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Home>Exhibitions>Past>1954>American Primitive Paintings from the Collection of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch

American Primitive Paintings from the Collection of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch

May 9 – July 11, 1954
Ground Floor, Central Gallery, Galleries G-9, G-10, G-11

Ralph Eleaser Whiteside Earl, Family Portrait, 1804, oil on canvas, Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1953.5.8

This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.

Overview: More than 100 portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and genre paintings came from the Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch collection of early American paintings. Since 1944, Colonel and Mrs. Garbisch had assembled the largest private collection of American naive art, more than 1,800 examples, from the early 18th to the late 19th century. Their intention was that the collection would eventually be made available to the public through gifts and loans to museums here and abroad. This first exhibition of paintings was drawn from their first gift of 300 paintings and 200 miniatures. It was coordinated by William P. Campbell.

Catalog: American Primitive Paintings from the Collection of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, Part I. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1954.