The Corcoran Gallery of Art stands as a major center of American art, both historic and contemporary. Founded “for the purpose of encouraging American Genius,” the Corcoran’s extensive collection of 18th, 19th, and 20th century American art represents most significant American artists. The Corcoran possesses a fine collection of European art as well. While continuing its efforts to represent historic American works, the gallery also encourages modern European and American artists by showing and purchasing their work, paying particular attention to artists in the Washington area.

Founding of the Gallery

The Corcoran Gallery was founded to house the private art collection of William Wilson Corcoran (1798-1888). Born in Georgetown in 1798, Corcoran was the son of an influential merchant and former mayor. His attempt to start a dry goods business at the age of 19 was a failure, but later success as a financier led to the founding of his own brokerage firm in 1837. In 1840, he and partner George W. Riggs formed the bank Corcoran & Riggs, and within a few years they were doing a booming business as a financial agent of the federal government during the Mexican War. He retired in 1854 to pursue philanthropic work.

Corcoran made his fortune during an era when many successful businessmen and industrialists were investing money to endow charitable and educational institutions such as hospitals, orphanages, universities, libraries, and museums. He was also one of the few early patrons of contemporary American art at a time when many American collectors were purchasing European works. Corcoran was a personal friend to several of the artists whose work now hang in the gallery, including Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church, Thomas Doughty, and George Inness. In general, he would buy a work for his collection only after the artists had a well-established reputation. His holdings soon came to include a number of American and European landscapes and genre paintings, as well as some sculpture.

As his collection expanded, Corcoran began to open his home to visitors twice a week to allow them to view it. This practice soon led him to formulate plans for a public building to house and display the collection. In 1859, he commissioned James Renwick to design a gallery at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 17th Street (now the Smithsonian Institution’s Renwick Gallery). His plans were changed, though, by the outbreak of the Civil War. Corcoran, a southern sympathizer, retired to Europe to wait out the war, and in his absence the federal government seized the still-unfinished building. Only after the war was the gallery returned to its owner and completed. On May 10, 1869, Corcoran deeded the building, grounds, and a private collection valued at $100,000 to the nine members of a self-perpetuating Board of Trustees. The following year, the institution was chartered and exempted from taxes by an Act of Congress. The Corcoran Gallery of Art formally opened its doors on January 19, 1874 with an exhibition of 98 paintings and sculptures. By the end of the year, the collection had expanded to more than 300 works.

Corcoran instructed his Trustees to open the gallery free to the public twice a week. The remaining days they were to charge “moderate and reasonable fees for admission” in keeping with the cost of maintaining the building and collection. Senator H.S. Foote commented in 1873, “If all the great capitalists that our country contains could be persuaded to imitate his noble example, our republic would so become paradise.”

Corcoran’s philanthropic efforts continued through his life and, though he never served on the gallery’s Board of Trustees, he remained vital to its operation and continued to influence the acquisition of new works. He died in 1888 at the age of 89.

:: Founding of the Corcoran School of Art

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