National Gallery of Art Author:Smithsonian Institution This volume contains reproductions of paintings and sculpture in the National Gallery of Art at the time of its opening, March 17, 1941. The reproductions are arranged according to national schools. Within each school the order of arrangement is alphabetical, according to the name of the artist. A complete list of works reproduced, in the order ... more »of their catalogue numbers, appears at the end of the volume. This list indicates, besides artist and title, the donor of each work of art.
The two major acquisitions comprising the present National Gallery collection are the gifts of Andrew W. Mellon and Samuel H. Kress. The Mellon Collection contains 126 paintings and 26 pieces of sculpture. The paintings are representative of the most important European schools as well as of early American art, and range from the thirteenth century to the nineteenth century.
The Kress Collection, devoted entirely to Italian Art, includes examples of all the major Italian schools from the thirteenth century to the eighteenth century. It contains 375 paintings and 18 pieces of sculpture. Mr. Kress has also loaned to the National Gallery of Art a number of paintings and pieces of sculpture.
The attributions of the paintings and sculpture in the Kress collection are based on investigations and studies made for the Samuel H. Kress Foundation by various cities. In the case of the Mellon collection, this research has been done by the staff of the National Gallery of Art.« less