Prints and Drawings from the Permanent Collection

June 18 – October 15, 2000
West Building, Ground Floor, Galleries GS-5-GS 9

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

Overview: Four thematic selections from the Gallery's collection of works on paper made up this exhibition.

Eighteenth-Century Drawings from the Chanler Bequest presented 20 French and Italian drawings from the recent bequest of Gertrude Laughlin Chanler. An architectural fantasy by Piranesi and 6 drawings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard of the adventures of Don Quixote were included .

Through the Window: Framing and Meaning included 21 drawings, primarily from the Gallery's Rosenwald Collection, showing varied ways in which framing devices such as windows, arches, and doorways were used by artists from the 15th through the 17th centuries. 2 northern European books on perspective were included as well.

Prints and Drawings from the Ravenel-Smyth Bequest presented 24 prints and drawings selected from the recent bequest of Gaillard Ravenel and Frances Smyth-Ravenel. Ravenel had been head of the design and installation department and Smyth-Ravenel editor-in-chief at the National Gallery of Art.

Prints and Proofs by Richard Diebenkorn included 28 prints, among them figurative works, landscapes, still lifes, and abstractions printed between 1962 and 1992 at Crown Point Press, Gemini G.E.L., and Tamarind Lithography Workshop.

Organization: The curators were Margaret Morgan Grasselli, curator of old master drawings; Gregory Jecmen, assistant curator of old master prints; Andrew Robison, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator; and Charles Ritchie, assistant curator of modern prints and drawings.