Past Exhibitions

Learn about past exhibitions going back as far as 1941 when the National Gallery of Art first opened to the public.

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May 30 - July 18, 1999
Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ
A group of four men with pale skin, shown from the waist up, almost fill this square painting. Light pours onto the scene from the upper left and falls across the upturned face of the bearded, bare-chested man, Saint Bartholomew, who is situated with his back facing us and his arms spread wide. In the top right corner, his right wrist is lashed to a pole that extends off the top edge of the painting. His other arm is bent at the elbow near the lower left corner, and he holds that hand palm up. His profile, facing our left, is bright against the shadowed background. His mouth is slightly agape, and his eyebrows are raised as he looks up toward the light that bathes his lithe, muscular body. His long beard is streaked with gray, and he has receding black hair. A second, broad-shouldered man, draped in a brown cloak, stands facing us behind and just to our left of Saint Bartholomew. The younger man holds a knife in one hand resting against a black, rod-like sharpener held in the other. He turns his head to gaze at Saint Bartholomew, his eyes deep in shadow. He also has a furrowed brow and a craggy, ruddy complexion. Two more men stand behind him, to our left, filling the left side of the painting. The man on the far left has smooth skin, a trimmed beard, and short brown hair. He stands in profile looking to our right and wears a cranberry-red cloak. Barely visible beyond him, to our right, is a man wearing a gray-green hood hiding half his face. His features are loosely painted and faint, but he also looks up, either toward the young man or the light from above. All four are surrounded by deep shadows against a brown background.
May 23 - August 22, 1999
Portraits by Ingres
May 16 - November 7, 1999
Faces and Figures
Five sketches in brown ink are spaced around a vertically oriented sheet of paper. In the top left quadrant, a bearded man faces our right in profile. He has short, curly hair, a deeply lined face, a pronounced underbite, and the tip of his long nose points down. Two independent, wrinkle-lined eyes are sketched in the top right quadrant of the page. Below are two drawings of women with their shoulders angled away from us to the right. Near the bottom left and smaller in scale, a woman looks over her shoulder at us with a slight smile on her lips. In the bottom right quadrant, a woman with her hair pulled back under a snood looks to our right in profile with her chin tipped up. The neckline of both women’s bodices dip across the shoulder blades in the back. The paper is speckled with faint brown stains and spots.
April 25 - July 5, 1999
Photographs from the Collection
February 21 - May 31, 1999
John Singer Sargent
January 31 - May 31, 1999
From Botany to Bouquets
A profusion of flowers in shades of white, orange, blue, and deep pink, with earthy-green leaves, burst from the narrow opening of a glass vase in this vertical still life painting. Shown against a dark brown background, the vase sits on a caramel-brown ledge. The flowers in the center of the arrangement draw the eye. On our right two tulips are streaked with cream white and dark pink. A flower above it, perhaps an anemone, has white ruffled petals with flame-red tips around a denim-blue center. A small snail in a rust-orange shell rests on a curling green leaf nearby. On our left is a partly opened tulip with scarlet-red streaks next to an ivory-white hydrangea with clusters of tiny petals. Trumpet-shaped, sea-blue morning glories and an amber-orange bloom surround the white hydrangea. The top third of the arrangement has a tall, white peony with feathery petals at the center. Queen Anne’s lace nestles alongside small blooms in muted purples and blues, sage-green peapods, and a carrot-orange flower that resembles a daisy. A slender stalk of wheat extends off the right side while another bends to meet the ledge. The lower third of the arrangement is filled with pink roses, more green pea pods, two closed, plum-purple flowers, and another feathery peony, this one crimson red, which droops to meet the ledge near the bottom right corner of the painting. A few blackberries lie on the ledge nearby. Leaves in various sizes and shades of green fill in among the blooms. More insects and creatures are scattered throughout the composition. For example, a caterpillar clings to the underside of the white peony at the top while a brown and black butterfly flies toward it. A bee sits on the white and red anemone, and a snail, salamander, and spider gather on the ledge to the left of the vase. Stems and the water line are visible within the glass vase, which swells from a narrow opening into a wide base. Panes of a window off to our left reflects in the belly of the vase. The artist signed the front face of the ledge near the lower left: “J.D. De Heem f.”
January 24 - May 9, 1999
American Impressionism and Realism: The Margaret and Raymond Horowitz Collection

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