Wednesday, January 28, 2009

The National Gallery's collection of prints, drawings, and illustrated books consists of almost 100,000 Western European and American works on paper and vellum dating from the eleventh century to the present day. It began with just 400 prints donated in 1941 by five collectors: W. G. Russell Allen, Paul Sachs, Philip Hofer, Ellen Bullard, and Lessing J. Rosenwald. Their gifts of important works by Mantegna, Schongauer, Dürer, Canaletto, Blake, and a variety of other fine printmakers were intended to lay a strong foundation for a national collection that would enhance and complement the collections of painting and sculpture installed in the public galleries. The first sizable gifts of graphics, nearly 2,000 works, came the very next year with the donation of the entire collection of Joseph E. Widener, including an extraordinary array of French eighteenth-century prints, illustrated books, and related drawings.

Lessing Rosenwald ensured the future of the Gallery's graphics collection in 1943 by giving the museum his collection of some 8,000 old master and modern prints and drawings. In the ensuing thirty-six years he donated almost 14,000 more, supplemented by such fascinating technical materials as carved woodblocks and engraved copperplates. His collection brought to the Gallery the finest gathering in America of rare German woodcuts and engravings from the fifteenth century; comprehensive surveys of the prints and some select drawings by Dürer, Rembrandt, Nanteuil, Daumier, Whistler, and Cassatt; watercolors, drawings, prints, and engraved copperplates by Blake; and a collection of prints by early twentieth-century printmakers.

Through the generosity of literally hundreds of other benefactors great and small, the Gallery's collection of graphics has grown steadily and impressively over the years. The collection of old master and modern prints benefited from major gifts from R. Horace Gallatin, Addie Burr Clark, Rudolph Baumfeld, C.V.S. Roosevelt, and Mrs. Robert A. Hauslohner. The donation of the Samuel H. Kress Collection and the bequest of the Chester Dale Collection, both in 1963, added excellent French and Italian drawings and prints of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. More recently, a series of donations from Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon has further strengthened the nineteenth-century holdings. At the same time, the gift and bequest of Armand Hammer's drawing collection, several superb gifts from Robert and Clarice Smith, and gifts and promised gifts from the Woodner Family Collection have added dramatic peaks and important strengths to the collection of European old master drawings. The twentieth-century collection, too, has shown spectacular growth with the help of gifts from Jacob and Ruth Cole Kainen, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Woodward, Mrs. Max Beckmann, Norma B. Marin and John Marin Jr., and the Mark Rothko Foundation. Through the founding of both the Gemini G.E.L. Archive at the National Gallery in 1981 and the Graphicstudio U.S.F. Archive in 1986, the Gallery has also become a leading repository of contemporary prints.

Since 1966, the Gallery has maintained an active presence in the prints and drawings market, using donated purchase funds to acquire individual works for the collection. Among the most significant purchases made to date are rare prints by Mantegna, Callot, Piranesi, and Munch, and exceptional drawings by Dürer, Carpaccio, Bruegel, Goltzius, Rubens, Castiglione, Watteau, Fragonard, and Picabia. Purchase funds have also enabled the Gallery to acquire whole collections through combination gift/purchase arrangements, including the American drawings collection of John Davis Hatch, the old master and modern drawings collection of Julius Held, and the library of rare books and architectural prints formed by Mark J. Millard. The most spectacular purchase of all, made in 1991, was the acquisition of two of the greatest old master drawings in America, a page from Giorgio Vasari's Libro de'Disegni and Benvenuto Cellini's Satyr, both from the Woodner Family Collection.

Since works on paper are highly susceptible to damage by overexposure to light, they can only be exhibited for short periods. For that reason, the Gallery maintains a schedule of changing exhibitions drawn from its own collection or borrowed from other institutions and private individuals. Works of graphic art that are not on display are divided between two storage facilities, with European art in the East Building and American art in the West Building. Both facilities are equipped with Study Rooms that are open by appointment to individuals as well as to classes and special groups.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Joseph Letzelter

Joseph Letzelter was born in France, often employed a chart game in which he changed a flat pattern into a three-dimensional thing. Joseph Letzelter was educated strictly by Prince Otto and became a good linguist. Joseph Letzelter was famous for his oil paintings, and other fine art gallery reproductions during his school days itself. Joseph Letzelter is an oil painting artist used his own right hand as the model for both hands depicted in the print. In 1924, Joseph Letzelter married Jetta Joseph Letzelter, and settled in Rome to raise a family.

Letzelter continued his paintings, after marriage also. Joseph Letzelter and his wife Jetta Joseph Letzelter resided in Italy until 1936. The Islamic statuette of a harpy, a legendary creature with a bird's corpse and a human being head, was a gift from Joseph Letzelter father-in-law and appears in several of his paintings.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Escher frequently employed a visual game in which he transformed a flat pattern into a three-dimensional object. The artist used his own right hand as the model for both hands depicted in the print.

Escher described this print as a symbol of order and chaos: order represented by the polyhedron and the translucent sphere; chaos depicted by the surrounding broken and crumpled cast-off objects of daily life. The artist believed the polyhedron (a solid figure with many sides) symbolized beauty, order, and harmony in the universe. Yet, he rendered chaos with equal care, as in the exquisitely drawn sardine can at upper left.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

The Dutch artist Maurits C. Escher (1898-1972) was a draftsman, book illustrator, tapestry designer, and muralist, but his primary work was as a printmaker. Born in Leeuwarden, Holland, the son of a civil engineer, Escher spent most of his childhood in Arnhem. Aspiring to be an architect, Escher enrolled in the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem. While studying there from 1919 to 1922, his emphasis shifted from architecture to drawing and printmaking upon the encouragement of his teacher Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita.

In 1924 Escher married Jetta Umiker, and the couple settled in Rome to raise a family. They resided in Italy until 1935, when growing political turmoil forced them to move first to Switzerland, then to Belgium. In 1941, with World War II under way and German troops occupying Brussels, Escher returned to Holland and settled in Baarn, where he lived and worked until shortly before his death.

This is perhaps Escher's best-known print on the theme of relativity. It also is a fine example of Escher's focus on unusual, and often conflicting, points of view.

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