
prints by French impressionists and post-impressionists.
1996
Paul Mellon gives The
Death of Harlequin, Pablo Picasso's last painting on this theme.
One only has to wander through the nineteenth- and twentieth-century French and American galleries to see how consistently excellent Paul's taste was. The quality of what the Mellons gave is testimony to Paul's magnanimity, but so too was the volume of the gifts. David Rockefeller, 1999
1999
Paul Mellon dies at the age of 91 on February 1, 1999, leaving generous
donations to many institutions, the model of an exemplary life lived with
grace, modesty, and generosity, and a vision to guide future generations.