Mar

Capital Portraits: Treasures from Washington Private Collections

(Image: Detail from “Hildegarde” by Lilla Cabot Perry, circa 1912, The Carl Collection. Photo by Alex Jamison Photography)

Kate (Portrait of Kate Moss) by Chuck Close, Jacquard tapestry, 2007. Dan Snyder and Tom Breit © Chuck Close, courtesy The Pace Gallery

“Capital Portraits: Treasures from Washington Private Collections,” showcases some of the finest examples of portraiture owned by individuals living in the Washington, D.C., region. On view at the National Portrait Gallery April 8 through Sept. 5, the exhibition features 60 works ranging from the mid-18th century to 2008. Many of the loans are on public view for the first time.

While planning the exhibition, curators Carolyn Kinder Carr and Ellen Miles (with assistance from Pie Friendly) discovered that owners of portraits in the nation’s capital generally possess them for one of three reasons: they have inherited them, they have collected them for their historical or artistic merit or they themselves sat for the portrait.

Together, these portraits reveal a remarkable range of styles and stories. Like all portraits, they reflect the coming together of a sitter and an artist and, at times, a patron. Thus the portraits provide a window into the life of the sitter, the career of the artist and the era in which they lived.

Thomas Sergeant and Henry Sergeant by Charles Wilson Peale, circa 1786. Private collection. (Photograph by Alex Jamison Photography)

“This exhibition demonstrates how portraiture is intertwined with the private sphere of people’s lives,” said Martin Sullivan, director of the Portrait Gallery. “It recognizes, too, the spirit of private collectors who have been instrumental in the formation and vitality of art collections in and around Washington, D.C.”

Subjects range from famous individuals to family members. Included are personalities such as the Marquis de Lafayette, artist John James Audubon and model Kate Moss. Major artists whose works are represented include John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Charles Willson Peale, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, Andy Warhol and Chuck Close. Six of the works were painted in Washington, including two by the 20th-century African American artist John Robinson and one by the well-known color-field painter Gene Davis.

"Passing/Posing (St. Monaca) by Kehinde Wiley, 2005. Collection of Henry L. Thaggert III. Copyright Kehinde Wiley.

Carr and Miles also wrote the accompanying 208-page catalog, Capital Portraits: Treasures from Washington Private Collections. The catalog was published by the Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press in cooperation with Rowan & Littlefield and will be available in the museum store for $49.95.