The Chester Dale Bequest

May 6 – August 18, 1965
Main Floor, Galleries 86 through 91

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

Overview: This exhibition presented Chester Dale's bequest to the Gallery. 88 paintings from Dale's apartment in the Plaza Hotel in New York, which had not been seen before in Washington, joined the 152 paintings that had been on loan to the Gallery, principally French works of the 19th and 20th centuries. 6 new galleries were finished on the Main Floor to make room for the additional acquisitions. Chester Dale died on December 16, 1962, leaving the Gallery a bequest that included 240 paintings, 7 sculptures, 22 graphics, 1,560 books, 1,232 sales catalogues, scrapbooks, and files, and $500,000 to endow 3 fellowships. Previous gifts of 34 paintings brought the Chester Dale collection to 303 works of art by 116 artists.

Catalog: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Paintings and Sculpture of the French School in the Chester Dale Collection. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1965.
Twentieth Century Paintings and Sculpture of the French School in the Chester Dale Collection. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1965. [Revised edition of the 1952 and 1960 publications.]
Paintings Other Than French in the Chester Dale Collection. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1965.