[Rotunda of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.]

Photographer Jacob Gayer utilized the revolutionary and portable autochrome process to capture this color photograph of a woman in the Rotunda of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. The woman is surrounded by works from the William A. Clark Collection, a collection of over 800 works of art that Senator William A. Clark (1839-1925) had bequeathed to the Gallery. The Clark Collection contained a number of important works and Charles A. Platt was hired to design a new a wing to display them. Platt’s design for the Clark Wing included the addition of the grand Rotunda, which is a nod to the smaller circular entry hall in Clark's lavish mansion in New York City. The Clark Wing opened on March 10, 1928 and Gayer's photo was published in National Geographic the following year.

Laura Coyle (Author) and Dare Myers Hartwell (Author), Antiquities to Impressionism: The William A. Clark Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2001, p. 37, ill. 28

Jane Livingston (Author), Odyssey: The Art of Photography at National Geographic (Exh. cat.), Thomasson-Grant, Charlottesville, 1988, ill. 61

Jacob Gayer (Contributor), Unique Gifts of Washington to the Nation, National Geographic Magazine, Washington, D.C., 1929 April, vol. 55 [LV], no. 4, p. 472-481

Odyssey: the Art of Photography at National Geographic, Corcoran Gallery of Art [1869-2014], Washington DC, June 04, 1988 - August 28, 1988

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