House Collection

The House Collection consists primarily of the historic interiors, Asian, European and American artworks, and interior furnishings that Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss gave to Dumbarton Oaks in 1940 and 1969. Principal to the collection is the Music Room, which was designed in 1927 by Lawrence Grant White of the New York City architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White. In the Music Room are displays of tapestries, sculptures, paintings, and furniture dating from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Also in the room is a 1926 Steinway concert grand piano signed by Ignacy Paderewski, who had played this instrument many times in the home of Mildred Bliss's mother in Santa Barbara, California.

Of particular importance in the House Collection are several masterpieces including the Flemish tapestry The Prince of Malice (ca. 1470–80), Tilman Riemenschneider’s early sixteenth-century lindenwood sculpture Virgin and Child on the Crescent Moon, and El Greco’s early seventeenth-century Visitation. Occasionally on exhibit in the Rare Book Room at Dumbarton Oaks are other House Collection masterworks, including the Song Rehearsal and Study of Giulia Bellelli, both by Edgar Degas, and early portrait studies by Georges Seurat and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Also in the Rare Book Room is a rare English bombé-shaped desk and bookcase, signed by the cabinetmaker Samuel Bennett.