Bruce Guthrie Photos: DC -- Freer Gallery of Art

DC -- Freer Gallery of Art -- Notes:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by Bruce Guthrie who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the Creative Commons definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. If asked for permission in advance, I'll usually waive the non-commercial clause unless it's for people trying to sell the photos. A free copy of any printed publication using the photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from official signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Description of Subject Matter: The Freer Gallery opened in 1923 as the first Smithsonian museum dedicated to the collection and display of works of art. The collection was from Charles Freer, who made a killing building railroad cars, and it consists of his Oriental art collection as well as some Western painters like James Whistler (who was one of Freer's friends).

From the official museum description: The gallery houses a world-renowned collection of art from China, Japan, Korea, South and Southeast Asia, and the Near East. Visitor favorites include Chinese paintings, Japanese folding screens, Korean ceramics, Indian and Persian manuscripts, and Buddhist sculpture. A highlight of the Whistler holdings is the Peacock Room, a dining room that was once part of a London townhouse. In 1876, Whistler lavishly decorated the room with a blue and gold peacock design. After the owner's death, the room was brought to the United States and permanently installed in the Freer Gallery.

The gallery was founded by Charles Lang Freer (1854–1919), a railroad-car manufacturer from Detroit who gave to the United States his collections and funds for a building to house them. The Italian-Renaissance-style gallery, constructed in granite and marble, was designed by American architect Charles Platt. When the gallery opened to the public in 1923, it was the first Smithsonian museum for fine arts. In subsequent years, the collections have grown through gifts and purchases to nearly triple the size of Freer's bequest

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Freer and the Ideal of Feminine Beauty:
Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919) was the devoted patron of James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Dwight Tryon, and Abbott Handerson Thayer. Born in Kingston, New York, Freer left school at an early age to help support his family. Her arrived in Detroit in 1879 (along with his business partner Frank J. Hecker) and entered the railroad car building business. Two decades later, Freer masterminded the merger of thirteen car companies into the Amer ...More...
Wikipedia Description: Freer Gallery of Art
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Freer Gallery of Art is the Smithsonian Institution's museum of East Asian art, including art from East Asia (China, Korea, Japan), South Asia (India), and southeast Asia, as well as American art. The Freer is one of two galleries of the National Museum of Asian Art, the other being the Sackler Gallery. It opened to the general public in 1923. It is located on the south side of the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Visitor favorites include Chinese ceramics and Chinese paintings, Korean Ceramics, and Korean pottery, Japanese folding screens, Indian and Persian manuscripts, and Buddhist sculpture from various regions and time periods. The artwork of the gallery ranges from Neolithic to modern, with multitudes of painted art mostly from the Song Dynasty,Ming Dynasty, and Qing Dynasty of China.

History:

The gallery was founded by Charles Lang Freer (1854–1919), a railroad-car manufacturer from Detroit who gave to the United States his collections and funds for a building to house them. The Italian-Renaissance-style gallery, constructed in granite and marble, was designed by American architect Charles A. Platt. When the gallery opened to the public in 1923, it was the first Smithsonian museum for fine arts. In subsequent years, the collections have grown through gifts and purchases to nearly triple the size of Freer's bequest.

A highlight of the Whistler holdings is the Peacock Room, a dining room that was once part of a London townhouse. In 1876, Whistler lavishly decorated the room with a blue and gold peacock design. After the owner's death, the room was purchased in toto and brought to the United States and permanently installed in the Freer Gallery.

The adjoining Arthur M. Sackler Gallery was opened in 1987 to house a gift of some 1,000 works of Asian art from Dr. Arthur M. Sackler (1913–1987), a research physician and medical publisher from New York City. Among the highlights of his ...More...
Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SIFG_130217_003.JPG: Whistler's Neighborhood: Impressions of a Changing London Nowhere in England could you find better material for pictures than in Chelsea... but it was then practically owned by James McNeill Whistler. There were his little shops, his rag shops, his green-grocer shops, and his sweet shops; in fact, so nearly was it all his, that after a time he sternly forbade other painters to work there at all. James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) lived in London’s Chelsea neighborhood from 1863 until his death. Bordering the River Thames, Chelsea was home to artists, aristocrats, tradesmen, and paupers. Whistler depicted the storefronts and street life outside his door and captured a section of the city that was undergoing a dramatic transformation in the 1880s. Historic buildings were razed and replaced with mansions for the upper class, forcing the poor into squalid conditions. The Thames Embankment, a major public works project designed to improve river navigation and provide underground sewers, changed the topography of Chelsea by claiming much of the riverbank for public gardens and new residential buildings. The diminutive etchings in Whistler’s Neighborhood: Impressions of a Changing London, which also features watercolors and small oil paintings, underscore the immediacy of the artist’s quick impressions of his evolving neighborhood. Together, the works form a panorama of Chelsea in the 1880s. The above was from http://www.asia.si.edu/explore/american/whistlers-neighborhood/intro.asp
2. SIFG_130217_201.JPG: The Peacock Room.
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages here that have content directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos]
- 2002_DC_SIFG: DC -- Freer Gallery of Art (32 photos from 2002)
- 2004_DC_SIFG: DC -- Freer Gallery of Art (98 photos from 2004)
- 2006_DC_SIFG: DC -- Freer Gallery of Art (37 photos from 2006)
- 2008_DC_SIFG: DC -- Freer Gallery of Art (72 photos from 2008)
- 2011_DC_SIFG: DC -- Freer Gallery of Art (76 photos from 2011)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [Museums (Art)]
2013 photos: So far, my camera is mostly the Fuji X-S1 but, depending on the event, I'm also using a Nikon D7000 and Nikon D600. Trips this year have been limited to a Civil War Trust conference in Memphis.
Photo Contact: Email Bruce Guthrie.