Fine Arts Gallery

The collection of European art at Vanderbilt broadly traces the development of the visual arts from the primarily ecclesiastical works of the Gothic and Renaissance periods, as represented by the Kress Collection, through the courtly art of the Baroque and Rococo era, with such works as Giovacchino Fortini's The Grand Dauphin, to the abstract modernism of the twentieth century.

While the university's holdings provide a general overview of the history of Western art, the collection has several areas of depth including nineteenth-century French paintings from the Barbizon School by such artists as Théodore Rousseau and Charles Daubigny. Vanderbilt also has an extensive collection of works on paper by such masters as Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Francisco Goya, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, and Marc Chagall. Additionally, the university holds over thirty prints by the important seventeenth-century Dutch artist Adriaen van Ostade, a student of Frans Hals, which depict the daily life of the Dutch peasant.