Mary Morton, via National Gallery

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. appointed Mary Morton the curator of French painting last month. She will oversee the collection’s 575 French paintings dating from 17^th to the early 20^th century.

Morton was previously associate curator of paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum, where she was developing an on-line catalog of the Getty’s painting collection.

She comes to the National Gallery two years after the death of Philip Conisbee, the senior curator of European Painting. More information on the appointment here.

Many of the National Gallery’s top French paintings arrived at the museum courtesy of a 1962 bequest including 240 artworks from the estate of Chester Dale.

Examples from that collection will be on view in the upcoming From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection, slated to run Jan. 31, 2010-July 31, 2011. Dale was a New York City financier with an art loving wife. French paintings filled five floors of their 79^th Street mansion.

Time magazine described Dale as “Manhattan’s No.1 collector of French art,” and a “leather-faced ex-Utilities Tycoon,” in a 1941 article timed to Dale’s loan to the “new pink marble” National Gallery. Dale’s pictures “perked up the National Gallery’s feeble French section like a shot of vitamins.”