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Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter's Eye
Closed October 4, 2015

This exhibition includes Caillebotte’s most famous cityscapes and interiors, along with a selection of portraits, nudes, river scenes, still lifes, and landscapes. All periods are represented with a focus on the years 1875 to 1882 when he was most closely allied with the impressionists.

Celebrating Photography at the National Gallery of Art: Recent Gifts
Closed March 13, 2016
The artwork shows a person standing in a tiled room. The person is captured in a full-body view, facing the camera directly. They are wearing a blue and green striped swimsuit and a matching swim cap. Yellow goggles rest on their forehead. The person's hands are placed on their face, covering their mouth. The background consists of a grid of cream-colored tiles with several metal fixtures on the walls. The ceiling features exposed pipes and fluorescent lights.
Exhibition: Garry Winogrand
Closed June 8, 2014

Surveying Winogrand’s career from 1950 to his death in 1984, this exhibition is divided into three sections: photographs made in New York from 1950 through 1971; work from the same period made mostly outside New York; and photographs taken mainly in Texas and Los Angeles from 1971 until his death.

The Color of Nature: Recent Acquisitions of Landscape Watercolors
Closed September 14, 2014
The painting depicts a hillside village viewed from an elevated perspective. The horizon is high in the image, with the village atop the hill, individual buildings distinguishable by warm color tones. Behind the village, the sky is clear blue, the mountains fading into darker tones. Delicate, fluid brushstrokes are used, especially in the foliage and winding path. The color palette is earthy and natural, with greens and browns predominant, the village's architecture and vibrant greenery offering lighter contrasts. The landscape shows rolling terrain rising towards the top of the hill.
A Subtle Beauty: Platinum Photographs from the Collection
Closed January 4, 2015
This is a photograph of an interior of a Gothic cathedral. The space features towering pointed archways with detailed stone carvings and traceries. There is an elaborately crafted arched window on the left side, allowing light to shine through intricate panes, casting shadows on the floor. A stone effigy rests on a raised platform to the right, surrounded by railings. The image conveys a sense of reverence and solemnity, with light and shadow accentuating the stillness of the space.
Modern American Prints and Drawings from the Kainen Collection
Closed February 1, 2015
The image shows a composition of geometric shapes and bold lines creating depth and movement. Shapes such as circles, triangles, and rectangles interlock and overlap. There are zigzag lines on the left, a curved form resembling a fire hydrant, and a heart-shaped form with eye-like circles in the center. Vertical shapes resemble buildings, some with striped patterns and signs saying "Shop" and "Cafe."
Modern German Prints and Drawings from the Kainen Collection
Closed June 29, 2014
El Greco in the National Gallery of Art and Washington-Area Collections: A 400th Anniversary Celebration
Closed February 16, 2015
Close to us, six people, all nude with light skin, stand or lie intertwined with snakes on a bank of rocks in this horizonal painting. Beyond them, the deep, distant landscape has a brown horse, tiny in scale, headed for a city of stone buildings beneath a vivid blue sky filled with twisting white clouds. The people’s bodies are sinewy and elongated, and their skin is painted in tones of ivory white, warmed with peach highlights and streaked with deep gray shadows. At the center, a man with a white beard and white, curly hair lies back on the charcoal-gray rock with his knees bent and his shins splayed out. With his body angled away from us to our right, he holds the body of a long, silvery-gray snake in his left fist, on our right, down by his hip. The snake curves behind the man’s body and he grips the snake behind its head. The man has high cheekbones and sunken cheeks, and rolls his eyes up and back to look at the snake, whose wide-open mouth nearly touches his hair. To our left, a cleanshaven young man stands with his body facing us but he arches back, holding an arcing snake in his hands. The young man’s right hand, on our left, bends at the elbow so he can grasp the snake’s tail and his other arm stretches straight back, holding the snake’s body as it curls around so its fangs nearly reach the young man’s side. To our right, next to the older man, a second, dark-haired young man lies on the rocks with his head toward us. His feet are on the ground, so we look onto the tops of his thighs. He lies with one hand resting on the ground, overhead. Three people seem to float, feet dangling, alongside the right edge of the painting. The person closest to us looks onto the writhing people in profile, back to us. A second person just beyond also looks to our left. A third head turns the opposite direction and looks off to our right. In the distance, the golden-brown horse is angled away from us, one front leg raised, on a path that moves from behind the rocky outcropping to the far-off town. Nestled in a shallow valley, buildings in the town are mostly painted with rose pink and red walls and smoke-gray roofs. The land dips to a deeper, green valley to our right, lining the horizon that comes two-thirds of the way up the composition. The standing people are outlined against the sapphire-blue sky and knotted, gray and white clouds.
Exhibition: Degas's Little Dancer
Closed February 8, 2015

One of our most popular works of art, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen will be presented with 14 additional works from our collection, including the pastel Ballet Scene, the oil painting The Dance Class, monotypes and smaller original statuettes by Degas that are related to Little Dancer Aged Fourteen.

Sculpted with rich brown wax, a young ballerina stands with her arms straight, hands clasped behind her back, and one foot in front of the other on a square wooden base. Her body is angled to our left in this photograph. Both feet are splayed outward, and her right foot is placed far in front of her left. Bangs cover her forehead, and she has a heart-shaped, upturned face with a squat nose and slightly pursed lips. Her heavy-lidded eyes are nearly closed and her hair is pulled back and tied with a wide, cream-white ribbon. She wears a fabric costume with a sleeveless, gold-colored bodice, a gray tulle skirt, and ballet slippers. Her body is sculpted from dark brown wax, and a layer of wax covers her hair, bodice, and ballet slippers.
Exhibition: Degas/Cassatt
Closed October 5, 2014

From the moment the Cassatt made her debut in 1879 with the group of artists known as the impressionists, her name has been linked with Degas. The two artists engaged in an intense dialogue, turning to each other for advice and challenging each other to experiment with materials and techniques.

A small brown dog and a pale-skinned little girl wearing a white dress sit in matching celestial-blue armchairs in this horizontal painting. To our right, the girl sits with her legs angled to our left. She slumps back with her legs spread, and her left elbow, on our right, is bent so that hand rests behind her head. Her other elbow is draped over the armrest. Her dark brown hair appears to be pulled back, and tawny brown eyes under faint brows gaze down and to our left. She has a small nose set in a round face and a coral-pink mouth closed in a straight line. Her white dress has touches of gray, soft pink, and powder blue with a wide plaid sash around her waist. The pine-green, black, and sapphire-blue sash is accented with overlapping vertical and horizontal lines of burnt orange, light blue, and mustard yellow. Her socks match her sash and come up to mid-calf, over black shoes with silver buckles. The small dog has scruffy black fur and a russet-brown face. It lies curled in the chair opposite the girl, to our left, with its eyes closed and ears pricked up. The rounded backs of the upholstered chairs curve down to become the low arms. The vivid and light blue fabric of the chairs is scattered with loosely painted strokes of avocado and forest green, peach pink, cherry red, plum purple, and white. Beyond the chairs closest to us is another armchair and an armless loveseat, both covered with the same fabric. They sit at the back of the room, in a corner flooded with silvery light coming through four windows on the right side. The furniture is arranged on a peanut-brown floor. The artist signed in the lower left, “Mary Cassatt.”
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