Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} National Gallery of Art Washington by John Walker User Search limit reached - please wait a few minutes and try again. In order to protect Biblio.com from unauthorized automated bot activity and allow our customers continual access to our services, we may limit the number of searches an individual can perform on the site in a given period of time. We try to be as generous as possible, but generally attempt to limit search frequency to that which would represent a typical human's interactions. If you are seeing this message, please wait a couple of minutes and try again. If you think that you've reached this page in error, please let us know at [email protected]. If you are an affiliate, and would like to integrate Biblio search results into your site, please contact [email protected] for information on accessing our inventory APIs. Can you guess which first edition cover the image above comes from? What was Dr. Seuss’s first published book? Take a stab at guessing and be entered to win a $50 Biblio gift certificate! Read the rules here. This website uses cookies. We use cookies to remember your preferences such as preferred shipping country and currency, to save items placed in your shopping cart, to track website visits referred from our advertising partners, and to analyze our website traffic. Privacy Details. John Walker. John Walker was an art curator whose work as the second director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington developed the collections and stature of the museum. He received an undergraduate degree in art history from Harvard University and studied at Villa I Tatti in Florence with Bernard Berenson. He served as a professor and assistant director of the American Academy in Rome from 1935 to 1939. Walker became chief curator of the National Gallery of Art in 1939 and was involved in identifying works of art looted by the Nazis following World War II. In 1956 he was named director of the National Gallery, succeeding David Finley, and remained in the position until his retirement in 1969. During his tenure at the National Gallery, Walker cultivated donor relationships with collectors such as the Mellon family, Joseph Widener, Armand Hammer, and Chester Dale; his significant acquisitions included Rembrandt’s Aristotle with the Bust of Homer, Fragonard’s La Liseuse, El Greco’s Laocoon, and the Ginevra de’ Benci by Leonardo da Vinci. He wrote six books, including Bellini and Titian at Ferraraand his autobiography, Self-Portrait with Donors. The Card Players , probably c. 1550/1599. (Van Diemen Gallery, Berlin, by 1923); (sold, Christie's, London, 20 May 1926, no. 269, as by Van Leyden); bought by Asscher and Welker, London). [1] Acquired from "Sarasota" 19 November 1928 by (Galerie Julius Böhler, Munich).[2] (Tomas Harris Gallery, London, by 1935).[3] Private Collection, Switzerland, by 1945.[4] (Frederick Mont, New York); sold 18 October 1951 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York; gift 1961 to NGA. [1] Van Diemen listed as seller and Asscher as buyer in the annotated auctioneer catalogue, Christie's Archive, London. [2] Böhler card no. 309-28, Böhler Gallery Records, Getty Research Institute. [3] Tomas Harris Gallery, Exhibition of Early Flemish Paintings , (London, 1935), no. 19, as Lucas van Leyden. [4] Basel, Offentliche Kunstsammlung (Kunstmuseum), 1945, Meisterwerke hollandischer Malerei des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts , no. 43, as Lucas van Leyden. Associated Names. Exhibition History. Technical Summary. The painting, composed of two boards with the grain running horizontally, is very badly damaged and extensive retouching is present throughout. The largest areas of loss are in the robe of the man at the far right, the sleeves of the seated woman at the center, and in the face of the man standing behind her. X-radiography suggests that generally the losses exist in both the paint and ground layers. Examination with infrared reflectography reveals underdrawing. The painting was cleaned and restored by Mario Modestini in 1954. On the reverse is a reattached label, with the following in italic script: et is ferrarius ante xit/ acrí ingenio. / G. C. Beiriu (?) National Gallery of Art, Washington. This volume reproduces over 1000 works in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, in colour, many printed with gold. Every full-page colour plate is accompanied by a commentary, and the artists covered include Giotto, Leonardo, Rubens, Rembrandt, Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso. Read More. This volume reproduces over 1000 works in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, in colour, many printed with gold. Every full-page colour plate is accompanied by a commentary, and the artists covered include Giotto, Leonardo, Rubens, Rembrandt, Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso. Read Less. John Walker, Washington Curator, Dies at 88. John Walker 3d, the patrician art connoisseur who as chief curator and then director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington shaped the museum into a world-class institution, died on Sunday at his home near Arundel in Sussex, England. He was 88 and had lived in England since his retirement from the gallery in 1969. Mr. Walker was a member of a ground-breaking generation of museum professionals who, spurred by a wide-ranging interest in art old and new, left an indelible stamp on this country's art institutions, often inventing them from scratch. Like many of his peers, he attended Harvard University, studying art history and museum practices in a fabled seminar of Prof. Paul J. Sachs. While there, he formed with Philip Johnson, Lincoln Kirstein and Edward M. M. Warburg the Society for Contemporary Art, whose exhibitions of art and design paved the way for museums and institutes of modern and contemporary art around the country for decades to come. But Mr. Walker soon turned from an interest in modern art to a passion for Old Master painting. After graduating from Harvard in 1930, he spent six years studying with Bernard Berenson, the doyen of connoisseurs, at his villa outside Florence. Mr. Walker then worked for several years in the department of fine arts at the American Academy in Rome. Arriving in Washington in 1939, Mr. Walker was more or less present at the founding of the National Gallery. It had been established by an act of Congress in 1937 at the urging of Andrew W. Mellon, the Pittsburgh steel magnate, and was built on the Washington Mall over the next four years. Working with the gallery's first director, David E. Finley, Mr. Walker had a hand in the museum's layout and helped oversee the construction of its great Romanizing building, designed by John Russell Pope, which remains one of the outstanding museum structures in the country. Mr. Walker also oversaw the installation of the gallery's original collection, a group of 38 paintings from the collections of Samuel H. Kress and Andrew Mellon that included works by Raphael, Rembrandt and Titian that Mellon had purchased from the Hermitage in Leningrad. Those paintings occupied only a few galleries of the National Gallery's new building, which opened in 1941. Over the next three decades, Mr. Walker worked assiduously to fill the remainder with the best art he could find. "His great achievement was in persuading all these American collectors to give their collections to the nation," said Everett Fahy, the John Pope- Hennessy Chairman of European painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who was reached by telephone yesterday. "These enormous collections, which would have been given to their local museums, went instead to Washington. They found his argument irresistible. Exhibitions come and go. It's the great art that remains." J. Carter Brown, former director of the National Gallery and Mr. Walker's immediate successor, described him as the "unsung hero" of the museum, and "the art brains behind it." Born in Pittsburgh in 1906, Mr. Walker was the only son of wealthy parents and was a childhood friend of Andrew Mellon's son, Paul. A self- described "galloping Anglophile," he married Lady Margaret Drummond, daughter of the Earl of Perth, in 1937. Mr. Walker's background gave him access to many of the wealthy patrons whose gifts of art or money turned his institution from a concept into one of the preeminent picture galleries of the world. He made the final selections from Samuel Kress's collection of Renaissance art and helped persuade several other collectors, including Joseph A. Weidner, Lessing J. Rosenwald and Chester Dale, as well as Paul Mellon and his sister, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, to donate the best of their holdings to the museum. Among the many paintings he acquired for the National Gallery was Leonardo da Vinci's portrait of Ginevra de' Benci. One of his most difficult tasks was landing Chester Dale's great collection of 19th- and early-20th-century French paintings. According to Mr. Brown, Mr. Walker said that the wooing of Dale, a mercurial stockbroker, was so trying that it turned his hair white and left him on tranquilizers for the rest of his life. Besides leaving the museum his paintings in his will, Dale surprised Mr. Walker by leaving him a sum of money. With it Mr. Walker purchased a summer home in Fishers Island, N.Y. and named it Will O' Dale. After retirement, he wrote books on Turner, Constable and Whistler and a frank memoir titled "Self-Portrait With Donors." He worked as an adviser to several English cultural institutions, including the National Trust, the London Library and the Glyndebourne Opera. Mr. Brown also credited Mr. Walker with an important role in the realization of the National Gallery's East Building, designed by I. M. Pei and completed in 1978. "He was very instrumental in getting Mr. Mellon focused on the opportunity of the building and nailing down the land for it," Mr. Brown said. "He loved being a host. I used to ride up in the elevator with him and he'd start talking to the visitors and tell them how happy he was to have them there." Mr. Walker's wife died in 1987, and his son, John, died in 1986. He is survived by his daughter, Gillian, wife of the documentary film maker Albert Maysles, and three grandchildren, all of Manhattan.