The Chester Dale Collection

You know this is going to be a spectacular collection from the very beginning--there are two portraits of each of them (Chester and Maud Dale). He is painted by Diego Rivera and Salvador Dali, and she is painted by George Bellows and Fernand Léger (one of only two portraits he is thought to have done). They are heavy hitters with taste. Dale was reputed to have been an astute businessman who made his fortune on Wall Street in the bond market. He thrived on forging deals and translated much of this energy and talent into his art collecting. He served on the board of the National Gallery of Art from 1943 and as president from 1955 until his death in 1962. Maud was his elder, and the one who had the final say in what was purchased.

Chester Dale's magnificent bequest to the National Gallery of Art in 1962 included a generous endowment as well as one of America's most important collections of French painting from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This special exhibition, the first in 45 years to explore the extraordinary legacy left to the nation by this passionate collector, features some 83 of his finest French and American paintings. In the Washington Post article that is linked to above, the collection has not been shown together because without it, the French collection is empty.

There are many impressions that I carried away from the exhibit. The first was not wanting to leave it. We walked through it three times, and yet I was reluctant still to go. Fortunately, the catalogue for the collection has remarkably good reproductions of almost all my favorites. Monet is always tricky, because so much of the genius of the painting is the remarkable interplay of light and shadow, and often that does not come out well in a photograph--of the five Monet landscapes in my favorite room of the exhibit, only one (The Houses of Parliament) is stunning, and only one suffers terribly (Palazzo de Mula, Venice). George Bellow's 'Blue Morning', which is remarkably strong despite being amidst so much Monet, is gorgeous, both in person and in reproduction. In any case, the collection as a whole takes your breath away. It is a lush. It is magnificent. The breadth of genius represented is awe inspiring. The portraits hold their own with the landscapes. The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts, and the collection is worth traveling to the National Gallery to see.