National Gallery of Art receives 62 rare works from Mellon family

 

A 62-piece collection of rare works, some unseen for decades — paintings by Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet and Winslow Homer, and oil sketches by Georges Seurat — have been added to the National Gallery of Art.

 

The works are part of a 110-piece bequest by the late philanthropist Paul Mellon. After his death in 1999, they remained in the care of his wife, Rachel “Bunny” Lambert Mellon, who released 48 works during her lifetime, including van Gogh’s “Green Wheat Fields, Auvers,” which went on view last year. These final pieces come to the gallery after her death in March.

 

The pieces are largely intimate works, of sizes and proportions that would fill a home, said Kimberly A. Jones, associate curator of French paintings. “It’s not about the physical scale but the quality of the works, which is exceptional,” she said.

 

Highlights include another van Gogh, “Still Life of Oranges and Lemons with Blue Gloves,” which is undergoing conservation and will go on display next month. “The Riders” by Edgar Degas is an example of both Degas’ and Mellon’s passion for horse racing and adds to the gallery’s Degas collection, the third-largest in the world.

 

Twelve oil sketches by Seurat are especially significant because the artist died young and left behind a relatively small body of work, Jones said. They have been added to the two large oil paintings, two other small oil sketches and one drawing already in the gallery collection.

 

“These are not the works everyone else is acquiring and displaying,” Jones said, “and there’s some nice little surprises.”

 

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