| National Gallery of Art

Animations:

Visit
Admission is always free

6th and Constitution Ave NW
Washington, DC 20565

Must-Sees at the National Gallery

Make the most of your visit
Learn more
Exhibitions & Events
America’s 250th

Celebrating American art and artists
Art & Artists
Open Call

Artists Reimagining the Collection
Meet the 50 makers selected from more than 1,600 submissions

Open 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.

Visit
Admission is always free

6th and Constitution Ave NW
Washington, DC 20565

Must-Sees at the National Gallery

Make the most of your visit
Learn more
Exhibitions & Events
America’s 250th

Celebrating American art and artists
Art & Artists
Open Call

Artists Reimagining the Collection
Meet the 50 makers selected from more than 1,600 submissions

Scholarly Article

Meindert Hobbema, A Farm in the Sunlight, 1668

April 24, 2014

by:

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.

We look across a stream and through a loose screen of shadowy trees at a sunlit farm under a powder-blue sky with towering, puffy clouds in this vertical landscape painting. The ground and stream closest to us are painted in tones of olive green, sepia and earth brown, black, and slate gray. Nearly lost in shadow, a group of six people gathers at the water’s edge in the lower left. Small in scale within the composition, they wear brick-red, gray, or caramel-brown garments. Beyond them, a low picket fence winds through and between a loose band of shadowy trees, which are painted with gnarled, dark gray trunks and camel-brown, sage, and pine-green leaves. The trees to our left are closer and taller, while those to our right are a little farther away. The sun pours from the upper left into the field beyond. The farm buildings there have tan walls and sloping, peach-colored roofs. A few animals and people, smaller than the group in front, stand among the buildings, and more cottages can be glimpsed through a stand of trees on our right. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the composition, and a church and steeple are silhouetted against the sky in the deep distance. A few birds fly in front of gray and white clouds that rise from the right side and spread across the top of the canvas.

Scholarly Article

Aelbert Cuyp, Herdsmen Tending Cattle, 1655/1660

April 24, 2014

by:

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.

A man stands and a woman sits near a herd of seven cows under a light-drenched sky in this horizontal landscape painting. The herd gathers on a grassy rise just beyond some large boulders and twiggy branches. The cows are caramel or copper brown and ivory white. They stand and lie, legs tucked demurely beneath their hulking bodies, facing different directions, their short horns curling like parentheses against the sky. The man stands on our side of the herd with his back to us to the left of center. He holds a tall shepherd’s staff in one hand as he hunches slightly and points with the other, to our right. He wears a high-crowned, wide-brimmed black hat, a crimson-red jacket, black trousers, and black knee-high boots. A knapsack hangs across one shoulder and rests behind his left hip. The woman sits on the far side of the herd so we see her under the man’s raised arm. She looks at him, her face peachy and round under a wide-brimmed straw-colored hat. She wears a white shirt under a robin’s egg-blue dress, and also holds a tall staff upright with both hands. Two more pale-skinned people sit on the ground or on a donkey in the near distance to our right, near the right edge of the canvas. Both wear hats and earth-toned clothing in black, gray, and blue. The donkey stands facing us, its face low, and a pair of baskets are slung across its back. The people and cattle cast long shadows from the setting sun, out of view to our left. The sunset ignites the undersides of the towering, slate-gray clouds with peach and gold against the ice-blue sky. A body of water stretches from beyond the low hill to a distant shore, where stone ruins are outlined on the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the composition. A flock of six birds and another pair dot the sky.

Scholarly Article

Gabriel Metsu, The Intruder, c. 1660

April 24, 2014

by:

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.

Scholarly Article

Pieter de Hooch, A Dutch Courtyard, 1658/1660

April 24, 2014

by:

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.

Scholarly Article

Adriaen Hanneman, Henry, Duke of Gloucester, c. 1653

April 24, 2014

by:

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.

Le Repos (Portrait of Berthe Morisot)

Closed November 29, 1987

New Glory Part II

Closed September 5, 1977

New Glory Part I

Closed September 5, 1976

Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings from the Correr Museum

Closed November 24, 1963

Watercolors by J.M.W. Turner from the British Museum

Closed October 13, 1963