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Home>The Corcoran Collection at the National Gallery of Art

Mathew Brady (1822 – 1896), Mr. William Wilson Corcoran (detail), 1883, collodion print, Library of Congress, Brady-Handy Photograph Collection LC-BH821-1100

The Corcoran Gallery of Art was the first institution in the United States created specifically as an art museum.

Founded in Washington, D.C., in 1869, the Corcoran remained a vital part of our city for nearly 150 years. After the museum closed in 2014, the National Gallery of Art took responsibility for the collection, ultimately acquiring over 9,000 of its objects. Ranging from antiquities to contemporary works, the broad range of European and American paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, prints, drawings, and photographs in the Corcoran Collection has immeasurably enriched the National Gallery’s holdings.

The Corcoran’s founder, William Wilson Corcoran (1798 – 1888), was a Washington, D.C., banker and philanthropist and one of the country’s first collectors of American art. He was passionate about sharing his collection. In the mid-1850s, he opened the picture gallery in his home for public viewing several times a week. He soon built his namesake museum with the mission of “encouraging American genius.” 

Originally across the street from the White House, the Corcoran later moved nearby to make room for the growing collection and newly founded art school (now part of George Washington University). The Corcoran Gallery of Art created a model for local and national support of the arts. It was the first arts institution given to the American people by an individual, and Corcoran thought of it as a national gallery.

Moses P. Rice (1839 – 1925), William Wilson Corcoran reading in the library of his home on the northeast corner of H Street and Connecticut Avenue, N.W., c. 1886, Corcoran Gallery of Art Archives, George Washington University

First Corcoran Gallery of Art building, at the corner
of 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. (now the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution), undated photograph, Corcoran Gallery of Art Archives, George Washington University

Corcoran Gallery of Art, final building, east facade, c. 1897. Photograph, Library of Congress, negative number USZ62-87608

Highlights from the Corcoran Collection

See works on view
Carved from creamy white marble, a nude woman stands next to a hip-high support, perhaps a low post. In this photograph, her body faces us, and she looks down to our right in profile. Her wavy hair is tucked behind her ear and drawn back in a bun at the nape of her neck. Her weight rests on her left leg, on our right, and her other knee is bent. Her left arm is angled in front of her body so her hand covers her groin. Her other hand, on our left, rests on the post. Chains hang from shackles encircling her wrists. The post is covered with a cloth that gathers around the top and spirals to the ground beneath her feet, the edge trimmed with tassels. A cross and medallion peek out from under the cloth near her hand. She stands on a circular base.

Hiram Powers, The Greek Slave, model 1841-1843, carved 1846, Seravezza marble, Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran), 2014.79.37
Three light-skinned men, one with his head and knee bandaged, sit and stand around a rusty, free-standing stove in a room with wide plank floors in this horizontal painting. In the center of the room and painting, glowing embers burn in the box-like stove and a long chimney pipe extends up off the back. A glass with amber liquid, a clay-brown mug, and a long, white pipe rest on top of the stove. To our left of the stove, the injured man sits on a broken-backed chair with his feet angled to our right. He leans forward and points at the man sitting across from him with his right hand. In his left hand, farther from us, he holds a half empty glass, also with amber-colored liquid. His head is wrapped in white cloth and his left knee in a red cloth. He rests that foot on the platform beneath the fireplace, and a wooden crutch leans on his leg. He has ash-brown hair and a five o’clock shadow. He has a rose-pink cravat tied at his throat and wears a cream-colored jacket over a white vest, olive-green pants, and brown shoes. To our right of the stove, a second man sits on a stool, his body angled to our left. He leans forward toward the other man with his feet straddling the platform under the stove. One hand is propped on his thigh and he leans on his other leg with his elbow, smoking a pipe held in that hand. He has curly blond hair, long sideburns, a long, prominent nose, and smoke wafts from his pursed lips. He appears to look past the injured man. He wears a camel-brown coat, charcoal-gray pants, and black shoes. A third man stands behind the smoking man. His body is angled to our right so he stands with his back to the injured man, has face in profile. His head is tipped down so his eyes are hidden under the brim of his hat, and he smiles slightly. He wears a dark brown cloak trimmed with fur and a fur hat with ear flaps folded up. In front of the stove, fire tongs, a log, and wood shavings litter the floor. To our left of the injured man, a black top hat lies on its side with playing cards and a spotted red handkerchief spilling out. Along the back wall, to our right, a built-in cabinet is filled with clear and dark glass bottles and small wooden barrels. A notice has been affixed to the taupe-brown wall, beyond the stove. It begins, “LONG ISLAND RAILROAD,” and is then indistinct. Two other slips of paper with indistinct writing have been nailed to the wall nearby. The artist signed the painting in the lower left corner: “Wm. S. Mount 1837.”

William Sidney Mount, The Tough Story - Scene in a Country Tavern, 1837, oil on wood, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund), 2014.79.28

Eadweard Muybridge, Plate Number 189. Dancing (fancy), 1887, collotype, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, 1887), 2014.79.232
Shown from the knees up, a young woman wearing a white gown and bonnet sits in front of a balcony railing on a sunny day, holding a small dog on her lap in this vertical portrait painting. The scene is painted with visible brushstrokes, which are especially broad in the background and clothing. The woman sits with her body angled to our left, and she looks down in that direction with blue eyes. She has a short, snub nose, rosy cheeks, and her full, pink lips are parted. The woman’s bonnet is tied under her chin with a pale yellow bow. Her dress has a tightly-fitting bodice, elbow-length sleeves, and a long skirt. The bonnet and dress are painted with strokes of faint sky blue, petal pink, lavender purple, and mint green, with cream-white highlights and some darker cobalt-blue and apricot-peach strokes for shading. The dog on her lap lies with its head to our left, lifted as it looks out onto the landscape. The tan glove the woman wears on the arm we can see reaches her elbow, and she rests that hand on the dog’s back. Her right arm, to our left, is hidden below the elbow by the dog. The animal has charcoal-gray fur along its back and tan fur on the legs and shaggy face. The woman sits in a wicker armchair with a crimson-red medallion next to her left shoulder, to our right. The black balcony railing spans the width of the painting at the level of her nose, and has vertical bars. In the landscape beyond, trees to the right are painted loosely with sage green and mustard yellow. Buildings in the distance fill the top quarter of the composition, and are loosely painted with strokes of slate and aquamarine blue. The sky above is streaked with pale blush pink and ice blue. The artist signed the painting in the lower right corner, “Mary Cassatt.”

Mary Cassatt, Young Girl at a Window, c. 1883-1884, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund), 2014.79.9
A buoy and a sailboat with three men and a woman tip at an angle on rolling aquamarine and azure-blue waves in this horizontal painting. The white wooden boat sails away from us toward the right side of the composition. Its unfurled sail is tinged with taupe and pale blue and attached to a pale wooden mast. The boat has a low cabin with round portholes on the side we can see. Two of the men are shirtless, tanned, and have their backs to us. One sits in the cockpit wearing a white hat with a short brim as he holds the tiller. The other man stands on the deck with his arms crossed. Beyond the standing man, the woman lies along the roof of the cabin, her head at about the height of the man’s chest. She is barefoot and lies on her stomach wearing long, blue pants and a watermelon-pink halter top and matching kerchief covering her hair. The third man stands to her right, his slender body angled toward us while holding onto the mast with one hand and rigging with the other. The woman and third man have noticeably pale skin. A buoy near the boat is battleship-gray with streaks of rust along its base and a copper-green bell inside. It floats just to the left of and tips toward the boat on a rising swell. The scene is lit by bright sunlight coming from the left side of the baby-blue sky with bands of feathery clouds, which takes up the top two-thirds of the composition. The artist signed the lower right, “EDWARD HOPPER.”

Edward Hopper, Ground Swell, 1939, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, William A. Clark Fund), 2014.79.23
This nearly square, abstract painting is filled with circles within circles, like nested rings, each of a single bright color against the ivory white of the canvas. Each ring is made up of a series of short, rectangular dashes, and some bands are narrower while others are a bit wider. The majority of the rings are crimson and brick red, and they are interspersed with bands of lapis blue, army green, and pale pink. One of two pumpkin-orange bands is the smallest, innermost ring at the center. There is one aqua-blue colored ring just inside a pale, shell-white ring, which is the first to get cropped by the edges of the canvas. A few red, green, and blue rings beyond the white band are only seen at the corners of the canvas.

Alma Thomas, Pansies in Washington, 1969, acrylic on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of Vincent Melzac), 2015.19.144
We hover over the bottle-green surface of a river as it rushes toward a horseshoe-shaped waterfall that curves away from us in this horizontal landscape painting. The water is white and frothy right in front of us, where the shelf of the riverbed changes levels near the edge of the falls. Across from us, the water is also white where it falls over the edge. A thin, broken rainbow glints in the mist near the upper left corner of the painting and continues its arc farther down, between the falls. The horizon line is just over halfway up the composition. Plum-purple clouds sweep into the composition at the upper corners against a lavender-colored sky. Tiny trees and a few buildings line the shoreline to the left and right in the deep distance.

Frederic Edwin Church, Niagara, 1857, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund), 2014.79.10
Black silhouettes against a white background show men and women engaged in four surreal, nightmarish, sexually suggestive or explicit vignettes. Each vignette takes up about a quarter of the vertical space. To the left, a tall, thin man with noticeably full, protruding lips and a snub nose faces our right in profile, wearing a broad-brimmed hat. A fish hangs from one end of a rod held by one hip. The man stands on one foot, and the other knee is bent so that foot is raised in front of him. Two people kneel at the man’s feet. To our left, a nude woman expresses milk from one breast with one hand and holds a gnarled, mossy stick behind her bottom with the other. Her mouth is open, and the tied ends of the kerchief covering her hair stick up from the crown of her head. A second person, perhaps a boy, is on one hand and knees near the man’s raised foot. The boy holds his other hand at the small of his back, and his lips are also parted. He wears a long-sleeved shirt with ties at the throat, and a band near his knees suggests the folded-down top of tall boots. A smaller fish hangs from a stick near his abdomen, and there are silhouettes of six more fish in the empty space beneath this vignette. In the next vignette, a woman faces our left in profile. Her full lips are slightly parted, and her hair is closely bound or cropped. She is bare chested and wears a knee-length skirt. Her head tilts down toward a mallet she holds in one hand near her chest, and the stems of two branches with sprays of roots beneath seem nailed or driven through her feet. In the third vignette, second from the right, a nude woman lays on a table with her back arched and legs flailing high in the air, as a man holds his hand at her genitalia. The woman’s hair is twisted into short tips and her lips are parted. She raises her head to look down past a firm, bare breast toward the man, one arm hanging down off the table, fingers crooked and spread wide. Slightly crouching, the man has a projecting brow, a long, hooked nose, and a slight double chin. He wears a ruffled shirt, a knee-length apron, and pointed shoes. One hand reaches to the woman’s groin and the other rests on the back of his hip. A knife and a second instrument with a long, narrow blade dangle from the end of the table near the woman’s head. A pheasant-like bird lies under the table near the woman’s outstretched hand. Strings of sausages float or are strung up over the pair, with one shorter string crossing into the vignette to the left. Another string of sausages drapes over the head of the man in the final vignette, to our right. Facing our right in profile, the man is clothed with a big belly, a pointed goatee, full, parted lips, and two peg legs. One hand loosely holds the top of a cracked cane behind his back, and with the other he holds a sausage near his mouth. The inverted nude woman in front of him stands on her hands, her buttocks lined up with and close to his groin. Links of a chain seem to pass around her waist, and possibly around the man. Her back arches and her knees are slightly bent, her feet near the man’s face. A braid or twist of hair tied with a bow hangs down over the back of her head, and there is a skeleton key near her mouth, which is wide open.

Kara Walker, Roots and Links, Inc., 1997, black paper collage on prepared wove paper, Corcoran Collection (Gift of the Women's Committee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art), 2014.136.226.1-4
Shown from the waist up, a bearded man with pale, peachy skin, wearing a black wide-brimmed hat and jacket, and a broad, layered, white collar, holds up a piece of rolled up paper in this vertical portrait painting. His shoulders are angled to our right but he turns his face to look at us with dark gray eyes. He has a bumped nose, and his full pink lips are slightly parted. There are bags under his heavy-lidded eyes. A light brown mole marks his soft cheek, on our left, and there are jowls along his jawline. His honey-brown goatee is trimmed to a point, and his brown curly hair falls to his collar. The wide brim of the hat sweeps down a bit to our right. Layers of white fabric create a wide collar that rests against his chest and nearly reaches his shoulders. His dark coat is a field of black, broken only by the sheer white cuff and the hand he holds up in front of his chest. The skin of that hand, his left, has a greenish cast, and he wears a gold ring on the pinky finger. Musical notation is visible on the rolled-up paper he holds loosely in that hand. He is lit from our upper left so casts a shadow against the peanut-brown wall behind him. The artist signed and dated the painting near the man’s shoulder, to our right: “Rembrandt f 1633.”

Rembrandt van Rijn, Man with a Sheet of Music, 1633, oil on panel, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection), 2014.136.41

Jean-François Millet, Calling Home the Cows, c. 1866, pastel and conté crayon on wove paper, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection), 2014.136.178
Four women and two children, all with pale skin, carry baskets as they walk along a beach under a brilliant blue sky in this horizontal painting. The scene is painted with visible dabs and blended strokes. The women all wear long-sleeved shirts, calf-length skirts and aprons, head coverings, and gray clogs. The group walks to our left, amid shallow pools that reflect the topaz-blue sky. At the front of the group, to our left, a young woman wears a white kerchief tied at the back of her neck, under her blond hair. She wears a navy-blue shirt and a gray skirt, and she carries a shallow, woven, straw basket against her left hip, closer to us. On her other side, a barefoot child walks beside her. The child wears a white, long-sleeved shirt tucked into tan-colored shorts and a wide-brimmed, golden yellow hat. He holds a basket at the small of his back. To our right, near the center of the composition, a pair of women walk with their heads tipped toward each other. The woman closer to us has bright, copper-blond hair under a white bonnet tied under her chin. A black shawl crosses over her white shirt, and black coverings are pulled up over the forearms of her white shirt. Her beige apron mostly obscures her crimson-red skirt. Wearing dark stockings, she is the only woman whose shins are not bare. The woman next to her, farther from us, wears a dark gray head covering and skirt, and a navy-blue shirt. The chin straps on the bonnets of both of these women flutter in the breeze. Behind that pair, to our right, and older woman also wears a black shawl and sleeve protectors over a white shirt. Her apron is aquamarine blue and she lifts it over a brown skirt. She has stopped to gaze down at the second child, standing next to her. Sunlight sets the child’s blond hair aglow as he reaches down to tug at the leg of his dark gray shorts. He wears a teal-blue, long-sleeved shirt and is also barefoot. Touches of white paint on the beach around the group makes the sand seem to shimmer. More people approach the beach from the upper right corner, where the dune leads back to a lighthouse. The structure is a hazy, slate-gray silhouette against the bright white clouds in the vivid blue sky above. The beach slopes down to our left into the distance, where sailboats and people are suggested with a few swipes of paint. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “John S. Sargent. Paris 1878.”

John Singer Sargent, En route pour la pêche (Setting Out to Fish), 1878, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund), 2014.79.32

Pierre-Philippe Thomire, Robert Robin, Mantel Clock with Vestals Carrying the Sacred Fire, 1789, gilded, patinated, and painted bronze, Sevres porcelain, enamel on copper, and marble, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection. Restored through funds given in memory of Alice Withington Clement, member of the Women's Committee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art), 2015.19.4089
In a verdant green landscape, a stone castle sits on a tree-lined hill in the distance in front of a high, craggy mountain peak while eighteen armored knights ride toward us along a bridge and path in this horizontal painting. The people whose faces we can see have pale skin. The knights are small in scale within the vast landscape, and they all hold long spears. Their procession is led by a knight on a white horse, which wears a gold bridle and lattice-like blanket. That knight has a ruby-red cloak over his armor, and his helmet has a red feathered plume. The other knights wear cloaks in tan, pale pink, or red, and some of their horses are covered with light brown blankets. Near the lower left corner, the path they ride on passes behind a tall, narrow plinth. The faces of the plinth are carved with pointed arches under ornate molding. A person atop the pointed, roof-like top of the structure stands facing away from us, wearing a robe. A gold halo is affixed to her head over long hair, and we see the small head of a baby over one crooked elbow. Near the base of the plinth, the horse at the head of the procession shies away from a man who stands to the side of the road a little farther along, near the bottom center of the painting. That man has a long white beard, and the brim of his hat is pushed back over his forehead, possibly pinned to the crown of the hat. He wears a loose brown robe and sandals, and a satchel is tied around his waist. He holds up one hand, palm out, toward the knights as he looks in their direction, facing our left in profile. In the other hand, he supports a tall staff with a knob at the center and a palm frond tied to the top. In that hand, he also holds a cross hanging from a string of red beads. As the path continues to our right, it passes an arched, free-standing structure, which has a fountain on the side facing us. A man holding a curved staff and a woman, both wearing togas, stand near the structure, looking at each other. On our side of the structure, a goat walks toward the fountain. A river extends behind the structure, back across the composition, and under the bridge leading from the castle. Tall or craggy trees grow along the side of the path as it winds into the distance to our left, and over the hill that rises to the crenelated castle complex. Touches of white and tan suggest people lining the walls of the castle and the tower over the drawbridge. A flat-topped, grassy butte rises beyond the castle, and a waterfall cascades over the edge near the drawbridge. Steep, hazy mountains rise sharply in the deep distance. Dashes of black paint indicate birds flying over the treetops near the castle, and miniscule white dots on the plateau could be grazing sheep. A town lines a body of water at the foot of the castle in the distance. White sailboats float in the water or are pulled up close to the shoreline. Opalescent white clouds curl up over the mountain top and ring the upper peaks in an otherwise clear, ice-blue sky.

Thomas Cole, The Departure, 1837, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran), 2014.79.13
Honey-gold sunlight from low along the horizon to our left falls across the copper and bronze-colored canopies of trees that frame our view of a stone church with stained glass windows and ornate spires in this horizontal landscape painting. We look down onto the scene from a height, and from a distance. On a dirt path across the front of the picture, an armored man is carried on a red cloth-draped stretcher, which is supported over the shoulders of four men. The armored man has a black beard and hair, and his face is turned from us. The men carrying him wear togas in white, rose pink, slate blue, and mustard yellow. Three of them wear armored breastplates and helmets. A white horse draped with a gold, lattice-like blanket walks behind them. An empty saddle is strapped to its back, and the reigns rest around its neck behind the lowered head. A bit behind this grouping, to our left, another armored man holding a spear rides a brown horse, and, farther back along the path, a man holding a crooked staff and a woman stand near the base of a tall, narrow plinth. The plinth is backlit so ornate carving along the roof-like top creates a spiky silhouette. A sculpted person stands at the peak of the roof, a halo around the head. The area beyond the plinth is layered with trees and bushes extending into the distance, lit sage green by the setting sun. The path with the horses and men runs parallel to a ravine, so the grassy embankment closer to us is in deep shadow. At least two brown goats walk along in the shadows of the ravine near the white horse. Four more white goats, one with black spots, stand and lie near a tree that rises nearly the height of the painting along the right edge. The tree has rust-red leaves, and the trunk leans away from us, to our right. One massive branch has been shorn off, and the exposed wood is caramel brown against the darker, gnarled trunk. The church is beyond the path, to our right of center. Tall stained-glass windows, several stories high, are ablaze in red, orange, and topaz blue. Birds, painted with short strokes of black, flock around the church roofline. A procession led by a man wearing blue and red vestments and a tall, split cap emerges from the main, arched doorway. Another man wearing a brown robe stands near a sun dial between us and the procession coming from the church. The wide brim of that man’s hat is fastened at the front with a gold object. He lifts one hand and holds a long staff with a black knob at its center with his other. More people walk near the church, sit on a bench under a tree, and move through the landscape deep into the distance. All the people have light skin. Beyond the moss-green, grassy area around the path and church, a river winds under an arched bridge. A tan-colored building complex sits on a low hill to our left of center. Across the back of the scene, smokey purple and muted mauve-pink mountains line the horizon, which comes about halfway up the composition. The vivid yellow sun is low on the horizon to our left. A few light gray clouds skim across the sky, which deepens from pale yellow along the horizon to light blue along the top of the painting. The artist signed and dated the work on a stone near the man next to the sundial: “T. Cole 1837.” He also signed the front face of the tall pedestal to our left with the same text, though it is difficult to make out.

Thomas Cole, The Return, 1837, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran), 2014.79.12
Warm sunlight bathes a scene with a herd of five golden tan, ivory, or chocolate-brown cows lying or standing on a low hill near four people on foot and on horseback in this horizontal landscape painting. The people all have pale, peachy skin. The horizon line is about a quarter of the way up the composition and is lined in the deep distance with spires rising over trees. Close to us and at the center of the composition, two cows look off to our left in profile; one is caramel brown and lies on the ground in front of a standing, gray cow. The three remaining cows cluster to our right and look off that side of the painting. One of two standing cows is ivory and the other is brown with a white face. The fifth cow lies down and is the same pale brown color of the other reclining cow. Two men riding horses converse with two people on foot to our right of and slightly behind the cows. The person closest to us rides a black horse and faces away from us. He wears a plumed hat and a red cape draped over a blue-gray coat, and he carries a long, thin rod. He looks toward the two people on foot farther back behind the cows. One standing person wears a gray coat, a floppy black, plumed hat, and holds a long staff in one hand and points to our right with the other. The other standing person wears a straw hat over blond hair and wears a blue garment over a white shirt. Near the right edge of the painting, the other horseman wears a gray coat and a brown cap over brown hair. He rides a silvery gray horse and looks back over his shoulder toward the interaction or herd. Birds fly in the distance in the watery blue sky below a bank of dove-gray clouds.

Aelbert Cuyp, Landscape with Herdsmen, mid-1650s, oil on panel, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection), 2014.79.707
A woman with dark hair pulled up in a bun, wearing a long, muted lilac-purple silk dress, stands singing in front of woman playing a piano and a man playing a cello in a dimly lit room in this vertical painting. All the people have pale skin. Light falls from our left onto the singing woman and the musicians sit in shadow behind her. The singing woman’s body is angled to our right, almost in profile, and she looks up and off into the distance with the light illuminating the curve of her forehead and right cheek. She has dark eyes, an oval face, and her lips are parted. She holds a sheet of paper, presumably music, down at her waist. Her pale purple dress is edged with lace at the neck and cuffs. A ruffle runs down the side of her floor-length skirt, and a ruffle lines the bottom hem around her feet. A train affixed to the back of the dress rests on the floor behind her. Both musicians face our right in profile. To our left, the man playing the cello has a white beard and hair, and he wears a dark suit and glasses. To our right, the woman at the piano wears a dark dress, and her dark hair is pulled up. The singing woman stands on a brick-red, patterned area rug, and the wall behind her is papered with sunflowers loosely sapced against a mottled, gold and caramel-brown background. A tall, light blue vase sits on a mantlepiece along the left edge, next to the cello player. A gold-framed picture hangs on the wall over the pianist.

Thomas Eakins, Singing a Pathetic Song, 1881, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund), 2014.79.19
A woman and two children wear nearly matching white dresses in this vertical portrait. All three have pale skin, and they look out at us. Their floor length, short-sleeved, scoop-necked dresses are made with what looks like light, tulle-like fabric gathered just below the bust. The woman sits to our left on a dark sofa. The back of the couch curves up over her shoulders and down to our right, and off the painting. The top edge of the sofa has nail-head trim, and the wall behind it is elephant gray. The woman’s curling brown hair is pulled back behind a white headband. She has gray eyes, and her pink lips are closed. She holds a sprig of strawberries with her right hand, which rests in her lap. Her left arm, on our right, wraps around the younger child, who stands on the sofa at the center of the composition. The child has blond hair and light brown eyes, and wears a delicate, coral bead necklace. To our right, the older child stands in front of the couch. Her black hair is brushed back from her face except for bangs sweeping across her forehead. She has dark brown eyes and wears a gold-colored necklace. The older girl holds a basket of strawberries with her left hand, and rests her other hand on the pointed end of a parasol, which is tucked behind her body to our left.

Joshua Johnson, Grace Allison McCurdy (Mrs. Hugh McCurdy) and Her Daughters, Mary Jane and Letitia Grace, c. 1806, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase through the gifts of William Wilson Corcoran, Elizabeth Donner Norment, Francis Biddle, Erich Cohn, Hardinge Scholle and the William A. Clark Fund), 2014.136.146
A nude, young woman with smooth, pale skin reclines against a grassy mound in a sunny field in this long, horizontal landscape painting. The scene is painted with blended strokes, giving it a soft look. The woman is close to us near the lower center of the painting. With her head to our left, she leans against the low mound supporting her back. Her body is angled mostly away from us, but she turns to look back at us over her shoulder. Her right arm is draped casually over her right hip. The fingers of that hand brush the rim of an iron-gray dish on the ground beside her. Her left foot is tucked under her extended right leg. She has large brown eyes under thick brows, a slender nose, and red lips set in her round face. Her dark brown hair is swept up and gathered at the back of her head. A leafy wreath or headdress is suggested by daubs of sage and avocado green, and a long stroke of brown paint could be a ribbon hanging down her back. She lies on a caramel-brown cloth or pelt dotted with black and streaked with white at the edges. The olive-green field around her is smoothly painted and speckled with dots of white, gold, and light blue, suggesting small flowers. Four shadowy figures cluster in the distance on the right side. Two hold up a gleaming object, perhaps a cup or jug. The scene is framed along the right edge of the painting by a delicate, leafy tree curving up and over from a rocky outcropping. The landscape extends far into the distance where it meets a line of low hills at the horizon, which comes halfway up the canvas. The pale blue sky above is filled with long bands of smoke-gray and white clouds. The artist signed and dated the work with orange letters in the lower left, “Corot 1860.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, The Repose, 1860, reworked c. 1865/1870, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection), 2014.79.709
A view across a wide, brightly lit field scattered with broken pieces of stone is framed to the left and right by crumbling stone temples in this horizontal painting. The sunlight is infused with a soft pink glow, which warms the cream-white stone with a pale blush. The temple on our left sits on a low rise, and a row of at least nine columns topped with an entablature faces our right. Several of the columns are broken off, and part of the entablature and the entire roof is missing, from what we can see. Fragments of pediments and wheel-like sections of columns tumble down from its front steps and back along its side, cascading into and across most of the field before us. The rocky terrain is carpeted in celery-green growth speckled with sage green and areas of rust red in the lower left and right corners. Barely visible in the center of the field, are two men, barely taller than the fragments they inspect. One man wears an apricot-orange suit and bowler hat over blond hair. He kneels with his back to us as he writes or sketches on a piece of paper. A second man stands to his right, also with his back to us, dressed in a long pleated, white tunic with a red cap, jacket, and knee-high boots. To our right and farther back than the other temple, a brick-red tower stands next to another columned arcade. A third temple there, or perhaps another part of that building complex, has columns carved into the shape of six identical, robed women, facing our left. Beyond the ruins, the field slopes down to a peach-colored plain that ends at a wide, topaz-blue body of water with mountains in the far distance along the low horizon line. A petal-pink haze rises from the water and mountains and almost fills the blue-gray sky above. The artist has signed and dated the painting in the lower left, “S.R. Gifford 1880.”

Sanford Robinson Gifford, Ruins of the Parthenon, 1880, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund), 2014.79.20
A dimly lit ballet studio is filled with about two dozen young dancers tying on their shoes, stretching, or practicing en pointe in this horizontal painting. The girls all wear dance costumes with knee length tutus, tight bodices, and belts in canary yellow, rose pink, or royal blue. The girls all have brown or dark blond hair. The room seems to be mostly lit from windows on the wall opposite us so some of the girls’ faces are in shadow, but all appear to have light skin. Starting from the left, two dancers are visible from the waist down as they descend a spiral staircase that rises along the left edge of the canvas and off the top. To our left of center is a knot of several dancers, two of whom stand on their toes en pointe, with arms raised. Further right and closest to us, four dancers cluster around a mahogany-brown bench. Rose-pink ballet slippers are piled next to a seated dancer wearing a scarlet-red jacket over her costume. Her head is turned to our right, looking at the girl standing next to her. On the other side of the bench, another dancer bends over to reach her feet, presumably tying on her slippers. The fourth stands on the far right with her back to us, her head turned to our left to look back at the central group. More dancers practice in a room beyond, seen through a wide, squared opening in the upper right of the composition. The room we seem to be in has dark olive-green walls and the room beyond has brighter, parchment-yellow walls. The faces and some details of the costume are loosely painted so their features are indistinct. The artist signed the painting in the lower right corner, “Degas.”

Edgar Degas, The Dance Class, c. 1873, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection), 2014.79.710

David C. Driskell, Peak and Plane, 1980, egg tempera, mesh fabric, and collage on wove paper, Corcoran Collection (Gift of the Women's Committee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art), 2015.143.169
From a high vantage point, we look down ontp a group of dozens of boys who stand, sit, stretch, sprawl, or dangle their legs off a rough wooden pier that juts out from the lower left corner into a dark river in this horizonal painting. Their gangly bodies are loosely painted and brightly lit from the upper left. Most are nude, their skin tones ranging from cream white to medium brown. There are gaps between some of the planks of pier, and some of the boards hang off the sides, as if laid loosely across the supports beneath. One boy dives into the river near the center of the painting while another bends over to pull a boy back onto the pier. Several splash in the water near the right side of the painting. The river is emerald green near the brightly lit pier and becomes almost black across the upper half of the painting. An empty, small rowboat painted in stripes of white, white, and blue floats in the shadows along the top center edge of the canvas.

George Bellows, Forty-two Kids, 1907, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, William A. Clark Fund), 2014.79.2
The spruce-green silhouette of a broad-shouldered man standing among palm fronds looks up at a faint red star against a field of green circles radiating out from the horizon in this abstracted vertical painting. The scene is made with mostly flat areas of color to create silhouettes in shades of slate and indigo blue, lemon-lime and pea green, plum purple, and brick red. To our right of center, the man faces our left in profile. His eye is a slit and he has tight curly hair. The position of his feet, standing on a coffin-shaped, brick-red box, indicate his back is to us. He stands with legs apart and his arms by his sides. Terracotta-orange shackles around his wrists are linked with a black chain. A woman to our left, perhaps kneeling, holds her similarly shackled hands up overhead. A line of shackled people with their heads bowed move away from this pair, toward wavy lines indicating water in the distance. The water is pine green near the shore and lightens, in distinct bands, to asparagus green on the horizon. On our left, two, tall pea-green ships sail close to each other at the horizon, both titled at an angle to our right. Concentric circles radiate out from the horizon next to the ships to span the entire painting, subtly altering the color of the silhouettes it encounters. To our left, a buttercup-yellow beam shines from the red star in the sky across the canvas, overlapping the man’s face. Spruce-blue palm trees grow to our right while plum-purple palm fronds and leaves in smoke gray and blood red frame the painting along the left corners and edge. The artist signed the painting in the lower right, in black, “AARON DOUGLAS.”

Aaron Douglas, Into Bondage, 1936, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase and partial gift from Thurlow Evans Tibbs, Jr., The Evans-Tibbs Collection), 2014.79.17
The top quarter of this horizontal abstract painting is dominated by bright, sunshine yellow over areas of sky blue, moss and forest green, and white below. The painting is made up of four vertical panels joined to make one long composition. Yellow dominates the leftmost panel over a field of pale blue marked with forest and spring green, teal, and yellow, mostly along the bottom edge of the canvas. The field of pale blue and white take up most of the space in the two center panels, with a band of yellow above and deep green marks below. In the rightmost panel, the blue field is more variegated with darker blues, shades of green, white, and yellow. Throughout, some of the colors are layered and sometimes they are applied next to each other. Thick and thin areas of paint and drips create a variety of textures on the surface of each panel. The artist signed this work in pencil in the lower right corner: “Joan Mitchell.”

Joan Mitchell, Salut Tom, 1979, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of the Women's Committee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and Museum Purchase with the aid of funds from the National Endowment for the Arts), 2014.136.135
A man and a woman with black skin stand in a sage and olive-green boat that comes toward us on a wavy, dripping band of cobalt blue that spans the lower edge of this loosely hanging, square canvas. The word “WANDERER” is written in white capital letters along the bow of the boat. Closer to us, in the boat, a woman is seen from the hips up. An oval, cloud-like form covers her torso, shoulders, and the area behind her head. It is white with rose-pink swirls, and has a few black lines creating scallops around the edge. A black shape at her waist, just over a cobalt-blue skirt, could indicate that at least one arm is bent behind her back. The penis, thighs, and knees of a man are seen between the boat and the triangular, pale lilac-purple sail. The sail is painted with long, curling strokes of violet purple up its center. A long, white pennant with two gold stars flutters from the boat’s burgundy-red mast, which has a crosspiece just below the pennant. The water is painted with strokes of royal blue, which partially drip over a white skull at the lower center. The boat is set against a background layered in washes of white, shell pink, and baby blue, with swirls and thin strokes of brick red scattered across it. A yellow sun outlined in deeper gold peeks above the horizon in the lower left, and is repeated with more orbs that together make an arc that curves to the upper right corner. A few geometric line drawings hover next to the woman, on our left, such as a compass-like cross with a crosshatched oval at each end. A black number

Kerry James Marshall, Voyager, 1992, acrylic and collage on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of the Women’s Committee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art), 2014.79.52
Four men on horseback riding side by side hold revolvers up in the air in this freestanding bronze sculpture. All four wear gloves with long cuffs and wide-brimmed hats. Their eyes are delineated as slits to suggest they are closed or nearly so, and their mouths are wide open. Their right hands, to our left, are raised holding revolvers in the air, and they hold the reins of the horses with their other hands. Three of the men have bushy mustaches and one, second from our right, has a full, trimmed beard. Two have long, shoulder-length hair, which alternate with the other two who seem to have close-cropped hair. The horses all run with their legs at different angles, all with two legs off the ground except the leftmost horse, who has three feet midair in a long stride. The horses’ heads pull forward as the riders pull up. In this photograph the sculpture is angled away from us to our left, so we see the most of the rider and horse closest to us to our right. He wears wide chaps, and a booted foot is snug in the stirrup on the side we can see. The base beneath the horses’ feet is modeled coarsely to suggest earth. Light creates white highlights on the dark brown bronze, and some surfaces are a little rough, especially on the horses’ bodies. The artist inscribed the right side of the base, “Frederic Remington” and a nearby inscription reads, “Copyrighted by Frederic Remington 1902.”

Frederic Remington, Off the Range (Coming Through the Rye), model 1902, cast 1903, bronze, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase), 2014.79.38

Louise Bourgeois, La tapisserie de mon enfance—montains in Aubusson (The Tapestry of My Childhood—Mountains in Aubusson), 1947, brush and black ink with gouache on wove paper, Corcoran Collection (Gift of William H. G. FitzGerald, Desmond FitzGerald, and B. Francis Saul II), 2014.136.212

Deruta 15th Century, Faenza 15th Century, Basin with geometric patterns and dragon, c. 1480/1500, tin-glazed earthenware (maiolica), Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection), 2014.136.308
Shown from the waist up, a Black woman, Ethel Shariff, wears a nun’s habit and light-colored clothing as she stands in front of about two dozen more Black nuns in this square black and white photograph. Ethel is in sharp focus at the center of the picture. She looks steadily at us with wide-set eyes, a rounded nose, and full lips in her oval face. The habit covers her head and falls beyond her shoulders. A scarf is tucked into the high neck of her white garment, which buttons up the front. She wears chunky earrings and a glimmering gold necklace with a small box-shaped pendant. She and the other women stand with their hands clasped behind their backs. Those behind Ethel stand in formation, creating a loose V. They are out of focus, their faces a variety of tones.

Gordon Parks, Ethel Shariff in Chicago, 1963, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2015.19.4631

William Eggleston, Memphis, 1969-1970, printed 1980, dye imbibition print, Corcoran Collection (Gift of Mr. Morris R. Garfinkle), 2014.136.409
A pale-skinned young woman stands holding a long-handled pot over an open barrel in this vertical painting. The woman faces our left in profile and leans slightly over the thigh-high barrel. The barrel is tinged with moss green, and it has a hole in the side facing us. The woman’s smooth cheeks and lips are tinged with rose red. She has a slender nose, and she looks off to our left with brown eyes. Her jacket, long skirt, and cap are all white, and her apron is light peach. A gold object, like a pendant or bell, dangles from a teal-blue ribbon around her neck. The long handle of the pot is tucked under her bent left arm, and she grasps the handle where it attaches to the pan. Her right hand reaches into the pot, which dips down beneath the lip of the barrel. The woman and the barrel take up most of the height of the composition. Clustered on the floor to the left of the barrel are three vessels, including a tall cylindrical container painted in copper brown with crimson-red streaks, a large brass pot lying on its side so we see its shiny interior, and brick-red pan with a long iron handle that ends in a hook. To our right, a peach-colored clay pot with bands of forest and sage green sits on the floor just behind the woman, with its short handle angled to our right. Light coming from the upper left glints on the edges and interiors of the pots and illuminates the woman. The floor is washed with laurel green and spruce blue, with strokes of mustard yellow. The back wall is mottled in caramel brown and smoke gray.

Jean Siméon Chardin, The Scullery Maid, c. 1738, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection), 2014.79.708
About a dozen women and men, all with pale or suntanned skin, work in a field harvesting grain in this horizontal painting. The women wear long skirts and aprons, and some wear cloths tied around their heads. The men wear long-sleeved shirts rolled up to the elbow and long pants. Closest to us and to our right of center, a woman stands facing our left in profile, holding a large, round sieve. Her dark hair is pulled back, and she wears a gold-colored, teardrop-shaped earring in the ear we can see. The sleeves of her white blouse are rolled up and a teal-blue apron is tied over a brown, ankle-length skirt above bare feet. Black seed pours from the sieve, which she holds in front of her with arms wide, onto a cloth below. To our left, a woman wearing a dark skirt, a white shirt, and a red head covering kneels on the cloth and scoops the black seed into a bucket. Next to her, a girl wearing a brown dress sits on the cloth and watches the seed cascade down as she holds a baby or a doll in her lap. One white bag stands upright behind the woman holding the sieve, while a second bag has been depleted. A brass-colored tea kettle sits between the bags with a vessel, possibly ceramic. Vivid red flowers in that area could be a patch of poppies in the field. A woman behind this group, to our right, wraps a big bundle of stalks in a blue sack while another woman, to our left, carries a bundle of the rapeseed stalks balanced on her head with both hands. A group of men beyond her work in a circle, holding long scythes with straight blades overhead. Another woman kneels with her back to us and others work, hunched over, around the men. The field is enclosed by band of pine-green trees surrounding houses and barns. Gray clouds cover much of the pale blue sky above. The artist signed and dated the work in dark paint in the lower left corner: “Jules Breton Courrieres 1860.”

Jules Breton, The Colza (Harvesting Rapeseed), 1860, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection), 2014.136.21

Andrea di Vanni, Scenes from the Passion of Christ: The Descent into Limbo [right panel], 1380s, tempera on panel, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection), 2014.79.711.c

Arthur Dove, #4 Creek, c. 1923, charcoal and graphite on wove paper, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase), 2014.136.206

Childe Hassam, Au Grand Prix de Paris (At the Grand Prix de Paris), 1887, pastel over graphite on paperboard coated with sawdust, Corcoran Collection (Bequest of James Parmelee), 2014.79.39
We look across the gleaming, forest-green surface of a lake at the foot of tall, jagged mountains in this horizontal landscape painting. The lake is flanked by a steep, gingerbread-brown hill on the left and a shoreline that forms a backward C curving from the lower center around and back along the right side of the composition. Strong sunlight from the upper left illuminates the center of the left-hand hill and the shoreline. The ground to our right is carpeted in rust-red, sage-green, and tan growth and is dotted with boulders. Tall trees with rust-brown trunks, crooked branches, and narrow canopies of caramel-brown and olive-green leaves fill the far end. Closest to us are dead tree trunks jutting out of the water and or lying on a flat, rocky outcropping nearby. Beyond the outcropping is a small black bear wandering down a sliver of sand-colored ground at the water’s edge. The hill on the left is covered with vertical rows of upright jagged boulders and slender, dark green trees marching up its slopes. A narrow, artic-blue waterfall cascades down its right side to empty into the lake. A thick layer of towering blue-gray clouds rises over the hill and lake, stretching back to the looming, snow-covered peaks that nearly brush the top edge of the canvas. The sky around the peak is vivid blue, scattered with high white clouds. The artist signed the lower right, “ABierstadt” with the A and B joined as a monogram.

Albert Bierstadt, Mount Corcoran, c. 1876-1877, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund), 2014.79.4

 

 

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While the National Gallery acquired approximately half of the Corcoran Collection, most of the balance of the objects were distributed to other museums in the Washington, D.C., area. Download a full list here.

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