Outside the East Wing of the National Art Gallery in Washington. Photo: Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times

The National Gallery, founded in 1937 as a gift to the nation from the financier Andrew W. Mellon, opened its doors in 1941. It is the jewel in the crown of Washington’s many great museums. It is open, with free admission, 363 days a year, although this year that number will drop to 362. Like many institutions along the Mall, it will be closed on Inauguration Day.

"Alba Madonna," circa 1510, by Raphael. Photo: National Gallery of Art

The museum’s art is almost entirely European and American, and its long suit by far is painting. The galleries are numbered, and the first 25 or so offer an amazing review of the font of Western painting in 13th- to 16th-century Italy, especially if you attend primarily to the abundant renderings of the Madonna and Child.

One of the choicest places to pause is Gallery 39, where you’ll find examples of the astounding realism favored in Germany and the Netherlands, such as Rogier van der Weyden’s luxuriously austere “Portrait of a Lady” of around 1460, her delicate face framed by white veils in a shape reminiscent of a sphinx. Photo: National Gallery of Art

A quick stop in Gallery 50C, not much bigger than a large closet, will bring you face to face with Vermeer’s dewy “Girl With the Red Hat” (1665-6), turning around to peer out of the picture so quickly you can almost hear the rustling of her blue silk garment. The space behind her is muffled by a yellow and green tapestry in soft focus. Photo: National Gallery of Art

On the other side of the rotunda, French Impressionism and a few galleries of American art await. Among the Impressionists, keep an eye out for Cézanne’s rough-surfaced, all-thumbs portrait of his domineering father in Gallery 83. Photo: National Gallery of Art

Another standout in this section is Paul Gauguin’s “Still Life With Peonies” (Gallery 84). Acquired by the gallery in 1995, the Gauguin is an early work painted in 1884, the year he quit his day job as a bank clerk and began to paint full time, but it conveys the turbulence central to both his life and his art. Photo: National Gallery of Art

Across the hall, the American paintings include examples of the limpid American landscape style called Luminism and the more flamboyant Ash Can School. Of particular interest is a gallery (No. 65) devoted to Gilbert Stuart’s portraits, including five of early American presidents (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, pictured, Monroe and Madison) that the Gallery has never exhibited together. Photo: National Gallery of Art

My favorite, however, is Stuart’s portrait from 1793-4 of Mrs. Richard Yates, possibly one of the nation’s first ladies who lunch. Dressed completely in light gray lace or satin or tulle, this thin, immaculately turned-out older woman looks up from her sewing to scrutinize us and seems noticeably unimpressed. Photo: National Gallery of Art

Inside the main entrance of the East Wing are several tiny galleries of small French paintings. Antoine Vollon’s lush “Mound of Butter” from 1875-85, in Gallery 103D. The work is primarily a pile of weightless brushstrokes, perhaps a comment on the excesses of Impressionism, which was all the rage during the time “Mound of Butter” was painted. Photo: National Gallery of Art

There are numerous paintings that should be seen upstairs in the East Wing’s galleries of modern art, including Matisse’s mini-masterpiece, “Open Window, Collioure” from 1905 (Gallery 404B), which looks back to Fauvism and forward to his Nice paintings of the 1920s. Photo: National Gallery of Art

But if you have time for only one painting, see Miró’s golden, finely itemized work of abstract realism, “The Farm,” of 1921-2, in Gallery 404E. Miró painted his farm from the farmer’s point of view, as seen by someone who knew every pebble and leaf, every pigeon and coop, every bucket and seed. It is, like all paintings but a little more directly than some, a picture of human striving.

by Roberta Smith http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/arts/design/16coll.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1