February 6 – May 3, 2015 | West Building, Main Floor
Outdoors – instead of the more usual indoors — with John Singer Sargent: En route pour la peche ( Setting out to Fish), and Simplon Pass — two of my favorite paintings from the Corcoran Collection.
At a time when wealthy American art collectors placed European art at the pinnacle of artistic achievement – as the Andrew Mellon collection became the core of the National Gallery’s collection of Italian Renaissance art – William Wilson Corcoran saw it differently: his Corcoran Gallery, which opened in 1874, fulfilled his vision of a national collection focused on American art. He wanted to encourage “American genius. And genius is everywhere in this prime collection which, through a new agreement, has now been joined, mainly, with the National Gallery of Art.