Vincent van Gogh's Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin, 1888. Oil on canvas, 61 x 50 cm. Copyright 2003 President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Harvard University Art Museums' Maurice Wertheim Collection contains important Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, sculptures, and drawings, many of which have become monuments in the history of modern art. Wertheim collected representational works of art made after 1870, when the first important Impressionist paintings were being exhibited, as well as works by artists who built on the heritage of Impressionism to make more personally expressive works of art.

The remarkable collection which Maurice Wertheim amassed in less than a decade and a half was first exhibited as a whole at the Fogg Art Museum in 1946 during his fortieth college reunion. Wertheim subsequently bequeathed his collection to Harvard, although, as the law then permitted, it was to be made available for the use of Mrs. Wertheim for as long as she lived at their apartment in New York. For most of each year from 1950 until Mrs. Wertheim's death in 1974, the collection remained in New York, but when she vacated the New York townhouse during the summer months it was either sent to Cambridge for temporary installation or was loaned to other museums for exhibition. In 1974, the collection was installed permanently in the Fogg Art Museum.

Among the highlighted works are The Rehearsal by Edgar Degas, Skating by Edouard Manet, The Gare Saint Lazare: Arrival of a Train and Red Boats, Argenteuil by Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh's Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin, and Mother and Child by Pablo Picasso. The collection also includes superb works by Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Constantin Guys, Henri Matisse, Camille Pissarro, Henri Rousseau, Raoul Dufy, Pierre Bonnard, Charles Despiau, and Aristide Maillol.