Seeing America
 

Director’s Foreword
Grant Holcomb

Preface
Marjorie B. Searl

Introduction
Michael Kammen


Chapters:


1
John Singleton Copley: Unfinished Portrait of Nathaniel Hurd, ca. 1765
Completing the story of an unfinished Boston portrait
Marjorie B. Searl
2
Thomas Chambers: View of West Point, after 1828
“No place in the Union…exceeds West Point in beauty of location and the stirring incidents
connected with its early history…”

Peter Ogden Brown

3
Unknown American Artist: Portrait of Colonel Nathaniel Rochester, before 1831
Rochester’s Audubon or Not? 
Peter Ogden Brown

4
Ammi Phillips: Old Woman with a Bible, ca. 1834
An Upstate Classic
Susan Nurse

5
Milton W. Hopkins: Pierrepont Edward Lacey and His Dog, Gun, 1835–36
A Boy and His Dog, Shortsville, New York
Jacquelyn Oak

6
George Harvey: Pittsford on the Erie Canal—A Sultry Calm, 1837
“Rambling uncontrolled in search of the picturesque”
Marjorie B. Searl
7
Asahel Lynde Powers: Portrait of a Dark-haired Man Reading the “Genesee Farmer,” ca. 1839
“Who has not heard of the Genesee country?”
Jessica Marten

8
DeWitt Clinton Boutelle: The Indian Hunter, 1846
“Why does the white man follow my path?...”
Marlene Hamann-Whitmore
9
Thomas Cole: Genesee Scenery, ca. 1846–47
A jewel of a waterfall, Letchworth State Park
Marlene Hamann-Whitmore

10
Lilly Martin Spencer : Peeling Onions, ca. 1852
Domestic life in old New York
Elizabeth L. O’Leary
11
George Catlin: Shooting Flamingoes, 1857
On the trail of pink flamingoes in South America
Peter Ogden Brown

12
Rubens Peale: Still Life Number 26: Silver Basket of Fruit, 1857–58
A fruitful arrangement in Pennsylvania
Susan Nurse

13
John Frederick Kensett: A Showery Day, Lake George, ca.1860s
“Where green hills swept boldly down to the water’s edge…”
Caroline M. Welsh

14
Leonard Wells Volk: Life Mask and Hands of Abraham Lincoln, 1860/1886
“There is the animal himself.”
Grant Holcomb

15
Asher B. Durand: Genesee Oaks, 1860
“One shade tree to every two acres…”
Marlene Hamann-Whitmore

16
Martin Johnson Heade: Newbury Hayfield at Sunset, 1862
“Nowhere is there greater beauty than in their curving creeks and irregular pools…”
Marjorie B. Searl

17
David Gilmour Blythe: Trial Scene (Molly Maguires), ca. 1862–63
Tarred and feathered in coal mining country
Kerry Anne Morgan

18
James Henry Beard: The Night Before the Battle, 1865
The Civil War…a poignant scene
Susan Dodge-Peters Daiss
19
Albert Bierstadt: The Sierras Near Lake Tahoe, California, 1865
California, the Promised Land
Diane P. Fischer
20
Mortimer Smith: Home Late, 1866
Evening in a frontier cabin
Kerry Schauber

21
Thomas Ridgeway Gould: The West Wind, 1876
“...the light foot she sets on the shore of an untamed continent”
Cynthia L. Culbert
22
Daniel Chester French: Bust of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1879
“The essential image of the Concord philosopher…”
Susan Dodge-Peters Daiss

23
John Haberle: Torn in Transit,1888–89 John Frederick Peto: Articles Hung on a Door, after 1890
Illusion and the stuff of daily life
Marjorie B. Searl

24
Frederick MacMonnies: Nathan Hale, 1890
“I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.”
Christopher Clarke

25
Winslow Homer: Paddling at Dusk, 1892
Evening in the Adirondacks
David Tatham

26
George Inness: Early Moonrise in Florida, 1893
Mystical view of Tarpon Springs, Florida
David Bjelajac

27
Winslow Homer: The Artist’s Studio in an Afternoon Fog, 1894
A retreat at Prout’s Neck, Maine
David Tatham

28
Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Charles Cotesworth Beaman, 1894; Hettie Sherman Evarts Beaman, 1900
Patronage in Cornish, New Hampshire
Henry J. Duffy

29
Frederic Remington: The Broncho Buster, 1895; The Cheyenne, 1901
Bronzes of the Wild West
Brian W. Dippie

30
Maurice Prendergast: The Ships, ca. 1895; Woodland Bathers, 1913–15
“Flutter, luminosity and kaleidoscopic color- movement”: New England scenes
Gwendolyn Owens

31
John Henry Twachtman: The White Bridge, late 1890s
An ornament in the Connecticut landscape
Susan G. Larkin

32
Everett Shinn: Sullivan Street, 1900–1905
A glimpse of Greenwich Village a hundred years ago
Marjorie B. Searl

33
Thomas Eakins: William H. Macdowell, ca. 1904
Portrait of the artist’s father-in-law
Elizabeth Johns

34
Childe Hassam: The Bathers, 1904
Arcadia in Portland, Oregon
Margaret Bullock

35
Jerome Myers: Sunday Morning, 1907
Immigrant life on the Lower East Side
Grant Holcomb
36
John Sloan: Election Night, 1907; Chinese Restaurant, 1909
New York night life
Grant Holcomb
37
Colin Campbell Cooper : Main Street Bridge, Rochester, 1908
Overlooking the Genesee River in downtown Rochester
Ruth Rosenberg-Naparsteck

38
Thomas Wilmer Dewing: Portrait in a Brown Dress, ca. 1908
Inspired by Whistler
Susan Hobbs

39
Kathleen McEnery Cunningham: Woman in an Ermine Collar, 1909
The New Woman
Jessica Marten

40
Abastenia St. Leger Eberle: Windy Doorstep, 1910
“Beauty hidden behind shabby facades”
Pamela W. Blanpied

41
Jonas Lie: Morning on the River, ca. 1911–12
The Brooklyn Bridge in winter
Barbara Dayer Gallati
42
George Bellows: Evening Group, 1914; Autumn Brook, 1922
From Maine to Woodstock, the rural landscape
Ronald Netsky

43
Ernest Lawson: The Garden, 1914
A teahouse tucked away in Tuxedo Park, New York
Deirdre F. Cunningham


44
William Ordway Partridge: Memory, 1914
“His mother dedicates this building to his memory.”
Marie Via

45
William Glackens: Beach at Blue Point, ca. 1915
Summer on Long Island
Grace Seiberling

46
George Grey Barnard: Abraham Lincoln, ca. 1918
“…the song of democracy written by God”
Grant Holcomb

47
Charles Burchfield: Cat-Eyed House, 1918; Springtime in the Pool, 1922; Telegraph Pole, 1935
“A blissful evocation of nature”
Nancy Weekly

48
Harold Weston: Three Trees,Winter, 1922
A passion for painting the Adirondacks
Rebecca Foster

49
George Luks: Boy with Dice, ca. 1923–24
City kid
Bruce Weber
50
Mahonri M. Young: Right to the Jaw, ca. 1926
A pas-de-deux with boxing gloves
Roberta K. Tarbell

51
Gaston Lachaise: Fountain Figure, 1927
A treasure from a Rochester garden
Cynthia L. Culbert

52
Thomas Hart Benton: Boomtown, 1928
The culture of oil in Borger, Texas
Henry Adams
53
John Marin: Marin Island, Small Point, Maine, 1931
“The border of the sea”
Elizabeth Hutton Turner

54
Georgia O’Keeffe: Jawbone and Fungus,1931
Organic forms from East and West
Sarah Whitaker Peters

55
Charles Sheeler : Ballet Mechanique, 1931
Ford Motor Company in River Rouge, Michigan
Karen Haas

56
Stuart Davis: Landscape with Garage Lights, 1931–32
French modernism on the Gloucester docks
Karen Wilkin

57
Alexander Calder : Untitled Mobile, 1935
An early mobile in Rochester, New York
Cynthia L. Culbert

58
Arthur G. Dove: Cars in a Sleet Storm, 1938
Heavy weather in Geneva, New York
Elizabeth Hutton Turner

59
Reginald Marsh: People’s Follies No. 3, 1938; Ice Cream Cones, 1938
“The earthy, the vulgar and the lowbrow…” New York scenes
Kathleen Spies

60
Ralston Crawford: Whitestone Bridge, 1939-40
Gateway to the 1939 World’s Fair
Marjorie B. Searl
61
Marsden Hartley: Waterfall, Morse Pond, ca. 1940
Finding a waterfall in Maine
Margaret MacDougal

62
Douglas Warner Gorsline: Bar Scene, 1942
One for the road at Costello’s – Third Avenue and East 44th
Marie Via

63
William Gropper : The Opposition, 1942
Senators, sleeping and filibustering in D.C.
Roberta K. Tarbell
64
George Grosz: The Wanderer, 1943
World War II Apocalypse
Nancy Norwood

65
Robert Gwathmey: Non-Fiction, 1943
The legacy of sharecropping
Michael Kammen

66
Norman Rockwell: Soldier on Leave, 1944
Romantic World War II interlude
Karal Ann Marling

67
Guy Pène du Bois: Jane, ca. 1946
Urban elegance
Betsy Fahlman

68
Jacob Lawrence: Summer Street Scene in Harlem, 1948
Hot colors, cool customers
Lowery Stokes Sims
69
John Koch: Interlude, 1963
Central Park West entr’acte
Susan Dodge-Peters Daiss
70
Andy Warhol: Jackie, 1964
Where were you when Kennedy was shot?
Marjorie B. Searl

71
Fairfield Porter: The Beginning of the Fields, 1973
Southampton idyll
Joan Ludman

72
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Famous Names, 1998
Native American experience clothed in contemporary aesthetic
G. Peter Jemison
73
Lorna Simpson: Untitled (The Failure of Sylvester), 2001
Images and text: the ambiguous message of an African American artist
Gretchen Sullivan Sorin

 
 

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