July D.C. Art Museum Visits

A few weeks ago, I took the metro into D.C. I went alone with no plan of where I wanted to go. First, I went into the Freer because I've always thought of it as one of the more boring art museums in the city and I wanted to give it a second chance. It was still small and sparse as I had remembered, but I enjoyed revisiting the nutty extravagance of the Peacock Room. Thomas Dewing's paintings "Before Sunrise" and "After Sunset" were pretty in a quiet, spooky sort of way. I copied a portion of a Japanese scroll into my sketchbook:

 

Next, I wandered through the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden and sketched one of the sculptures:

Inside the NGA's East Wing, I was impressed by the huge exhibit about Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. I loved the costume designs by Leon Bakst. In the NGA's West Wing, I checked out some Pre-Raphaelite illustrations, a Munch exhibit (he seemed to have an obsession with women's hair), and lots of sculptures by Rodin and Degas. There were crowds of tourists in the rooms with the Monet and Van Gogh paintings. But the only painting that I really reacted to was Andrew Wyeth's "Wind From the Sea." It's not a pretty picture of flowers or people. But when I stepped in front of it, I instantly imagined myself in an old house by the sea, with the wind WHOOSHing through the window, the tattered curtain, and onto my face. I had a physical reaction to this painting and probably even said "Woah" out loud. It probably doesn't have the same effect with an internet jpeg:

You'll just have to trust me on this and check it out if you ever go to the West Wing of the National Gallery in D.C. I've never been a big fan of Andrew Wyeth's hyper-realism, until it blew my hair back with an imaginary gust of wind.