Publications

Our publications embody the art of the printed page and the power of digital storytelling.

New and notable

Discover beautiful exhibition publications, collection highlights, in-depth research, and more.

National Gallery of Art Selected Works

An ideal introduction to the National Gallery of Art, this book highlights 50 paintings, sculptures, works on paper, photographs, and more from the museum’s collection. Selected from more than 150,000 works in the museum’s vast collection, these remarkable examples of European and American art span centuries of human creativity.

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Publication:  Little Beasts

A beautifully illustrated publication traces the connections between artists, naturalists, and collectors in an age of scientific discovery and broadening horizons.

Publication:  Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies

This award-winning book highlights Elizabeth Catlett’s remarkable career centered on activism and artistic expression.

Publication:  Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment

Delve into the origins of impressionism through the 1874 exhibition that is considered the birth of this French art movement.

Publication:  Mark Rothko: Paintings on Paper

This exploration of Mark Rothko’s paintings on paper transforms our understanding of a preeminent 20th-century artist.

 

Publication:  Dorothea Lange: Seeing People

An expansive look at portraiture, identity, and inequality as seen in Dorothea Lange’s iconic photographs.

Publication:  The Land Carries Our Ancestors

Some 50 works by today’s most innovative Native American artists share a common thread of the land.

National Gallery of Art Collections

This lavish volume, our first large survey book in more than 20 years, celebrates 400 works from the nation’s museum.

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Center publications

Publications from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts seek to deepen our knowledge of the artistic past, present, and future, transforming our understanding of art’s role in the world.

Publication:  Black Modernisms in the Translatlantic World

Ten leading scholars broaden our understandings of modernism by centering Black artists and experiences with beautifully illustrated essays.

Publication:  Contact: Art and the Pull of Print

A leading art historian presents a new grammar for understanding the meaning and significance of print.

Publication:  The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s

A vivid historical imagining of life in the early United States.

Publication:  Beauty Born of Struggle: The Art of Black Washington

This book examines the legacy of influential Black artists in the nation’s capital as well as the key institutions and communities that contributed to the Washington Black Renaissance.

Publication:  Boundary Trouble in American Vanguard Art, 1920–2020

A profound examination of the complex constructs that have kept “outsider” and self-taught artists on the margins of the mainstream.

Publication:  Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern

Based on her 2011 Mellon Lectures held at the National Gallery of Art, Mary Beard tells the fascinating story of how images of Roman autocrats have influenced art, culture, and the representation of power for more than 2,000 years.

Conservation publications

Facture is the National Gallery's biennial conservation research journal.

Publication:  Facture Volume 6

Volume 6 explores the themes of workshops and studios in different cultural contexts and various media.

Publication:  Facture Volume 5

Volume 5 explores issues associated with the conservation and technical analysis of modern and contemporary art.

Publication:  Facture Volume 4

Volume 4 examines the complex themes of series, multiples, and replicas with a broad historical purview that spans from the Renaissance to the 20th century.

Publication:  Facture Volume 3

Volume 3 is dedicated to the works of Edgar Degas (1834–1917) in honor of the centenary of his death.

Publication:  Facture Volume 2

Volume 2 presents great works of art in new contexts, examining the art of two very different eras—the Italian Renaissance and the 20th century.

Publication:  Facture Volume 1

The inaugural issue of Facture brings together the recent work of the National Gallery's conservators, scientists, and curators centered on Renaissance painting, sculpture, textiles, and works on paper in the museum's collection.

Online Editions

Diver deeper into the National Gallery’s collection with insights from the world’s leading art historians and conservators. Online Editions provide authoritative resources for scholars and anyone exploring art history.

This nearly square painting shows an industrial area with buildings, storage silos, a smokestack, and railroad tracks. A mound of brown dirt or other material is in shadow in the lower left corner of the painting. Next to the mound, railroad tracks extend diagonally from the lower center of the painting into the distance to our right. The tracks end at a white building with staggered gray rooflines to our right in the distance. A tall terracotta-red smokestack rises high beyond the white building, smoke pouring out of its top and blending into the clouds above. Just beyond the mound of dirt, piles of white material, perhaps in unseen bins, line the railroad track to our left and lead back to a row ten interconnected, coral-orange silos. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and it is lined with a row of long white and gray warehouses. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “Sheeler 31.”

American Paintings, 1900–1945

This horizontal painting shows a group of eight light-skinned musicians and onlookers gathered closely around a rectangular, carpet-covered table. The front edge of the table runs parallel to the bottom edge of the painting, and seems close to us. Shown from about the waist up, the men and women’s vivid lapis-blue, coral-red, buttercup-yellow, lilac-purple, and moss-green garments fall in crisp folds. Bright reflections on the fabric suggest a satin-like material. Two women wear feathers in their hair and one man’s hat is plumed. One man, wearing crimson red and black, sits with his back to us to our left on the near side of the table. He holds the neck of a bass viol, about the size of a cello, with his left hand, and points to pages of an open music book with the bow in his right hand. The other people cluster on the far side of the table. A man to the left plays a violin; a woman at the center plays a guitar-sized bandora, and a woman to our right plays a lute. The musicians, along with a man who leans over the table from between the two women, look down at the music books. A young man behind the woman at the center holds up a glass of pale liquid with his right hand as he touches his left forefinger to his smiling lips. A man and woman stand close together in the background to our right, in the top right corner of the canvas.

Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century

A young woman draws on an oval surface with white chalk while three winged, baby-like putti gather nearby, all on a bank of pale pink clouds in this horizontal painting. The woman and putti have pale, rosy skin, flushed cheeks, and hazel-brown eyes. To our left, the woman reclines with her upper body propped up on her far elbow, which rests on a steel-blue cushion as her legs stretch out to our right. Her light brown hair is braided and wrapped across the top of her head. She wears a loose, seafoam-green robe over a billowing ivory-white garment that has slipped off the shoulder closer to us. A round paint palette with brushes sticking out of its thumb hole and a roll of blue and white paper sit in the lower left corner, behind the woman. The woman and the objects are on a red cloth. In front of the woman is a rounded surface, perhaps a canvas, on which she draws. She holds up a gold-colored stylus with her right hand, closer to us, with a pointed piece of white chalk in one end and black chalk in the other. The canvas is taller than her head, so the child-like putto she draws on it is life-sized. The three nude putti on the far side of the canvas have copper or golden-blond, curly hair, flushed, rounded cheeks, short wings in white or peacock blue, pudgy torsos, and dimpled limbs. One putto, presumably the one the woman draws, sits back on the bank of clouds with a carnation-pink sash across his chest. He pulls his chin back and looks at her from under his eyebrows. He holds a gold-colored torch with a pink flame in one hand, and the other hand rests near a cylindrical quiver of arrows. Another putto peeks around the side of the canvas, and the third stands and props the canvas up. That third putto holds up a wreath of laurel leaves up over the canvas, above the woman’s drawing hand. The bank of clouds is parchment-brown with muted pink and blue highlights against a vivid blue sky. The artist signed and dated the lower right, “F Boucher – 1765.”

French Paintings of the Fifteenth through Eighteenth Centuries

This horizontal painting is made up of three parts: in the center square panel, a woman reclines under a wooden shelter set into a rocky cave, which is surrounded by angels, and narrower wings to either side are each occupied by a standing man. All the people have pale skin, which is tinged with faint green. The three panels are joined with a gold frame, and the gold background behind the central scene and the men in the side panels are covered with a noticeable network of cracks. In the central panel, a cobalt-blue robe nearly envelopes the reclining woman’s body; this is Mary. It covers her head and falls open where she crosses her wrists over her chest to show a pink garment underneath. A flat gold halo encircles her head ,and her body is surrounded by a field of crimson red, almost like an aura. She rests under a wooden structure with a pitched roof, which is surrounded by craggy, barren rock. A swaddled infant lies in a rectangular, tray-like manger. The infant’s head is also surrounded by a gold halo. Fine gold rays emanate down into the structure from a star just above the peak of the roof. A bull and a donkey look down at the baby from the far side of the manger. The interior of the structure behind them is black. In a smaller scale, two women wash a haloed infant in a tub in front of the rocky cave near the lower left corner of this panel. A man with a white beard and hair sits to our left of Mary, holding a pink cloak at his throat and looking toward the infant. Above and around the rocks, seven winged and haloed angels cluster on each side. One angel to the right presents a scroll with black writing to two men accompanied by a dog and several sheep in the lower right. The man in the panel to the left, Isaiah, has a gray beard and long, wavy hair, and he wears a lilac-purple cloak draped over a coral-orange robe. In his right hand, on our left, he holds an unfurled scroll with large black lettering. His other hand is raised with one finger pointing upward. He looks to our left, away from the central scene. On the right, Ezekiel, echoes Isaiah's pose. Ezekiel holds an open scroll with his left hand, on our right, and his other hand is raised. He also wears a coral-colored robe, but his is overlaid with a blue cloak. His receding hair is short and brown, as is his beard. Like Isaiah, he takes up most of the height of the panel and gazes to our left, toward the central panel.

Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

A partially nude woman with pale, peachy skin sits to our left looking into a mirror held up by a nearly nude, winged child to our right in this vertical painting. The woman’s body is angled to our left but she looks across her body to our right. She holds her left hand to her chest, and her right hand grips the fur-lined edge of the scarlet-red, velvet fabric that drapes over that upper arm and around her hips. Her blond hair is coiled up in rows of pearls, and she has dark eyes, a straight nose, and her pale pink lips turn up in a subtle smile. A teardrop pearl earring hangs from the ear we can see, and she wears rings and gold bracelets. The child-like figure to the right stands on a gold-striped cushion facing away from us as he holds up the rectangular, black-framed mirror. He has small silver wings and a sash of golden yellow hangs from one shoulder around the opposite hip. A second child reaches from behind the mirror to hold up a ring of laurel leaves. A forest-green curtain is gathered in the upper left corner and the beige wall beyond falls into shadow to our right.

Italian Paintings of the Sixteenth Century

Alfred Stieglitz Key Set

Systematic catalogs

These comprehensive catalogs contain research on the paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts in the National Gallery's collection.

Publication:  Edgar Degas Sculpture

This groundbreaking volume honors this extraordinary gift by linking art and science. It brings together the insights of a distinguished art historian of nineteenth-century painting and sculpture and the specialized knowledge of National Gallery conservators and scientists who have published pioneering technical studies.

Publication:  European Sculpture of the Nineteenth Century

Download a PDF of the 2000 systematic catalog European Sculpture of the Nineteenth Century.

Publication:  French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I: Before Impressionism

Download a PDF of the 2000 systematic catalogue French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I: Before Impressionism.

Publication:  Twentieth-Century American Art: The Ebsworth Collection

Download a PDF of the 1999 exhibition catalog Twentieth-Century American Art: The Ebsworth Collection.

Publication:  American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part II

Download a PDF of the 1998 systematic catalog American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part II.

Publication:  Decorative Arts, Part II: Far Eastern Ceramics and Paintings, Persian and Indian Rugs and Carpets

Download a PDF of the 1998 systematic catalogue Decorative Arts, Part II: Far Eastern Ceramics and Paintings, Persian and Indian Rugs and Carpets.

Publication:  Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Download a PDF of the 1996 systematic catalog Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.

Publication:  American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I

Download a PDF of the 1996 systematic catalogue American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I.

Publication:  American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century

Download a PDF of the 1995 systematic catalog American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century.

Publication:  German Paintings of the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Download a PDF of the 1993 systematic catalogue German Paintings of the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries.

Publication:  Western Decorative Arts, Part I:

Download a PDF of the 1993 systematic catalog Western Decorative Arts, Part I: Medieval, Renaissance, and Historicizing Styles Including Metalwork, Enamels, and Ceramics.

Publication:  British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries

Download a PDF of the 1992 systematic catalog British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries.

Publication:  American Naive Paintings

Download a PDF of the 1992 systematic catalog American Naive Paintings.

Publication:  Spanish Paintings of the Fifteenth through Nineteenth Centuries

Download a PDF of the 1990 systematic catalog Spanish Paintings of the Fifteenth through Nineteenth Centuries.

Publication:  Early Netherlandish Painting

Download a PDF of the 1986 systematic catalogue Early Netherlandish Painting.

Publication:  Antoine Watteau (1684–1721)

This volume is a collection of papers presented at an international conference, cosponsored by the Center and the École du Louvre, held in Paris on October 29–31, 1984. The contributors are an international group of Watteau scholars and students of the period that includes the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the Régence. The essays consider theater, the arts, dance, music, and fashion from Watteau’s time, enabling us to understand better the artist’s milieu, what he took from it, what he contributed to it, and also how the “myth” of Watteau was created. 

Publication:  A Catalogue of the Collection of American Paintings in the Corcoran Gallery of Art: Volume 2

Download a PDF of the 1973 book A Catalogue of the Collection of American Paintings in the Corcoran Gallery of Art: Volume 2, Painters Born from 1850 to 1910.

Publication:  A Catalogue of the Collection of American Paintings in the Corcoran Gallery of Art: Volume 1

Download a PDF of the 1966 book A Catalogue of the Collection of American Paintings in the Corcoran Gallery of Art: Volume 1, Painters Born Before 1850.