The National Gallery of Art (West Building) is one of our most preferable musea in the DC area. It houses and exposes fantastic collections of master paintings and sculptures, most of them donated by (very rich) American art collectors. Chester DALE (1883 - 1962) and his wife, Maud, were amongst the instigators of this fabulous gallery. Together they amassed (a part from their significant acquisitions of American art) one of the finest collections of late 19th and early 20th century European paintings. However, it was financier, art collector and philanthropist Andrew W. MELLON (in the mid 1920s, he was the 3th highest income tax payer in the USA, behind John Rockefeller and Henry Ford) who donated his huge art collection and a building to house a new museum (in the early 1940s, it was the largest marble structure in the world !). We find it truly marvelous to observe all these grandiose master pieces of art and we enjoy it every time again ... millions and millions of dollars of valued art, accessible for free. Matisse, Monet, Renoir, Cassatt, Modigliani, Degas, Cézanne, Manet, Boudin, Picasso, de Toulouse-Lautrec, da Vinci, Raphael, van Eyck, Vermeer, de Goya, van Gogh, Rembrandt, Hals, Rubens, Breughel, Botticelli, Rodin, etc. etc. ... name it and they have it ! More pictures (you can take them without any problem), click HERE.
