In European art, images of children blowing soap bubbles often suggest how frivolous and short our time on earth is. Life, like fragile bubbles, is fleeting.
News 37 (11 March 1939): 10, repro. 1942 "Collectors Continue Enriching the Nation
Gentile da Fabriano’s patrons were princes, the church, and various city governments as well as the customary merchant clients. His art has a cosmopolitan flavor, in which brilliant color, textural richness, and ornamental pattern are combined.
America’s National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation.
The strength and vitality of the people who helped establish the new Dutch Republic are nowhere better captured than in the work of Frans Hals, who was the preeminent portrait painter in Haarlem, the most important artistic center of Holland in the early part of the seventeenth century. This unidentified sitter—one of Hals’ most impressive portraits—was sixty years old when the painting was made, according to the artist’s inscription.
America’s National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation.
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), one of the greatest masters of the 17th century, painted this masterpiece as a young artist in Rome. Rubens depicted a moment of high drama in this popular Greek myth that was famously recounted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (c.
Apollo 117, no. 609 (May 2013): 20, color repro. 2015 "Art for the Nation: The
A pair of portraits of Emilia di Spilimbergo and her younger sister Irene was begun in about 1558, most likely in anticipation of their prospective marriages. The initial reason may have been to present two highly eligible, aristocratic young women to potential husbands, or the portraits may have been intended as permanent mementos for the sisters’ family after they were married.
America’s National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation.
Over 50 years and across many styles and mediums, the artist probed his roots.
The nation was heading toward civil war, which would erupt in 1965.
vision for the National Gallery focuses on expanding the museum’s service to the nation
Art for the Nation: Gifts in Honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the National Gallery
This is no “family� in the usual sense. A harlequin, a jester, a young man in a leotard, a boy in a blue costume, a girl in a tutu with a basket, and a woman in a flowered hat are arranged in this rose-hued landscape.
America’s National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation.
Painted in October 1909, the remarkably expressive and dynamic Both Members of This Club is the third and largest of George Bellows’s early prizefighting subjects. The painting’s title is a reference to the practice in private athletic clubs of introducing the contestants to the audience as “both members� to circumvent the Lewis Law of 1900 that had banned public boxing matches in New York State.
America’s National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation.
