American Art Revision Materials (0)

American Art Revision Materials

Colonial Period

Portraiture. The first typically American paintings were illustrated maps but painting remained scarce during C17. There were 4 reasons : settlers came from backgrounds where art was unusual , Protestant attitudes was averse to imagery and painting, the English were not yet distinguished in visual arts and religious art was non-existent. The colonial period is almost entirely limited to portraiture (deemed as ‘useful’ by settlers). These first paintings were made by limners and artisans without formal training and were based on what was popular in England during the Tudors. The paintings are technically unskilled, strongly patterned, flat and linear . Spanish painting in America was mostly religious.
In C18, painting was a luxury and necessitated wealth that had by then become available . Portraitures remained at the forefront because the rich could thusly display their status and because it was less “frivolous” than other forms of painting. In early -C18, Baroque was imitated (handsome settings, rich chiaroscuro, rich color and painterly execution). Paintings became gradually more elaborate. During mid-C18, the new immigrants introduced the style of Rococo (gracious, charming and pretty ).
Exemplary artist. John Singleton Copley ( late -C18). He was self-taught and pursued truth in the characters of his sitters and their surroundings. He emphasized the hands of his sitters. After moving to England, he adopted history paintings.
Subsidiary artists : Thomas Smith, the Gansevoort Limner, John Smibert, Robert Feke, John Wollaston, Joseph Blackburn, Benjamin West .

Republican Period

Portraiture. The Revolutionary War sparked the interest in portraits of national heroes and statesmen. Portraiture remained “practical”, was official and private. The first museums were established and first art exhibitions held . Realism persisted. Peale employed trompe-l’oeil (“deception”, giving the impression of three dimensions). Peale, Stuart and Trumbull all painted George Washington’s portraits which were demanded and worshipped by the public. Military was romanticized by scenes of battle and theatrical postures.
Artists: Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, John Trumbull, Thomas Sully, Rembrandt Peale.
History. History painters had to create a demand for their paintings. History paintings encapsulated the patriotic duty to memorialize the country ’s struggle for independence and human rights. Allston was America’s first truly Romantic artist and expressed the themes of mystery, terror and poetic daydreaming.
Artists: John Trumbull, John Vanderlyn, Washington Allston.
Landscape , Genre and Still Life. In late-C18, these were almost entirely neglected. Guy painted city life, Birch painted the seascape. The “Peale formula” was adhered to: objects along tableware against a dark background. Also, trompe-l’oeil persisted via Charles Willson’s Peale’s sons.
Artists: Ralph Earl , Francis Guy, Thomas Birch, James Peale, Raphaelle Peale.

Mid-C19

Landscape. In C19, landscape painting became dominant and provided many unexplored subjects . The tradition of landscape art emerged in the 1820s through the work of the so-called Hudson River School. The school of “luminism” is also distinguished, it is interested in the phenomenon of light .
Exemplary artists. Thomas Cole (early-C19). He painted more in the Romantic mold than his contemporaries. He was inspired by the valleys of Catskill Mountains . He depicted lonely wilderness and apocalyptic visions.
Albert Bierstadt (late-C19). He painted the last frontier , the heroic landscape of the country. He compiled a portfolio of sketches during the mapping of a trail across the Rocky Mountains to California which became the basis for the gigantic paintings of western scenery.
Subsidiary artists: Thomas Doughty, Asher B. Durand, Samuel F. B. Morse, John F. Kensett, Thomas W. Whittredge, Robert Salmon, Fritz H. Lane, Martin J. Heade, Frederic E. Church, George Inness.
Genre. Genre painting arose during the rule of Andrew Jackson (1829– 1837 ). Its appeal depends on recognizing ordinary life experience and in appreciating the reproduction of reality. It was concerned with city life, country folk and people on the frontier. Genre painting was spurred by the growth of publications and the illustrations within them . Hand -colored lithographs were the most characteristic art form of the era. Genre painting depicts people’s common social relations and activities in a general sense .
Exemplary artists. William Sidney Mount (early-C19). He depicted the environment of Long Island . He creates stories and invested pictures with warmth and humor . He represented blacks as dignified human beings.
George Caleb Bingham (early-C19). He depicted the everyday life of the frontier. He depicted river life and politics . His West is pleasant, sunny and free of civilized constraints . His manner is grand and his figures are precisely placed. He selected subjects both singular and typical . He displayed his faith in the democratic process with his series of paintings on elections.
John James Audubon (early-C19). He studied American birds . His works are both records and masterpieces, thus his achievements are dually great. He was self-taught. He had a sense of design and an ability to render the characteristics of the bird .
George Catlin (early-C19). He painted Indians and their life. The paintings are authentic and lively . He spent some eight years living with them. His style is sketchy, free and more graphic than painterly. Among his works are portraits.
Subsidiary artists: Richard C. Woodville, John Quidor.
History and Portraiture. In mid-C19, few were concerned with history paintings. Romanticism was intensified. Nudity became a freshly observed experience. Portraiture remained the most stable source of income for most artists but interest and technique withered.
Artists: William Page, Emanuel Leutze.

Civil War till C20

General Trends . Borrowing from Europe gave late-C19 American art an eclectic appearance. Art activity was strengthened after the Civil War by way of museums, institutions and art schools ; also in the increase of artists, collectors and dealers. Two styles arose, namely Realism and Romanticism. The former was dominant. Many artists studied and lived abroad. Some of Whistler’s work has an abstract nature. In late-C19, Munich became the attraction for artists. Still-life was barely accepted but trompe-l’oeil still-life painting bloomed after the war.
Realism. Exemplary artists. Mary Cassatt (late-C19). She was influenced by Degas’ Impressionism and Japanese art. She was self-taught. She often painted her figure groups from above , objects run out of the edges of the composition (similar to photography). She also displayed the theme of woman -and- child and with warmth and tenderness.
Winslow Homer (late-C19). He is considered the most “American” of American artists. He worked as an illustrator before painting. His technique is comparable to Impressionism in its simplicity. He told stories, displayed multiple figures in scenes, captured gestures and characterized individuals. He had a feeling for light. He was also influenced by photography. Later in his career he turned to watercolors. Among his themes are pleasant holiday activities, blacks, heroism, seascape, adventure pictures and battle of the elements .
Thomas Eakins (late-C19). He painted in the mold of both the American style and the luminist style. He painted outdoor sporting pictures and indoor genre pictures and portraits. He unified Realism and science to exhibit preliminary perspective, anatomical accuracy and photographic evidence as reinforcement for visual experience. He managed to juxtapose realistic detail with affective impression. He also touched upon heroic realism and focused on portraiture later in his career. He depicted the visual world without emotion.
Subsidiary artists: James A. M. Whistler, John S. Sargent, Eastman Johnson, Frank Duveneck, William M. Chase, Thomas P. Anshutz, John F. Weir, William M. Harnett, John F. Peto.
Romanticism. Romanticism persisted but was altered after the Civil War. Spiritual essence and mood stood above story and idea .
Artists: William M. Hunt, John La Farge, Albert P. Ryder, Ralph A. Blakelock.
Impressionism. Direct reaction to Impressionism occurred during the 1880s. Hassam painted urban scenes which were an innovation in American painting. An informal alliance, “The Ten”, emerged who by way of Impressionistic paintings that refreshed the image of America (cityscapes, gardens, parades, society, landscapes ).
Artists: Theodore Robinson, Frederick C. Hassam.

C20 till WWI

General Trends. In early-C20, national consciousness started to develop. Sympathy was expressed for the oppressed workers. Before photography became preeminent, there was a brief period of newspaper illustrators and artist-reporters. By 1908, a new generation of artists had emerged who were not afraid to dabble in abstact art, Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism , Der Blaue Reiter and Orphism. The Armory Show of 1913 is the general birthdate of American modernism.
“The Eight”/”The Aschan School”. These artists explored the everyday life of ordinary people in large cities. They represented the transition to modernism. Art had previously supposed to have been representational and realistic. These artists emphasized the artist’s involvement with actual life and its reflection in the painting. Content and viewpoint superseded style. They painted more in the spirit of good-natured reporting, not social protest. The attitude towards life was altered. Their unifier was the opposition to the feeble academic art of the time. Vibrant and life-oriented paintings impressed the public and their realism was endowed with the name “The Ashcan School”. They revived a protestant mood in art by attacking urban ugliness and breaking from academia. Among the themes are urban life, physical action , manly virtue, human sorrow, solitude, common man and landscapes. Pendergast is considered the first true American modernist .
Exemplary artist. Robert Henri (early-C20). He is considered the leader of “The Eight”. He preferred older European masters over the moderns like Monet , Cézanne and Renoir . His style has been called “dark Impressionism”. His paintings are sharply observant.
Subsidiary artists: John Sloan, George Luks, William Glackens, Everett Shinn, Maurice Pendergast, Ernest Lawson, Arthur B. Davies.
The Stieglitz Group. In early-C20, the influx of immigrants variegated the art scene . Alfred Stieglitz introduced avant -garde European art to Americans in his gallery . Stieglitz supported “art for art’s sake”, not for social significance. Dove is considered one of the earliest abstractionists and tried collage.
Exemplary artists. Max Weber (early-C20). He combined the influences of Cézanne, Matisse , Rousseau and Cubism. He later approached Futurism. He exploited violent and kaleidoscopic effects . He was largely experimental.
Georgia O’Keeffe (early-C20). She painted experimental pictures in watercolors. She married Stieglitz. She later began to isolate images, especially flowers and enlarging them. She magnified details until they lost recognizability. She then displayed severe edges, rigorous formality and austere paint surfaces, often in her landscape paintings. Later in her career, she painted romantic essence of New Mexico , displaying skulls, bones and flowers and veered towards the abstract.
Subsidiary artists: Gertrude Stein , Joseph Stella , John Marin , Arthur G. Dove, Marsden Hartley .
The Armory Show. Held in 1913, this was the most influential art exhibition ever held in America. The revolutionary Europeans drew more attention than the American painters. The show was held to present the evolution of modern art since Romanticism. The exhibition became a subject of headlines and controversy . The prices of pieces of art surged after 1913 and the market for modern art boomed.
Synchromism. Definition : shapes and volumes of pure color. The style was more directed toward free and pure-colored abstraction. The style name suggests harmonized colors . It is closely related to abstraction.
Artists: Morgan Russell , Stanton MacDonald-Wright.
Dada. Definition: incongruous effects. It received a short-lived enthusiastic welcome thanks to Stieglitz. Dada was nihilistic as it was anti-esthetic in its creations and in its protest against bourgeois values and despair over WWI.
Exemplary artist. Marchel Duchamp (early-C20). He managed to convey everyday American experience in a pseudo-Cubist style. He asserted that the mental activity of the artists was more important than the object created. He condemned the mechanistic environment of modern life. He also produced “ ready -mades”, which were common manufactured objects intentionally devoid of esthetic interest.
Subsidiary artists: Francis Picabia , Man Ray.

Between the Wars

Precisionism. Definition: clinically precise and clean -edged. The modernist impulse lay the groundwork for more realist trends. Precisionism (or the art of the “Immaculates” or Cubist-realists) is an art of stillness focused on buildings and machines . Human figures are of minor importance. The paintings are peopleless, emotionless and lack involvement with social issues . Geometric patterns of Cubism are combined with the environment. Drawings are meticulous, design is clear and the colors are low-keyed.
Exemplary artists. Charles Sheeler (early C-20). His background lay in the analytical methods of Cubism. He worked in photography which were concerned with abstract patterning that he later transferred to his paintings. He painted skyscrapers, factories, rural and urban life. His work is marked by illusionistic clarity, sharp objectivity, structural design, idealistic mood and temporal stillness. He incorporated abstraction, realism and classicism .
Charles Demuth (early-C20). He started with watercolors, especially watercolor illustrations. His art is fragile and cold . His style is one of “ hard ” geometric abstraction (akin to Cubism), flattened prismatic shapes, intersecting diagonals, shafts of light. Urban architecture in his paintings is simplified.
Subsidiary artists: Rawlston Crawford, George Ault, Niles Spencer, Peter Blume, Joseph Stella, Stuart Davis, Preston Dickinson.
American Scene. Between the wars, American artists focused more on a style that would express political , cultural and social problems. This art form is socially conscious . It grew from the tradition of Realism and revived it. The American scene was interpreted as a way of life and the cities were communicated through gloomy endurance. It also expressed an emotional reaction to the effects of the Great Depression. American Scene painting was cheerless, romantically nostalgic and grotesque. The pictures are laden with shadows and the oppressive atmosphere of desolation. The subjects concerned landscape, architecture and urban scenes. The “Regionalists” displayed false optimism and tried to rejuvenate the values of the heartland of the Mid-West. Their pictures were an art of the country (hillbillies, folksingers, farms etc.). There is marked influence of xenophobia and Puritanic elements.
Exemplary artist. Edward Hopper (early-C20). He focused on large cities. He was influenced by “The Eight”. Typical to him is bleak light, loneliness , detachment, beauty in ugliness and monotony. He suggests non-existent or uneasy relations between human figures. He emphasizes light to suggest the time of day. The sense of location is perseveres in his pictures.
Thomas Hart Benton (early-C20). He was a proponent of Regionalism . He was disappointed with the lack of narrative content in modernism art. He was influenced by Renaissance art. His paintings exhibit human warmth, energy, power and dynamism. His cultural viewpoint is simplistic.
Subsidiary artists: Charles Burchfield, Grant Wood .
Social Realism. Social Realism arose as a reaction to the political and economic crisis. This drove artists to seek a new cultural identity . Hopelessness and government sponsorship spurred an art which was primarily concerned with social themes. The process of democratization of the arts resurfaced again after the Civil War. The government employed artists to decorate municipal building, banks and other public edifices. Variations on primitive expression also returned to the fore . Black artists gained self-confidence.
Artists: Ben Shahn, Jack Levine , Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence .
Expressionism . Expressionism is distinguished by strong subjectivity, brilliant colors and violence . Mysticism was one source of inspiration.
Artists: Morris Graves , Mark Tobey.
Abstraction. Geometric abstraction continued to develop under the influence of European immigrants. In 1936, the American Abstract Artists organization was established. Members of this were precise, used sharp-edged rectilinear shapes, geometric curves and flat colors.
Artists: George L. K. Morris, Ad Reinhardt, Stuart Davis.

Post- WWII

Abstract Expressionism. American art was maturing. Abstract Expressionism (or Action Painting or the New York School) sometimes renounced representational content. The three currents that produced Abstract Expressionism were abstraction (“ plastic ” values), Expressionism (emotional intensification) and Surrealism (automatism). The catalyst for this movement was the presence of European artists in New York. The mid-1940s are now considered the golden era in modern American art. Focus shifted to the act of painting itself and expressing the artist’s own being. Canvases tended to be enormous which encouraged full body movement. Some were also labeled “gesture” painters to differentiate them from subsequent artists.
Exemplary artists. Arshile Gorky (early-C20). He focuses on the theme of self-identity. He used the form of biomorphism. He sought to synthesize the flatness and geometry of Cubism with the fluidity and improvisation of Surrealism. His pictures often have billows of exotic color mixed with linear effects.
Jackson Pollock (mid-C20). His work is abstract, violent and expressive. He poured and spray painted canvases in repeated rhythmic gestures. A vortex of swirling lines, spatters and drips were cast on the canvas . He used commercial enamels and metallic paints to pour and drip .
Willem de Kooning (mid-C20). His paintings retained figural images. His style was influenced by Cubist structures , Expressionist handling and Surrealist automatism. The foreground and background are constantly interchanged.
Subsidiary artists: Franz Kline, Hans Hoffman.
Color- Field . Simply composed paintings became prevalent. Paintings appeared as unified optical textures and increased in scale . Various shapes were united into dominant islands , zones and boundless fields of intense and homogenous color. Expanses of bright hues produced unbroken “color fields” and did not stress sequential linear detail and formal diversity. The mood is one of mystic quietude. The transition period from action painting to color-field has been termed “post-painterly abstraction”. Chromatic expression reduced to monochromes and rigid geometrics.
Exemplary artist. Mark Rothko (mid-C20). He combined Surrealist automatism with human, animal and plant forms into inventive biomorphs. His compositions are soft , luminous and rectangular. The boundaries between forms and grounds are deliberately hazy. His works evoke a meditative mood.
Subsidiary artists: Clyfford Still, Sam Francis, Barnett Newmann, Adolph Gottlieb , Ad Reinhardt.
Realist Trends. Realism declined due to political climate (isolationism produced Regionalism, Depression produced social realism). Cultural agencies promoted Abstract Expressionism as a symbol of America’s leadership in fine arts. The impression of Soviet Union’s Socialist Realism weakened realist art even more. Contemporary realism was no longer the academic realism of C19. Abstraction increased the role of formal structure, Expressionism stimulated free and emotional manner and Surrealism widened the sources of inspiration. “ Magic Realists” opposed abstract art by a realism of style, not of content.
Exemplary artist. Andrew Wyeth (mid-C20). He worked in dry- brush watercolor and tempera . His themes included loneliness in nature and the outdoors, and nostalgia . His technique was meticulous and clinically direct. He strived for the verisimilitude of the photograph . His paintings display social and psychological tension and the savagery of the life during the era. He reduced his compositions to their bare essence.
Subsidiary artists: Paul Cadmus, Jared French, George Tooker, Ivan Albright.

Post-1960

General Trends. Critics searched something to re-establish a connection with the past. The borders between painting and sculpture became blurred. Concept art stressed the idea of the artist over material execution to transform art from physical objects to mental images.
Pop Art. Pop Art emerged as an original and irreverent parody of the vulgar imagery and artifacts of the commercial culture. It grew from Action Painting towards objectivity. Use of repetition and the elimination of dramatic climax were favored by the composer John Cage . Rauschenberg and Johns introduced “popular” materials into their art by depicting them or actually incorporating real objects. Pop Art debuted in 1962. The works spanned painting, sculpture and objects of daily use. “Happenings” (improvised semi-dramatic visual spectacles with audience participation) contributed to the Pop culture of the 1960s . The art form is based on the anonymous , mechanized and mass-produced images of advertisements , billboards, comic books and TV. Mass culture is the source of inspiration but it is neither critical nor sympathetic. Similarly to Regionalism, it stressed that which was generically American but concentrated on urban culture. By the late-1960s, Pop had lost its novelty but had turned artists from abstraction back towards recognizable imagery.
Exemplary artists. Robert Rauschenberg (late-C20). He loaded his paintings with rags and tatters of cloth, reproductions, fragments of comic strips and other collage elements of discarded materials. He worked similarly to Action painters. His paintings produce the effect of confusion of sights , sounds, debris and movements. His work bridges the gap between Action Painting and Pop Art.
Roy Lichtenstein (late-C20). He drew inspiration from comic books and newspaper comic strips. He essentially cast a magnifying glass over the symbols of mass culture and enlarged them. He later made parodies of all the chief Modernist art styles.
Andy Warhol (late-C20). He presented repeated images of car crashes, singers, movie stars, soup cans, Coca -Cola bottles and dollar bills. Some different views should reveal various aspects of the person ’s character. His works display a delight in the surprise and shock of nonart but he is still rooted in the mechanized, standardized and mass-produced culture. He emphasized the mass-consumer society in which everyone uses the same products. Through this, he may be considered a modern history painter.
Subsidiary artists: Larry Rivers, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselmann, Robert Indiana .
Super-Realism. It has also been called Photorealism and Hyperrealism, and draws on photographic sources and commercial advertising for imagery but makes trompe-l’oeil illusion viable again without the fantastic invention or satirical commentary of Pop Art. These artists also considered the work of earlier American art and even C17 Dutch still-life and genre painting.
Exemplary artists. Chuck Close (late-C20). He did enlargements of snapshot photographs, often painted painstakingly with acrylic. He deliberately reproduces the distortions of a photograph (blurriness and focus). He reduces his humongous images to visual information about surface, depth of field, focus and scale, sans psychological factors.
Richard Estes (late-C20). He produced flawlessly elegant townscapes of New York. He painted storefronts and urban panoramas. Glass in its reflections and transparency plays an important role in his works. He used photographs as the basis for his paintings but modified them. He also painted views of Paris, Florence and Venice (comparable to Canaletto ).
Subsidiary artists: Philip Pearlstein, Ralph Goings, Robert Bechtle.
Post-Painterly Abstraction. Post-Painterly Abstraction was another reaction to Abstract Expressionism. It was to some extent a continuation of its important aspects. There was an interest in symmetry, clear definition of shape , immaculate surface and formal order. This was opposed to the unrestricted and spontaneous character of Action Painting. “Hard-edge” was associated with this style. Chromatic abstraction spread wide in the late 1950s.
Exemplary artist. Ellsworth Kelly (mid-C20). His hard-edge forms were scrupulously clean of any detail and surface irregularity. He established relationships between large and bold shapes in a simple format, in their “shaped canvases” (unconventional shapes). He created a mode of painting in three dimensions which was opposed to Expressionism and Action Painting.
Subsidiary artists: Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland.
Op Art. Op Art spread during the 1960s. It was a revolt against the reign of Abstract Expressionism. These artists drew upon scientific materials from optics and psychology to create illusions of movement and distortions of form.
Artists: Larry Poons, Richard Anuszkiweicz, Julian Stanczak.
Minimal Art. Minimal art continued the tradition of abstraction. “Minimal” attitude was antipathetic to composition, hierarchy, “beauty”, “sentiment” and “personal emotion”. Previous artists had developed methods to eliminate the “hand of the artist”. Paintings stressed the relationship between single images and the frame , instead of the interrelations between internal parts of the composition. Even the simplest forms turned out to be highly complex, especially when seen against its total environment, lighting conditions and the position of the spectator.
Artists: Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman, Brice Marden, Frank Stella, Cy Twombly.
Graffiti . Graffiti’s prevalence was ordained by the aerosol can. The subway of New York became a popular venue during the 1970s. Some basic forms of graffiti are tags and trains (“worms”). By the 1980s, graffiti had been driven out of the subways, as the trains were covered with special easy-to-clean paint. Soon, the art was dismissed. Some artists offered advertisements for a fee which led to stores, shops, garages and the like to being decorated with fancy and colorful drawings. Apartment buildings became the preferred choice of canvas. Spray-can memorials emerged, these were the murals in the memory of young Latinos and African Americans who were dying on the streets. The newer generation of graffiti artists is older than the original generation. There is a strong presence of Latino artists.
Exemplary artists. Jean-Michel Basquiat (late-C20). He was self-taught who worked himself up to elitist galleries. He painted on paper, doors , refrigerators, scrap metal and made assemblages from junk. His paintings are flat, primitive and childlike. He depicted angry images with heads, grimacing skulls, words , arrows etc.
Keith Haring (late-C20). He had formal training in art. He drew cartoon-like images on advertising spaces in New York subway. The basis of his art is the drawn line. His imagery included sexual elements, flying saucers, running figures, instruments of communication and crawling babies. He painted on paper, fiberglass, canvas, enameled steel squares, badges, T-shirts, vases and plaster casts. He used thick black lines. He broke the barrier between high art and low art.
Newer Realist Trends. A plurality of trends has been embraced. Some realists tried to learn from the immediate past, others from the Old Masters. Baroque and Classic realism were re-examined.
Artists: Alice Neel , Alfred Leslie, Jack Beal, William Beckman, Martha M. Erlebacher, Steve Hawley, David Ligare, Vincent Arcilesi, John Nava, Delmas Howe, Leon Golub, Eric Fischl, Jeff Koons.
Exemplary artist. Kalev Mark Kostabi (late-C20). He neither paints nor conceives of most of the works that bear his name. He employs an assistant-base mode of artistic production . Teams produce his paintings and there is an intricate division of labor (painters, canvas stretchers, idea persons, color theorists, rhetoricians, creative consultants etc.). His figures are faceless. He quotes imagery from art history (especially those of Edward Hopper). This is associated with the theme of American alienation. He considers the titles of his paintings of the utmost importance. He uses poet and translator Joachim Neugroschel as his “titling person”. He was born to Estonian parents and has included elements of Estonia in some of his works (e.g. the flag).
Native American Art. Native Americans might not have a term for “art” but certainly knew of the concept. They too drew pleasure from things made well and imaginatively. Some works were made with functional utility and ritual correctness in mind. Collecting of Native art was spurred by curiosity (craftsmanship of the savage ), anthropology (artefacts of a ‘vanishing culture’ by C19 sentiment) and non-Western concepts ( traits not expressed in Western art). Now, many communities request that museum collections be returned to them. They regard some works as being intended to be seen only by knowledgeable people that are able to control the powers that the work expresses.

Exemplary Works

Colonial Period.
Self-Portrait by Thomas Smith (c. 1690) Pau de Wandelaer by Gansevoort Limner (c. 1730) The Bermuda Group by John Smibert (1729)
Boy with Squirrel by John S. Copley (c. 1765 ) Watson and the Shark by John S. Copley (1778) Death of Wolfe by Benjamin West (1770)
Republican Period.
The Staircase Group by Charles W. Peale (1795) George Washington by Gilbert Stuart (1796) Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos by John Vanderlyn ( 1812 )
Winter Scene in Brooklyn by Francis Guy (c. 1820)
Mid-C19.
Ruins in a Landscape by Thomas Doughty (1828) The Beeches by Asher B. Durand (1845) Approaching Storm by Martin J. Heade (c. 1860)
Merced River, Yosemite Valley by Albert Bierstadt (1866) The Lackawanna Valley by George Inness (1855) Jolly Flatboatmen by George C. Bingham (1846)
Blue -Winged Teal by John J. Audubon A Single Death by George Catlin Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze (1851)
Civil War to C20.
The Falling Rocket by James A. M. Whistler ( 1874 ) The Boating Party by Mary Cassatt (1893) Breezing Up (A Fair Wind) by Winslow Homer (c. 1876)
Max Schmitt in a Single Scull by Thomas Eakins (1871) The Faithful Colt by William M. Harnett (1890) Still Life with Lantern by John F. Peto (c. 1890)
C20 till WWI.
Blind Spanish Singer by Robert Henri (1912) Cliff Dwellers by George Bellows (1913) Chinese Restaurant by Max Weber (1915)
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 by Marcel Duchamp (1912) Airplane Synchromy in Yellow -Orange by Stanton MacDonald-Wright (1920) The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows by Man Ray (1916)
Between the Wars.
Classic Landscape by Charles Sheeler ( 1931 ) I Saw the Figure Five in Gold by Charles Demuth (1928) February Thaw by Charles Burchfield
Nighthawks by Edward Hopper (1942) American Gothic by Grant Wood (1930) Ram's Head White Hollyhock and Little Hills by Georgia O’Keeffe (1935)
Post-WWII.
No. 5, 1948 by Jackson Pollock (1950) The Artist and His Mother by Arshile Gorky (c. 1929) Woman III by Willem de Kooning (c. 1953)
Untitled (Yellow, Orange, Red on Orange) by Mark Rothko (1954) Playground by Paul Cadmus (1948) Christina ’s World by Andrew Wyeth (1948)
Post-1960.
Bed by Robert Rauschenberg (1955) Sleeping Girl by Roy Lichtenstein (1966) Ethel Scull 36 Times by Andy Warhol (1963)
Mark by Chuck Close (c. 1979) Two Panels: Black with Red Bar by Ellsworth Kelly ( 1971 ) Coruscate by Richard Anuszkiewicz
Harran II by Frank Stella (1967) Cabeza by Jean-Michel Basquiat Drawing from Sketchbook by Keith Haring
Landscape with Eros and Endymion by David Ligare (c. 1991) 2nd of May, Los Angeles by John Nava (1992) Greenwich Avenue (with Cynthia) by Kalev Mark Kostabi