Hidden Treasures

A gallery at the Walters Art Museum displaying a small portion of the the 

founders' collection arranged in the "salon" fashion popular in the 19th century. 

Note Detaille's "The Picket" in the lower left corner. 

On a visit to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, I was delighted to discover works by some of the best French military painters of the 19th century. http://thewalters.org

"The Picket" by Edouard Detaille, 1875. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

More and more museums are beginning to display their collections of academic art that they once hid away as embarrassingly old fashioned. 

"Irregulars in the Trenches," by Alphonse de Neuville, 1874. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

The Walters and some other smaller museums are especially good places to look for paintings like these because they are often built around their founders' personal collections. 

"Attack at Dawn" by Alphonse de Neuville, 1877. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

In this case, the collectors were William and Henry Walters, American millionaires of the "Gilded Age" who regularly traveled to Europe to buy art.

"Napoleon" by Jean Louis Meissonier, 1962, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.