The American Story through Art

We look beyond a cluster of flags hanging from the side of one tall building onto a wide street at a row of buildings across from us in this vertical painting. The scene is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes, so some details are difficult to make out. We seem to lean out a window to look along the street, so the building to our right only skims the edge of the composition and continues off the top. The three flags closest to us fly from nearly horizontal flagstaffs along the bottom edge of the painting. All the flags are in shades of scarlet red, white, and royal blue. The flag closest to us is red with the red, white, and blue Union Jack in the upper corner. Beyond it is an American flag with 49 stars, and then the French flag with the vertical bands of blue, white, and red. Those three flags are repeated about a dozen times along the building that stretches away from us, along the right edge of the painting. More of those flags are hung from the cream-white and tan buildings across the street, to our left. Some of those buildings reach off the top edge of the canvas and others come close. The shadows along moldings and the windows are painted with pale and lapis blue. Through narrow gaps left between the fluttering flags, vertical strokes of navy blue and violet purple suggest crowds of people in the street below. The sky between the buildings is ice blue. The artist signed and dated the painting in the center left, “Childe Hassam May 17 1917.”

Celebrate America’s birthday by looking at 11 paintings that depict some of the people, places, and events that contribute to the unfolding story of America.

Spend a minute or two looking carefully at each painting and consider:
What captures your attention? Why?
What interesting details do you notice? What can you learn from them?
What new ideas does this work of art provoke about the American story?

Explore the works on your own with a self-guided tour.

Childe Hassam, Allies Day, May 1917, 1917, oil on canvas, Gift of Ethelyn McKinney in memory of her brother, Glenn Ford McKinney, 1943.9.1

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In the winter of 1789–1790, President George Washington and his wife, Martha, posed for Edward Savage in New York City, then the nation’s capital. The Washingtons are shown with their grandchildren, Eleanor and George Parke Custis, who the couple adopted after the death of their father, John Parke Custis. On the right is William “Billy” Lee, who served by Washington’s side throughout the Revolutionary War. In this unique interpretation of Washington in his combined civil, military, and familial roles, the artist attempted to capture the likeness of the first president. Savage worked on this ambitious group portrait along with several related images over a seven-year period. One of the most important projects undertaken by a federal-period artist, this painting quickly became an icon of early national pride.

Edward Savage, The Washington Family, 1789-1796, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1940.1.2

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Shown from the lap up, a woman with pale skin wearing a white satin dress and tall white bonnet sits sewing with her body facing our left in this vertical portrait painting. She turns her head to look directly at us from under slightly raised eyebrows with heavy-lidded, almond-shaped, dark brown eyes. She has a long, sharp nose and her high cheekbones are lightly flushed. Her thin lips are pressed together with the corners pulled back, and her mouth is framed by vertical wrinkles along her chin. A bonnet of sheer white fabric is secured around her head by a white silk ribbon tied into a four-loop bow above her forehead. The bonnet is pleated to create ruffles that frame her face. The woman pinches threaded sewing needle between her right thumb and index finger, farther from us, while holding the thread taunt with her outstretched pinky. Light catches a pearl-like object near her thumb, but on closer inspection it might be a thimble she wears on her middle finger. The remainder of the thread is secured by her left index finger and thumb, which also holds the fabric she stitches. A gold ring glistens on the third finger of her left hand. The crisp fabric of her dress looks white in the light and the shadows are a silvery, pale gray. The long sleeves fit closely along her arms and more fabric, perhaps of the skirt, billows up beside her over the arm of the chair. A piece of gauzy white cloth drapes over the woman's neck and over her shoulders, and may be tied around her torso. She sits in a dusky rose-pink upholstered chair lined with brass nail heads. The background behind her is taupe near her torso and it darkens to nearly black in the upper corners.

As if she does not wish to waste time posing for an artist, Catherine Yates is shown here industriously attending to her sewing. While American taste demanded a realistic depiction of Mrs. Yates’s distinctive face and forthright character, Gilbert Stuart’s lively paint handling is riveting as well. In every passage of this portrait the artist employs some technical tour de force, using a variety of thick or thin, opaque or translucent oil paints for the fabrics, needle, thimble, wedding band, and fingernails. It is little wonder that this work has become one of America’s most famous paintings, as both an artistic masterpiece and a visual symbol of the early republic’s rectitude.

Gilbert Stuart, Catherine Brass Yates (Mrs. Richard Yates), 1793/1794, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1940.1.4

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Several pieces of fruit, a bunch of green grapes, a stem of raisins, and several types of nuts in their shells are piled on a putty-brown tabletop or ledge with rounded corners against a dark background in this horizontal still life painting. The food is brightly lit from the front, and we look slightly down onto the table. There are two round red apples and two pieces of small yellow fruit, perhaps quinces, flanking a golden yellow pear at the back center. The bunch of grapes drapes over the fruit to our right and the raisins lie between the apples. Thirteen walnuts, peanuts, almonds, hazelnuts, and perhaps a brazil nut are scattered in a loose band in front of the fruit. The surface on which the still life sits becomes swallowed in shadow behind the fruit, and blends into the dark brown background. The artist signed and dated the work in dark paint in the lower right corner, almost lost in shadow under the ledge: “R.S. Duncanson 1848.”

African-American artist Robert Seldon Duncanson (1821–1872) was widely recognized during his lifetime for pastoral landscapes of American, Canadian, and European scenery. Recent scholarship, however, has begun to focus on a small group of still-life paintings (fewer than a dozen are known) that Duncanson produced during the late 1840s. Spare, elegant, and meticulously painted, these works reflect the tradition of American still-life painting initiated by Charles Willson Peale and his gifted children—particularly Raphaelle and Rembrandt Peale. Classically composed with fruit arranged in a tabletop pyramid, Still Life with Fruit and Nuts includes remarkable passages juxtaposing the smooth surfaces of beautifully rendered apples with the textured shells of scattered nuts.

Robert Seldon Duncanson, Still Life with Fruit and Nuts, 1848, oil on board, Gift of Ann and Mark Kington/The Kington Foundation and the Avalon Fund, 2011.98.1

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We look across and down into a valley with a person sitting near a tall tree and a train puffing smoke beyond, all enclosed by a band of mountains in the distance in this horizontal landscape painting. Closest to us, several broken, jagged tree stumps are spaced across the painting’s width. A little distance away and to our left, the person wears a yellow, broad-brimmed hat, red vest, and gray pants. He reclines propped on his left elbow near a walking path beside a tall, slender tree with golden leaves. The green meadow stretching in front of him is dotted with tree stumps cut close to the ground. Beyond the meadow, puffs of white smoke trail behind a long steam locomotive that crosses a bridge spanning a tree-filled ravine, headed to our left. The ravine creates a diagonal line across the canvas, moving subtly away from us to our left. The train has climbed out of the valley, away from a cluster of brick-red buildings. The most prominent structure is a train roundhouse, a large building with a high, domed roof to the right of the tracks. Smoke rises from chimneys on long, warehouse-like buildings, and a steeple and smaller structures suggest a church and homes to our left. Hazy in the distance, a row of mountains lines the horizon, which comes about halfway up the composition. The sky above deepens from pale, shell pink over the mountains to watery, pale blue above. The artist signed the work in tiny letters in the lower left corner: “G. Inness.”

Painted at the outset of Inness’s career, The Lackawanna Valley stands out for its sensitive rendering of an early morning’s delicate light and hazy atmosphere. Yet the work’s fame rests chiefly with its subject. Since the mid-20th century, the painting has been embraced by American cultural historians as an iconic image in discussions of 19th-century railroad expansion and technological change. Inness painted The Lackawanna Valley as part of a commission that he received from the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad, but, as evidenced by the tree stumps scattered across the painting’s foreground, he did not shy away from addressing how the industry was actively reshaping the American landscape.

George Inness, The Lackawanna Valley, c. 1856, oil on canvas, Gift of Mrs. Huttleston Rogers, 1945.4.1

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We look out onto a sweeping, panoramic view with trees, their leaves fiery orange and red, framing a view of a distant body of water under a sun-streaked sky in this long, horizontal landscape painting. The horizon comes about halfway up the composition, and is lined with hazy mountains and clouds in the deep distance. Close examination slowly reveals miniscule birds tucked into the crimson-red, golden yellow, and deep, sage-green leaves of the trees to either side of the painting. Closest to us, vine-covered, fallen tree trunks and mossy gray boulders line the bottom edge of the canvas. Beyond a trickling waterfall and small pool near the lower left corner, and tiny within the scale of the landscape, a group of three men and their dogs sit and recline around a blanket and a picnic basket, their rifles leaning against a tree nearby. The land sweeps down to a grassy meadow crossed by a meandering stream that winds into the distance, at the center of the painting. Touches of white and gray represent a flock of grazing sheep in the meadow. A low wooden bridge spans the stream to our right, and a few cows drink from the riverbank. Smoke rises from chimneys in a town lining the riverbank and shoreline beyond, and tiny white sails and steamboats dot the waterway. Light pours onto the scene with rays like a starburst from behind a lavender-gray cloud covering the sun, low in the sky. The artist signed the painting as if he had inscribed the flat top of a rock at the lower center of the landscape with his name, the title of the painting, and date: “Autumn – on the Hudson River, J.F Cropsey, London 1860.”

Cropsey’s particular talent, manifested so clearly in Autumn – On the Hudson River, was his ability to create scenes of grandeur tempered by accessibility, landscapes where poetic vision and fidelity to nature could exist simultaneously. Though painted in England, the work draws upon the artist’s numerous sketching trips in the Hudson River Valley. From a high vantage point looking southeast toward the distant Hudson, the flank of Storm King Mountain is visible. This painting is among the most widely admired of Cropsey’s works and perhaps the finest example of the theme with which he became most closely associated both at home and abroad: the spectacular colors of the American autumn.

Jasper Francis Cropsey, Autumn - On the Hudson River, 1860, oil on canvas, Gift of the Avalon Foundation, 1963.9.1

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Near the center of the painting, a masted wooden ship floats against a vibrant sunset that fades from lilac purple to carnation pink along the horizon line, which comes about a quarter of the way up this horizontal landscape. The boat is angled away from us and to our left with one sail tied up near the top of one of the two tall masts. Four people stand on the lumber-filled deck and tie up other sails. A second boat floats in the distance, its rigging and masts silhouetted against the vivid pink sky. The water is deep blue along the bottom edge of the canvas and lightens where it meets the hills along the horizon. Slivers of wispy slate-gray clouds sweep across the sky.

One of Lane’s finest paintings from his late career, this work shows a pair of topsail schooners sailing on Maine’s Penobscot Bay at sunset. The vast expanse of colorful sky casts a shimmering, diffuse light over the meticulously rendered vessels and surrounding coastal waters. The scene’s poignant sense of loneliness, time stilled, and nature’s complex beauty abstracted into a few simple shapes suggest a host of possible readings, ranging from a reverence for the divine to a transcendentalist’s response to the physical world. Lumber Schooners reveals Lane’s success in distilling the essentials from long-familiar subjects, transforming the ordinary into the exceptional with incredible refinement.

Fitz Henry Lane, Lumber Schooners at Evening on Penobscot Bay, 1863, oil on canvas, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Francis W. Hatch, Sr., 1980.29.1

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Sheer, vertical, cliffs, brightly lit in cream white and rust orange by the low sun, tower over a band of people riding horses into the distance in this long, horizontal landscape painting. The glowing cliffs dominate the upper right quadrant of the painting. They lighten from burnt orange along the jagged tops to flame orange down the steep sides, and are and warm, parchment white near the earth. One tall, narrow promontory to our right looms over a range of lower, rounded cliffs. As the cliffs move into the distance, they are shrouded with a lavender-purple haze. The land closest to us dips into a shallow valley at the bottom center of the composition, leading away from us. The dirt-packed earth is dotted with pine-green, scrubby bushes and vegetation and a grove of low, gnarled trees a short distance to our right. One chestnut-brown horse walks along the path at the bottom center of the composition, lagging behind a cluster of at least two dozen horses and riders winding into the distance. The horses range from ivory white to tawny brown and charcoal gray. The riders are loosely painted so some details are indistinct, but they all seem to have brown skin and dark hair. They wear feathered headdresses and garments in teal blue, fawn brown, or golden yellow. They ride over a low hill toward a crystal-blue river, and then back along a flat expanse toward a row of miniscule, triangular tepees lining the horizon in the deep distance. The horizon comes halfway up the composition, and the tepees are backed by a row of rose-pink, flat-topped cliffs. A pale yellow disk hangs low in the sky, over the distant cliffs. The sky above deepens from soft, lilac purple along the horizon to ice and sapphire blue along the top. A few wispy clouds are burnished orange in the sunlight. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “TYMoran 1881,” with the T, Y, and M overlapping to make a monogram.

In 1871 Moran was asked to illustrate a magazine article describing a wondrous region in Wyoming called Yellowstone and quickly made plans to travel west. Before he reached the land of geysers and hot springs, he stepped off the train in Green River and discovered a landscape unlike any that he had ever seen. Rising above the dusty railroad town were towering cliffs, reduced by nature to their geologic essence. Throughout his career, the artist repeatedly returned to the western landscape that he saw first —the magnificent cliffs of Green River.

Thomas Moran, Green River Cliffs, Wyoming, 1881, oil on canvas, Gift of the Milligan and Thomson Families, 2011.2.1

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When the Civil War began in 1861, Homer was working as a freelance illustrator for Harper’s Weekly. The artist made two trips to the front, and his resulting sketches were translated into wood engravings published in the magazine. The war also inspired major paintings from his early career, including Home, Sweet Home. Here, two Union soldiers listen to the regimental band shown in the distance; one pauses in the midst of writing a letter. Homer’s mastery of telling detail—threadbare uniforms and meager rations—captures the reality of conditions of life in the field and, along with the painting’s title, evokes the homesickness and loneliness that Homer experienced firsthand.

Winslow Homer, Home, Sweet Home, c. 1863, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1997.72.1

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Close to us, a young man and three boys sit or recline in a small sailboat that tips to our left on a choppy dark green sea in this horizontal painting. The billowing sail extends off the top left corner of the canvas and is echoed in the background to our right by the tall sails of another ship in the distance. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the composition, and puffy gray and white clouds sweep across the turquoise sky. The sun lights the scene from our right so the boys’ ruddy faces are in shadow under their hats. The young man and boys all face our left so they lean against and into the boat as it cants up to our right. The boy nearest the sail to our left reclines across the bow. Next to him to our right, a younger boy perches on the edge of the boat and holds on with both hands. The oldest, in a red shirt, sits on the floor of the boat as he maneuvers the sail with a rope. Closer to us and to our right, a younger boy sits with his bare feet pressed together in front of his bent knees on the back edge of the boat, gazing into the distance over his right shoulder as he handles the tiller. The artist signed and dated the painting in dark letters in the lower right corner: “HOMER 1876.”

One of the best–known and most beloved artistic images of life in 19th-century America, Breezing Up was first exhibited in 1876, the year of America’s centennial celebration. Critics hailed the work for its freshness and energy. The young boy who holds the boat’s tiller faces the horizon—a forward-looking, optimistic metaphor of his future and, more expansively, of the young United States. The anchor on the boat’s bow was understood to symbolize hope. Amid the general climate of optimism and expectations for the years ahead, contemporary viewers responded positively to Homer’s painterly prediction of “A Fair Wind”—the work’s original title—as America recovered from the aftermath of the Civil War.

Winslow Homer, Breezing Up (A Fair Wind), 1873-1876, oil on canvas, Gift of the W. L. and May T. Mellon Foundation, 1943.13.1

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A six-story, narrow building stands alone in an otherwise unoccupied lot under the deck of a high bridge, with a river and cityscape in the background in this horizontal painting. Dozens of people, small in scale, are each painted with a few swipes of black and some with peach-colored faces. They gather at the foot of the building and around a fire to our left, near the lower left corner of the composition. The fire is painted with a dash of orange, a few touches of canary yellow, and a smudge of gray smoke. Several more people stand and sit against the building, which has a streetlamp near its entrance. The back end of the building angles away from us to our right, so we see the narrow, front entrance side to our left. Each of the six floors of the building has two windows with fire escape ladders on the narrow side we can see. Some strokes in red and white on the lower levels of the long, flat side of the building suggest signs or posters. The top story glows a warm sienna brown in sunlight, while the rest of the building and the scene below are in shadow. More people walk along a grayish-violet fence that encloses the lot beyond the building. The ground is painted thickly with slate gray, pale, sage green, and one smear of white to suggest snow. To our right and a short distance from us, a white horse pulls a carriage near the foot of the bridge. The ivory-white, concrete piling rises up and off the right edge of the canvas and supports the deck of the bridge above. Only a sliver of the brick-red underside of the bridge is visible, skimming the top edge of the painting in the upper right corner. Two twiggy, barren trees grow up beyond the muted purple fence, and the landscape beyond is bright in the sunlight. A terracotta-orange building rises along the left edge of the painting, with the area between it and the lot under the bridge filled with thickly painted patches of butter yellow, amethyst purple, and sage green. Beyond that, an ice-blue river flows across the composition. The shore beyond is lined with patches of beige and tan paint that could be buildings. A black tugboat puffs bright white smoke in the river. The sky above is frosty white. The artist signed the work with dark blue in the lower left corner of the painting, “Geo Bellows.”

Bellows’s charismatic teacher, Robert Henri, exhorted his students to forego conventionally beautiful, genteel subject matter and to instead paint the grittier aspects of modern urban life they encountered on the streets of New York. The Lone Tenement presents a particularly bleak scene. A tenement district has been razed to the ground except for a single remaining edifice to make room for the new Queensboro Bridge over Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island), where the city’s least fortunate were sent after the destruction of their community to reside in the island’s almshouse, workhouse, and penitentiary. A lone tenement building surrounded by wraith-like vagrants remains as a vestigial monument to the area’s marginal lives. The Lone Tenement’s unusual palette of ambers and ochres, oblique point of view, and forlorn poetry profoundly influenced another of Henri’s most gifted protégés, Edward Hopper.

George Bellows, The Lone Tenement, 1909, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.83

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Allies Day, May 1917 is an early example of more than 30 paintings of flag-lined streets executed by Hassam from 1916 to 1919. Hassam commemorates the designation of Fifth Avenue as “the Avenue of the Allies” in the spring of 1917 as America entered the First World War. One of Hassam’s most ambitious efforts, Allies Day is both an arresting pattern of abstract shapes and a concrete representation of America’s city of progress, industry, and hope for the future. Hassam was gratified to have his flag paintings used as expressions of patriotism and even authorized the sale of color reproductions of the painting for various war relief efforts.

Childe Hassam, Allies Day, May 1917, 1917, oil on canvas, Gift of Ethelyn McKinney in memory of her brother, Glenn Ford McKinney, 1943.9.1

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The American Story Through Art