American Painting
Two centuries of American painting, from the colonial portraits of Copley and Gilbert Stuart to Bellows's boxing rings: reproduced whole from the open-access scans of the Met, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian and other museums.
215 prints · printed to order on heavyweight matte paper · framed or unframed
From the colonies to the city
American painting began as portraiture: Copley in Boston, Gilbert Stuart, whose unfinished Athenaeum head of Washington became the face on the dollar bill. Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School turned to the wilderness from the 1820s. After the Civil War, Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins painted what they saw, plainly; Sargent and Whistler made their careers in London and Paris; Hassam, Chase and Twachtman brought Impressionism home; and Robert Henri's circle painted New York as it was.
The works in this collection
Sargent's Lady Agnew, Dr. Pozzi and the Wyndham Sisters; Homer's Snap the Whip, The Fog Warning and Northeaster; Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold and his portrait of Thomas Carlyle; Eakins's Max Schmitt in a Single Scull; Hassam's flag paintings; Tanner's Annunciation; Bingham's Fur Traders Descending the Missouri; Harnett and Peto's trompe-l'oeil still lifes; Remington and Catlin's West; and the Hudson River landscapes of Cole, Church and Bierstadt. Every painter here died more than seventy years ago.
On the wall
Homer's seas and Lane's harbours suit a hallway, a study or a coastal house; Sargent's portraits want a wall of their own in a dining room or a sitting room. The Hudson River landscapes are wide: hang one above a sofa or a sideboard at 36 by 24 inches. Black or dark wood frames both suit the period.