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Discover some of the most iconic and important works in the world, in the heart of Washington, DC.

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The image features a series of horizontal lines and a rectangle filled with star shapes at the top left corner. The flag consists of green and black stripes with a red rectangle in the upper left containing a pattern of blue stars. Below, a more subdued version mirrors the form with tones of gray and white. The composition is set against a textured gray background.

:  American Icon

The US Flag in Art

Through December 6

Visiting with kids?

Make the most of your visit.

Hands-On Activities:  Storytime: I Like Myself/¡Me gusta cómo soy! 

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Talks & Conversations:  Poetry Writing Workshop: María Fernanda on Language

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This is a painting of a person surrounded by abstract forms. The person is facing the right, and they have pale skin, high cheekbones, and pink lips. They appear to be wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a thick white collared shirt. One of their hands is visible, clenched in a fist and resting on a brown table. To the right of the person is a white shape that looks like a four-pointed star. Behind the person are similarly abstract swirls of red, blue, and white.

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Talks & Conversations:  The Art of Looking: David Alfaro Sinqueiros, Self-Portrait 

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An armored man on horseback hands a piece of emerald-green cloth down to the nearly nude man standing next to him in this slightly stylized, vertical painting. Both men have light skin, and they, along with the horse, nearly fill the composition. To our right, the bright white horse stands angled to our right with the front left hoof raised. It has a smoke-gray mane, and wears a black bridle. The man riding the horse has short, copper-blond hair and a long face with a pointed chin. He looks down at the ground with dark eyes under black, arched brows. He has a long, thin nose, and his small lips are closed and framed by the faint suggestion of a mustache. He wears a white ruff pleated into figure-eights over his high-necked armor, which is liberally outlined and decorated with gold against the pewter-colored plates. He grips the voluminous, green cape in one hand and holds a sword in the other, down by the leg we can see. The cleanshaven man next to him, to our left, looks off to our right in profile. He has close-cropped, dark hair and smooth skin. His lips are parted, and he tips his head slightly away from us. He holds the green cloth with the hand closer to the horse and gestures down with his other pointer finger, in front of his hip. A white cloth bandage is wrapped around one shin, and he rests his weight on the other leg. The horse and man stand on a curving spit of brown earth. A spring-green landscape dips down behind them, running low near the bottom edge of the painting. The horizon comes about a quarter of the way up the composition, and fog-gray and white clouds create thin screens across the topaz-blue sky. The loose brushstrokes are visible in some areas, especially in the landscape and clothing. The artist signed his name in Greek near the lower right corner.

Talks & Conversations:  Finding Awe: El Greco’s Saint Martin and the Beggar 

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A kid playing with toys at a First Saturday event at the National Gallery of Art.

Hands-On Activities:  Kids' Play Space

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Hands-On Activities:  Storytime: I Like Myself/¡Me gusta cómo soy! 

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Find out about our free talks, tours, exhibitions, and more.

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A fleet of ships gathers in a river lined by trees and buildings in this horizontal painting. The horizon is low, less than a quarter of the way up the composition, and the immense pale blue sky above is filled with clouds with golden tops above dove-gray undersides. The river spans the width of the painting and is congested with boats and ships, many festooned with red, white, and blue flags and banners. The vessels are crowded with people, mostly men wearing hats and black or brown garments. A ship to our right is closest to us and is the largest in the composition. A rowboat has pulled up to the side of the ship, and is occupied by a seated man wearing crimson red and a standing man wearing black. Another man, wearing brown, pulls the rowboat closer to the ship. Amid the densely packed deck over the rowboat, a musician plays a drum while another drinks from a flagon. Ships with unfurled sails, rowboats, and ferries fill the river behind and around the large ship. Churches and buildings are clustered along the riverbank to the left and trees line the river to the right.

Discover our artworks.

Our extraordinary collection brings together centuries of masterpieces from around the world. 

Explore by artist, topic, period, and more

Play Color Catch on Roblox

Dash through worlds inspired by our artworks in this interactive game of chase.

Color Catch National Gallery of Art

A few of our favorites

This painting shows a woman sitting with her body turned to the right, her hands clasped around her knees and her head tilted up to the ceiling. Her eyes are closed, and her long, wavy hair flows over her shoulders and down her back. She has pale skin, and her face is illuminated by dramatic lighting, highlighting her round cheeks and small nose. She is wearing a white blouse with ruffled sleeves that drapes off of her right shoulder, exposing her neck, sternum, and part of her shoulder. Over this shirt she seems to be wearing a draped purple garment with a yellow border that covers her other shoulder and her legs. The background is dark.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy, c. 1625, oil on canvas, Gift of Funds from Nina J. Cohen in honor of her father Emanuel Cohen and Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2025.88.1
The top quarter of this horizontal abstract painting is dominated by bright, sunshine yellow over areas of sky blue, moss and forest green, and white below. The painting is made up of four vertical panels joined to make one long composition. Yellow dominates the leftmost panel over a field of pale blue marked with forest and spring green, teal, and yellow, mostly along the bottom edge of the canvas. The field of pale blue and white take up most of the space in the two center panels, with a band of yellow above and deep green marks below. In the rightmost panel, the blue field is more variegated with darker blues, shades of green, white, and yellow. Throughout, some of the colors are layered and sometimes they are applied next to each other. Thick and thin areas of paint and drips create a variety of textures on the surface of each panel. The artist signed this work in pencil in the lower right corner: “Joan Mitchell.”
Joan Mitchell, Salut Tom, 1979, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of the Women's Committee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and Museum Purchase with the aid of funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, 1979), 2014.136.135
Edgar Degas, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, 1878-1881, pigmented beeswax, clay, metal armature, rope, paintbrushes, human hair, silk and linen ribbon, cotton faille bodice, cotton and silk tutu, linen slippers, on wooden base, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1999.80.28
Shown from the knees up, a woman with brown, wrinkled skin, wearing a white blouse, apron, and black skirt is shown in front of a pale gray background in this vertical portrait painting. Straight-backed, she faces and looks at us with her hands resting in her lap. Her wavy, iron-gray hair is parted in the center and pulled back from her face. Her eyebrows are slightly raised, and her face is deeply lined down her cheeks and around her mouth. She wears a heart-shaped brooch with a red stone at its center at her neck and a gold band on her left ring finger. The light coming from our left casts a shadow against the wall to our right. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner: “A.J. MOTLEY. JR. 1922.”
Archibald John Motley Jr., Portrait of My Grandmother, 1922, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, Avalon Fund, and Motley Fund, 2018.2.1
Two women with pale skin look out at us from the other side of a rectangular window opening with a shadowy interior behind them in this vertical painting. On our right, in the lower third of the composition, one young woman leans toward us over her left arm, which rests along the window ledge. She bends her right arm and props her chin on her fist. She looks at us with dark brown eyes under dark brows. She has shiny chestnut-brown hair with a strawberry-red bow on the right side of her head, to our left. She has a straight nose, and her full pink lips curve up in a smile. She wears a gossamer-white dress with a wide neckline trimmed in dark gray, with another red bow on the front of her chest. Her voluminous sleeves are pushed back to her elbows. To our left, a second woman peeks around a partially opened shutter. She is slightly older, and she stands next to the first woman with her body facing us. She tilts her head and also gazes at us with dark eyes under dark brown brows. She has dark brown hair covered by an oyster-white shawl. She holds the shawl up with her right hand to cover the bottom half of her face. Her mouth is hidden but her eyes crinkle as if in a smile. Her left arm bends at the elbow as she grasps the open shutter. She also wears a white shirt pushed back to her elbows, and a rose-pink skirt. The frame of the window runs parallel to the sides and bottom of the canvas. The room behind them is black in shadow.
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Two Women at a Window, c. 1655/1660, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.46
We look onto the side of a rowboat crowded with nine men trying to save a pale, nude young man who flails in the water in front of us as a shark approaches, mouth agape, from our right in this horizontal painting. In the water, the man floats with his chest facing the sky, his right arm overhead and the other stretched out by his side. Extending to our left, his left leg is bent and the right leg is straight, disappearing below the knee. His long blond hair swirls in the water and he arches his back, his wide-open eyes looking toward the shark behind him. To our right, the shark rolls up out of the water with its gaping jaws showing rows of pointed teeth. In the boat, eight of the men have light or tanned complexions, and one man has dark brown skin. The man with brown skin stands at the back center of the boat, and he holds one end of a rope, which falls across the boat and around the upper arm of the man in the water. Another man stands at the stern of the boat, to our right, poised with a long, hooked harpoon over the side of the boat, ready to strike the shark. His long dark hair blows back and he wears a navy-blue jacket with brass buttons, white breeches, blue stockings, and his shoes have silver buckles. Two other men wearing white shirts with blousy sleeves lean over the side of the boat, bracing each other as they reach toward the man in the water. An older, balding man holds the shirt and body of one of this pair and looks on, his mouth open. The other men hold long oars and look into the water with furrowed brows. The tip of a shark’s tail slices through the water to our right of the boat, near the right edge of the canvas. Along the horizon line, which comes three-quarters of the way up the composition, buildings and tall spires line the harbor. The masts of boats at port creates a row of crosses against the light blue sky. Steely gray clouds sweep across the upper left corner of the canvas and the sky lightens to pale, butter yellow at the horizon.
John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark, 1778, oil on canvas, Ferdinand Lammot Belin Fund, 1963.6.1
Carved from creamy white marble, a nude woman stands next to a hip-high support, perhaps a low post. In this photograph, her body faces us, and she looks down to our right in profile. Her wavy hair is tucked behind her ear and drawn back in a bun at the nape of her neck. Her weight rests on her left leg, on our right, and her other knee is bent. Her left arm is angled in front of her body so her hand covers her groin. Her other hand, on our left, rests on the post. Chains hang from shackles encircling her wrists. The post is covered with a cloth that gathers around the top and spirals to the ground beneath her feet, the edge trimmed with tassels. A cross and medallion peek out from under the cloth near her hand. She stands on a circular base.
Hiram Powers, The Greek Slave, model 1841-1843, carved 1846, Seravezza marble, Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran, 1873), 2014.79.37

More ways to explore

Play Artle

Four artworks, one artist to discover. Test your knowledge with a new puzzle every day. 

From low on a hillside, we look up at a light-skinned woman and boy standing in tall grass against a sunny blue sky in this vertical painting. The woman stands at the center of the composition, and the moss-green parasol she holds over her head almost brushes the top edge of the canvas. Her body faces our left but she turns her head to look at us. Her long dress is painted largely with strokes of pale blue and gray with a few touches of yellow. Her voluminous skirts swirl around her legs to our left. She holds the parasol with both hands, and her brown hair is covered with a hat. Long strokes of white paint across her face suggest a veil fluttering in the breeze. The tall grass she stands in is dotted with buttercup yellow and plum purple, and she casts a long diagonal shadow along the grass toward us. The young boy seems to stand on the other side of the hill, since the grass and flowers comes up to his waist. He wears a white jacket and pale yellow straw hat. His arms are by his sides, and he seems to look off into the distance to our left. A sunny blue sky behind the people is dotted with bright blue clouds. The painting is created with loose brushstrokes throughout, and they are especially choppy in the clouds. The artist signed and dated the painting in royal-blue letters at the lower right: “Claude Monet 75.”

Download free images

Nearly 60,000 high-resolution images from our collection are available to download for free.

Open Call

Out of more than 1,600 submissions from across the country, 50 creators were selected to reinterpret works from our collection through original short-form videos.

America's 250th :  Celebrating American art and artists

No one tells America’s story like its artists.  Join us as we explore 250 years of American creativity from across the nation.

A flatboat with eight light-skinned men floats toward us down a wide river in this horizontal painting. The boat nearly spans the width of the composition and has low sides and a shallowly arched, low cabin upon which the men gather. At the center, a man with dark hair and wearing light blue trousers and a pink shirt dances with one foot and both arms raised. To our right a seated musician plays a fiddle, and to our left a smiling man holds up a metal pot and strikes the flat bottom with the back of his fingers. The remaining men sit or recline around the musicians and dancing man, some looking toward the dancer and two looking out at us. Bedrolls and animal skins are stored in the cabin below. The olive-green surface of the river is streaked with pale blue. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the composition. The trees and riverbanks in the distance are hazy beneath a watery blue sky.

Art uncovered

Peek behind the scenes with stories and videos that reveal the people, ideas, and moments that shaped our collection.

Explore our stories

Storytellers in Residence

Two storytellers visit the museum and unearth new ways to understand art.
We look out onto a sweeping, panoramic view with trees, their leaves fiery orange and red, framing a view of a distant body of water under a sun-streaked sky in this long, horizontal landscape painting. The horizon comes about halfway up the composition, and is lined with hazy mountains and clouds in the deep distance. Close examination slowly reveals minuscule birds tucked into the crimson-red, golden yellow, and deep, sage-green leaves of the trees to either side of the painting. Closest to us, vine-covered, fallen tree trunks and mossy gray boulders line the bottom edge of the canvas. Beyond a trickling waterfall and small pool near the lower left corner, and tiny within the scale of the landscape, a group of three men and their dogs sit and recline around a blanket and a picnic basket, their rifles leaning against a tree nearby. The land sweeps down to a grassy meadow crossed by a meandering stream that winds into the distance, at the center of the painting. Touches of white and gray represent a flock of grazing sheep in the meadow. A low wooden bridge spans the stream to our right, and a few cows drink from the riverbank. Smoke rises from chimneys in a town lining the riverbank and shoreline beyond, and tiny white sails and steamboats dot the waterway. Light pours onto the scene with rays like a starburst from behind a lavender-gray cloud covering the sun, low in the sky. The artist signed the painting as if he had inscribed the flat top of a rock at the lower center of the landscape with his name, the title of the painting, and date: “Autumn – on the Hudson River, J.F Cropsey, London 1860.”

Article:  Celebrate Fall Foliage with Autumn Art at the National Gallery

Explore our bounty of fall images.

The image depicts a woman sitting on the ground. She is turned slightly towards the camera, with her right arm resting on her bent knee. She has short, wavy dark hair, a soft facial expression, and is wearing a chunky sweater over a white skirt. Artist supplies such as a palette, an open book or sketchpad, and a glass of liquid are nearby. The background shows a pathway beside a brick structure partially covered by greenery, with plants growing next to where she is seated.

Interactive Article:  Everyday Awe

Learn how the American painter Georgia O'Keeffe marveled at commonplace natural forms—and how to find the same sense of awe on your own.

Close to us, a young man and three boys sit or recline in a small sailboat that tips to our left on a choppy dark green sea in this horizontal painting. The billowing sail extends off the top left corner of the canvas and is echoed in the background to our right by the tall sails of another ship in the distance. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the composition, and puffy gray and white clouds sweep across the turquoise sky. The sun lights the scene from our right so the boys’ ruddy faces are in shadow under their hats. The young man and boys all face our left so they lean against and into the boat as it cants up to our right. The boy nearest the sail to our left reclines across the bow. Next to him to our right, a younger boy perches on the edge of the boat and holds on with both hands. The oldest, in a red shirt, sits on the floor of the boat as he maneuvers the sail with a rope. Closer to us and to our right, a younger boy sits with his bare feet pressed together in front of his bent knees on the back edge of the boat, gazing into the distance over his right shoulder as he handles the tiller. The artist signed and dated the painting in dark letters in the lower right corner: “HOMER 1876.”

Interactive Article:  A New View for America’s Centennial

As the United States emerged from the Civil War, Winslow Homer spent years perfecting a painting to embody his hopes for America’s future. 

Video:  Why William Blake Never Fit in

Uncover how Blake shattered the boundaries between poetry, painting, and printmaking, and why the art world couldn't understand him. 

Article:  The Last of the Buffalo and their Revival

Albert Bierstadt’s twin paintings of the disappearing American bison became part of the movement to save the animal from extinction.

Video:  The Radical Intimacy of Mary Cassatt

How did Mary Cassatt transform impressionism?