Three boys and a man share a catboat that heels hard under a fair wind. Spray catches the light; the sail is taut; the horizon is a clean, almost empty line. Winslow Homer’s Breezing Up (A Fair Wind) (1873–1876) looks at first like a summer outing off the New England coast. Look longer and the picture rearranges itself: an anchor sits where a figure once sat in the bow, and the youngest boy — not the man in red — holds the tiller. Critics at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876 already read that swap as hope and a forward gaze for a nation still recovering from the Civil War. Quick facts Artist: Winslow Homer (1836–1910) Date: 1873–1876 (inscribed lower right HOMER 1876 ) Medium: Oil on canvas (61.5 × 97 cm / 24 3/16 × 38 3/16 in.) Collection: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1943.13.1; Gift of the W. L. and May T. Mellon Foundation; West Building, Gallery M68) Notable fact: Homer reworked an earlier composition...

The Child holds a string. At the end of it, a goldfinch waits with a red mask and charcoal wings, as if the next second of the painting might be a tug or a flight. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s Madonna of the Goldfinch (about 1767–1770) is a late, quiet canvas from a painter famous for ceilings the size of weather. Here the drama shrinks to a veil, a blue mantle, and a bird that Christian viewers already knew as a sign of the Passion: the goldfinch that feeds among thorns. Quick facts Artist: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770) Date: c. 1767–1770 Medium: Oil on canvas (62 × 49.5 cm) Collection: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1997.60.1; West Building, Gallery M32) Notable fact: A late half-length Madonna from Tiepolo’s last years; the goldfinch on a thread is a traditional emblem of Christ’s coming Passion Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Madonna of the Goldfinch, c. 1767–1770. Oil on canvas. Source: National Gallery of Art,...

Look once for the black dog on the wall. Look again for the sun that is trying to erase the river. If you only know J.M.W. Turner from storms and wrecks, Mortlake Terrace (1827) is where you meet the other Turner: the one who treats light as the main character and everything else as its supporting cast. Quick facts Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) Date: 1827 Medium: Oil on canvas (92.1 × 122.2 cm) Collection: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Andrew W. Mellon Collection) Notable fact: Painted for William Moffatt at The Limes, Mortlake; evening companion to the Frick Collection’s Mortlake Terrace: Early Summer Morning (1826) Joseph Mallord William Turner, Mortlake Terrace, 1827. Oil on canvas. Source: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Accession 1937.1.109. Open Access / Public Domain. Print available from the Sapiens Verbum shop. What Is at Stake Most people scroll past a “pretty Thames sunset” in three second...

The Gothic towers of Westminster do not stand so much as dissolve. Claude Monet's The Houses of Parliament, Sunset (1903) turns London's most solid civic silhouette into violet mist over the Thames. Spikes of architecture blur into atmosphere; the river below breaks into short strokes of pink, orange, and blue. This is not a postcard of Big Ben. It is weather made of paint. Quick facts Artist: Claude Monet (1840-1926) Date: 1903 Medium: Oil on canvas (32 x 36 7/16 in / 81.3 x 92.5 cm) Collection: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Chester Dale Collection) Notable fact: Part of Monet's London Parliament series, painted from the terrace of St Thomas' Hospital across the Thames; signed lower right "Claude Monet 1903" Claude Monet, The Houses of Parliament, Sunset, 1903. Oil on canvas. Source: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Accession 1963.10.48. Open Access / Public Domain. Print available from the Sapiens Verbum shop. A Landmark Wit...

There is almost no story here - and that is the point. No farmer, no cart, no church steeple. Just a field of green wheat rising in waves, a pale dirt path slipping in from the lower right, and a sky full of soft, restless clouds. Vincent van Gogh painted Green Wheat Fields, Auvers in 1890, in the village north of Paris where he spent his last months. The canvas is "pure" landscape: nature under wind, thickened into paint. Quick facts Artist: Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) Date: 1890 (Auvers-sur-Oise, likely May) Medium: Oil on canvas (28 1/2 x 36 in / 72.39 x 91.44 cm) Collection: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Paul Mellon Collection) Notable fact: A "pure" landscape with no figures or buildings; entered the NGA in 2013 from the Mellon gift Vincent van Gogh, Green Wheat Fields, Auvers, 1890. Oil on canvas. Source: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Accession 2013.122.1. Open Access / Public Domain. Print available from the Sapiens Verbum ...

In February 1967, a portrait smaller than a dinner plate crossed the Atlantic sealed inside a modified American Tourister suitcase, booked into a first-class seat under a false name, and met on the tarmac by federal agents. It was Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra de' Benci — and the $5 million the National Gallery of Art paid to bring it home was, at the time, the largest sum ever spent on a single work of art. Three decades before he painted the Mona Lisa, a 22-year-old Leonardo had already produced his first masterpiece of psychological ambiguity, and hidden a second, secret message on the back of the panel. Quick facts Artist: Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) Date: c. 1474–1478 Medium: Oil on panel, painted on both sides Collection: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Notable fact: The only painting by Leonardo on public view in the Americas Leonardo da Vinci, Ginevra de’ Benci, c. 1474/1478. Oil on panel. Source: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Accession 19...