At the National Gallery, Every Picture Tells a Story

How long does it take to see every single work of art on display at the National Gallery of Art?

I'm talking West Building and East Building. Every oil painting, watercolor, drawing, print, sculpture, bronze, ceramic, medallion and mobile.

Five hours. How do I know? Because at 10 a.m. one day last week, I walked up to the information desk in the West Building, picked up a map and headed to Gallery 1. I figured it was best to start there and move numerically through the galleries.

I made some rules: I had to visit every room and eyeball every work of art. I couldn't tear through the museum like a contestant in a reality show. I had to open my eyes and my brain and hope that force-feeding myself so much art would cause these organs to make connections they might not otherwise have made.

The first half-dozen galleries -- 13th- to 15th-century Italian -- were pretty much all sacred works. Wan Madonnas held strangely elongated Christs, who fixed the viewer with a knowing look. Saints and angels were arranged like students on class picture day.

None of these people looked real, but then I came face to face with a life-size terra cotta of Lorenzo de Medici , his squashed nose and furrowed brow chilling my blood. In nearby galleries, I spotted other men with the same expression: Bellini's Giovanni Emo , a scowling Venetian who looked like a Teamster who'd moved up in the world, and the Venetian gentleman in Gallery 25 painted by Giorgione and Titian, his chin raised and eyes lowered in skeptical appraisal. I wanted to get them together for a game of golf.

Even scarier in their own way were the "Ill-Matched Lovers" painted by Quentin Massys . In it, a lecherous, gap-toothed old man gropes a young brown-haired beauty. Just as I was starting to feel sorry for her, I noticed that she'd swiped the old fool's coin purse and was passing it off to her accomplice.

One painting over from the groping/thieving pair was Jan Gossaert's "Portrait of a Merchant." The businessman's pinched expression made me think he knew exactly what was going on next door -- and didn't approve.

Through the galleries I went, leapfrogging across Europe and moving forward in time: from 16th-century Spain to 17th-century Italy, then to Holland. By 11:30 I'd made my way to America and Gallery 69A, where the sight of Joseph Decker's "Ripening Pears" reminded me just how hunger-inducing art appreciation can be.

After lunch: the Impressionists and the East Building.

It was while I was looking at Vincent Van Gogh's self-portrait that I realized how lucky we are in Washington. A tycoon would probably pay $80 million to own that painting, and there I was gazing at it for free. I could've looked for as long as I liked -- if I hadn't been in a hurry. So on I forged, finishing about 3 p.m. in the exhibit of small French paintings in the East Building.

Doing what I did -- freebasing art, if you will -- might not be the way to visit every art gallery. But it has its attractions. The images were fresh in my mind, and there they jostled against one another, forging serendipitous unions.

I'd seen Edouard Manet's "Oysters" in the East Building. Where else had I seen oysters? Oh, yeah, back in Gallery 44, painted by Osias Beert the Elder . Turn a fire hose on Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi's "Adoration of the Magi" and you get Arshile Gorky's "One Year the Milkweed." The creepy toddler in Henri Rousseau's "To Celebrate the Baby" reminded me of the macrocephalic Westwood children painted by Joshua Johnson .

And Picasso's stiff-jawed Pedro Mañach , I decided, would round out my tough-guy golf foursome.

As I was leaving the museum, I absent-mindedly scanned the postcards in the gift shop. Magritte's "The Blank Signature" leapt out at me. Uh-oh. I didn't remember seeing that painting among the roughly 2,723 works on exhibit. Had I missed it?

But no. When I checked at the information desk, they told me that it was not currently on display. A whole lot of other things are, though. Go see for yourself.

My e-mail:kellyj@washpost.com