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.”

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

Ongoing from March 1, 2026

Celebrating American Art

Dates

Ongoing from March 1, 2026
Locations

West Building, Main Floor
Ticketing Information

Admission is always free and passes are not required

A new look at the art of our nation.

Step into a fresh take on our American art galleries. The National Gallery is home to iconic works like John Singleton Copley’s Watson and the Shark, Gilbert Stuart’s George Washington, and Thomas Cole’s series The Voyage of Life. Now see them in a new light alongside historic sculptures like Hiram Powers’ The Greek Slave and Bessie Potter Vonnoh’s Day Dreams. Reimagined galleries invite you to explore how artists told the American story from the colonial era to the 20th century. With new texts, digital tools, and hands-on activities, there’s something here for every generation to discover.

Organization
Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Curated by Sarah Cash, associate curator of American and British Paintings

Explore selected works

Shown from the chest up, a cleanshaven, middle-aged man with pale skin and silvery gray hair, wearing a white, ruffled shirt under a velvety black, high-necked jacket, looks out at us in this vertical portrait painting. His body is angled to our left, and he turns his face slightly to look at us with gray eyes under slightly arched eyebrows. He has a long nose and his thin lips are closed in a straight line. Shadows define slightly sagging jowls along his jawline and down his neck. His light gray hair is pulled back from his forehead and swells in bushy curls over his ears. Part of a black ribbon seen beyond his shoulder ties his hair back. Light illuminates the person from our left and creates a golden glow on the light brown background behind him. — Gilbert Stuart, George Washington, c. 1821, oil on wood, Gift of Thomas Jefferson Coolidge IV in memory of his great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, his grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge II, and his father, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge III, 1979.5.1

We look onto the side of a rowboat crowded with nine men trying to save a pale, nude young man who flails in the water in front of us as a shark approaches, mouth agape, from our right in this horizontal painting. In the water, the man floats with his chest facing the sky, his right arm overhead and the other stretched out by his side. Extending to our left, his left leg is bent and the right leg is straight, disappearing below the knee. His long blond hair swirls in the water and he arches his back, his wide-open eyes looking toward the shark behind him. To our right, the shark rolls up out of the water with its gaping jaws showing rows of pointed teeth. In the boat, eight of the men have light or tanned complexions, and one man has dark brown skin. The man with brown skin stands at the back center of the boat, and he holds one end of a rope, which falls across the boat and around the upper arm of the man in the water. Another man stands at the stern of the boat, to our right, poised with a long, hooked harpoon over the side of the boat, ready to strike the shark. His long dark hair blows back and he wears a navy-blue jacket with brass buttons, white breeches, blue stockings, and his shoes have silver buckles. Two other men wearing white shirts with blousy sleeves lean over the side of the boat, bracing each other as they reach toward the man in the water. An older, balding man holds the shirt and body of one of this pair and looks on, his mouth open. The other men hold long oars and look into the water with furrowed brows. The tip of a shark’s tail slices through the water to our right of the boat, near the right edge of the canvas. Along the horizon line, which comes three-quarters of the way up the composition, buildings and tall spires line the harbor. The masts of boats at port creates a row of crosses against the light blue sky. Steely gray clouds sweep across the upper left corner of the canvas and the sky lightens to pale, butter yellow at the horizon. — John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark, 1778, oil on canvas, Ferdinand Lammot Belin Fund, 1963.6.1

A middle-aged, light-skinned man stands facing and looking at us, leaning on one arm propped on a tall rock in a landscape in this vertical portrait painting. The man looks out with dark blue eyes under curved black brows. He has a prominent nose, his full apricot-colored lips are closed, and there is a shadow of a beard on his smooth cheeks. He has a receding hairline, and his wavy, ash-gray hair curls around his high, white collar. The man wears a tawny-brown topcoat with white, ruffled cuffs at his wrists, and a long brown vest with fabric-covered buttons. He wears matching brown, knee-length pantaloons with white stockings, and black shoes with gold buckles. His feet are widely planted as he leans on the tall rock on his left elbow, to our right. His elbow rests on an open book on the tall, narrow rock, shaped like a podium. Writing visible in the thick book reads, “Nolumus Leges Angliae mutari.” He points with his other index finger to our right. Behind the man and to our right is a gray, stone statue of a woman wearing flowing robes. She holds a pair of scales in one hand a tall staff with a bell-like form at the top in the other elbow. The statue is angled toward the man, and the tall base on which she stands is carved with the words, “Co LEX ANGLI.” A tree with sickle-shaped leaves and peach-colored fruit spans the height of the composition behind the statue. Near the lower left corner of the composition, two halves of a piece of paper, torn from corner to corner, lies on the ground with the edges curling up. The writing on the paper reads, “Imperial Civil Law — Sumary proceeding.” A thick tree trunk curves in a shallow S shape up along the left edge of the canvas, behind the man. Fern-green jimson weed, clover, small flowers, and rocks carpet the ground beneath and around the man. In the distance, to our left, a man wearing a red coat, a tricorn hat, and holding a musket leads a mule carrying a pack, while sheep graze to our right. Pockets of azure-blue sky are visible beyond gray clouds to our left and fluffy, flaxen-yellow clouds to our right. — Charles Willson Peale, John Beale Bordley, 1770, oil on canvas, Gift of The Barra Foundation, Inc., 1984.2.1

A pale-skinned woman wearing a shimmering, pearl-white dress stands next to a harp, which is taller than she is, in this vertical portrait painting. The woman’s body faces us, but she angles her head slightly to our right. She looks up and off into the distance with gray-blue eyes under dark, curved brows. She has an oval face with a narrow chin. Her cheeks are flushed, and her full pink lips are closed. Her hair is pulled up, and chin-length curls frame her face. A ruffle, perhaps of lace, lines the low neckline of her dress, which has a sheen suggesting satin or silk. The gown has short, cap sleeves and falls in a narrow A-line to her pointed white shoes. One foot rests on a pedal at the base of the harp, and behind her is a low stool with a round, dark orange upholstered seat and a wood pedestal base. A topaz-blue brocade-patterned scarf with fringed narrow ends falls over one of the woman’s shoulders, down her back, across the stool, and then puddles on the floor. The woman’s right arm, on our left, rests over the upward curving neck of the harp. She holds a T-shaped tuning key in that hand. Her other hand reaches across her body to touch the strings. The crown of the harp is ornately carved with leaves, and the instruments rests on low, clawed feet. The carpet or floor is patterned with concentric circles and patterned rings in peach, moss green, soft yellow, and pink. A gray stone column rises to our right behind the woman, and a ledge spans the rest of the space behind her. The landscape beyond has hills and trees leading back to the horizon, which comes about halfway up the composition. Parchment-brown clouds swirl against a muted blue sky above. The artist signed the work as if his initials and date were written on the base of the harp. The intwined letters T and S are followed by the date, 1818. — Thomas Sully, Lady with a Harp: Eliza Ridgely, 1818, oil on canvas, Gift of Maude Monell Vetlesen, 1945.9.1

Cows, horses, sheep, and pigs stand closely together in a band across the bottom edge of this horizontal painting. Rolling hills open onto grassy lawns, farms, and fields beyond. The two dozen cows spanning the leftmost two-thirds of the painting are cream white, tawny, russet, or dark brown, or speckled with brown or black and white. White sheep, six adult and one baby, cluster beyond the cows, to our left. Five black pigs are behind the cows across the middle of the picture, one of them suckling several piglets. Nine horses and foals gathered to our right are white, gray, or one of several shades of brown. The land on which the animals stand is teal blue underfoot. Pale green, grassy plots rise gently to either side of a trough or irrigation ditch that comes toward us from a culvert at the far side of the field. Eight men wearing tall hats, coats, and pants gather in pairs beyond the animals, and one man, farther in the distance, walks alone. The grassy lawn is hemmed to each side by fences, and more run across the back of the space. A man walks behind a horse-drawn plow to our right. There is a line of five spindly trees in front of the fence to our left. Three cows lie in that enclosure not far from one more tree. Several buildings painted with cream white and barn red line the plots across the back of the space. Beyond, painted lightly, as if hazy, lines of crops or trees blur into the horizon, which comes about two-thirds of the way up the composition. The sky above is pale petal pink, and it deepens to icy blue across the top edge. A couple bunches of white and tan-colored clouds drift to our right. Brown lettering against a sand-colored ground along the bottom edge reads, “An Indian summer view of the Farm & Stock of James C. Cornell of Northampton Bucks county Pennsylvania. Tat took the Premium in the Agricultural society, october the 12, 1848 Painted by E. Hicks in the 69th year of his age.” The name James C. Cornell is in all caps, and October begins with a lowercase o. — Edward Hicks, The Cornell Farm, 1848, oil on canvas, Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1964.23.4

Joshua Johnson, The Westwood Children, c. 1807, oil on canvas, Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1959.11.1

The painting features a valley with purple and brown mountains in the distance, surrounding a reflective body of water with a small rowboat floating on it. Closer to us, there are gray rocks, brown tree trunks and branches, and lush green vegetation at the edge of the water. The sky above is painted in warm shades of yellow, peach, and orange, which transition to pale greenish-blue at the top. The water below reflects these colors, as well as those of the distant mountain and surrounding trees. — Elizabeth Gilbert Jerome, American Landscape, 1872, oil on canvas, Gift of Funds from James and Christiane Valone in honor of Franklin Kelly, 2025.25.1

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

A flatboat with eight light-skinned men floats toward us down a wide river in this horizontal painting. The boat nearly spans the width of the composition and has low sides and a shallowly arched, low cabin upon which the men gather. At the center, a man with dark hair and wearing light blue trousers and a pink shirt dances with one foot and both arms raised. To our right a seated musician plays a fiddle, and to our left a smiling man holds up a metal pot and strikes the flat bottom with the back of his fingers. The remaining men sit or recline around the musicians and dancing man, some looking toward the dancer and two looking out at us. Bedrolls and animal skins are stored in the cabin below. The olive-green surface of the river is streaked with pale blue. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the composition. The trees and riverbanks in the distance are hazy beneath a watery blue sky. — George Caleb Bingham, The Jolly Flatboatmen, 1846, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2015.18.1

A violin, bow, and at least two pages of sheet music hang from a dark, forest-green, wooden door in this vertical painting. The string holding the violin hangs from a nail at the top center of the composition. The violin takes up the top two-thirds of the painting. The wood body of the instrument is a deep chestnut brown alongside the fingerboard, and it lightens to tawny brown at the corners. White powder coats the strings near the bridge and gathers on the instrument beneath it, where the strings are played. The bow hangs to our right, and it and the violin overlap sheets of music, which curl at the corners. Several pins or nails are pounded into the wooden door, and a few small holes and vertical cracks mar its surface. The door’s handle is a metal ring hanging at the center to our left, and bracket-shaped arms of two rusty hinges nearly span the width of the painting from the right edge. A bolt is missing from the top hinge, and the rightmost section of the bottom hinge has been broken off. A scrap of newspaper is pasted on the door just below the violin, to our left, but the text is illegible. Finally, the corner of a pale blue envelope has been tucked into the edge of the painting near the lower left. A black and white postage stamp with the number 25 is affixed to the upper right corner, and the envelope has been stamped several times. Cursive writing of the address reads, “W. M. Harnett 28 East 14th St New York.” The word “Chargé” has been penned in the lower left corner of the envelope. A circular cancelation stamp near the postage stamp locates and dates the envelope: “PARIS 3 27 AVRIL 86.” — William Michael Harnett, The Old Violin, 1886, oil on canvas, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Mellon Scaife in honor of Paul Mellon, 1993.15.1

This sculpture is a large ceramic jar. It is made from brown, glazed material with a glossy finish. The jar is cylindrical with a wide opening at the top and two small, rounded handles near the rim. There are carved lines of text or markings around the upper portion of the jar near the rim. — David Drake, Storage Jar, 1859, alkaline-glazed stoneware, Anonymous Gift of Funds, 2023.2.1

A view across a wide, brightly lit field scattered with broken pieces of stone is framed to the left and right by crumbling stone temples in this horizontal painting. The sunlight is infused with a soft pink glow, which warms the cream-white stone with a pale blush. The temple on our left sits on a low rise, and a row of at least nine columns topped with an entablature faces our right. Several of the columns are broken off, and part of the entablature and the entire roof is missing, from what we can see. Fragments of pediments and wheel-like sections of columns tumble down from its front steps and back along its side, cascading into and across most of the field before us. The rocky terrain is carpeted in celery-green growth speckled with sage green and areas of rust red in the lower left and right corners. Barely visible in the center of the field, are two men, barely taller than the fragments they inspect. One man wears an apricot-orange suit and bowler hat over blond hair. He kneels with his back to us as he writes or sketches on a piece of paper. A second man stands to his right, also with his back to us, dressed in a long pleated, white tunic with a red cap, jacket, and knee-high boots. To our right and farther back than the other temple, a brick-red tower stands next to another columned arcade. A third temple there, or perhaps another part of that building complex, has columns carved into the shape of six identical, robed women, facing our left. Beyond the ruins, the field slopes down to a peach-colored plain that ends at a wide, topaz-blue body of water with mountains in the far distance along the low horizon line. A petal-pink haze rises from the water and mountains and almost fills the blue-gray sky above. The artist has signed and dated the painting in the lower left, “S.R. Gifford 1880.” — Sanford Robinson Gifford, Ruins of the Parthenon, 1880, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund, 1881), 2014.79.20

Two men with pale skin, wearing white sleeveless shirts and royal-blue caps, row in unison in a long, narrow boat on a placid blue river in this horizontal landscape painting. The low, honey-colored wooden boat extends off both sides of the canvas. Both men face our left as they row to our right. The man in front looks ahead of him, beyond the stern of the boat, and the man to our right, closer to the bow, tucks his chin down to look past his shoulder. Their bare, muscled arms are extended straight as the two oars sweep back. The tip of another boat runs close and parallel to the bottom edge of the composition, spanning the left three-quarters of the painting. The opposite riverbank is lined with a dense forest of pine-green trees. People crowd along the decks of a steamboat and a paddleboat near the riverbank to our left. Another narrow skuller, rowed by four people wearing ruby-red shirts, cuts through the water at the back center of the river. The riverbank beyond is lined with people, painted with strokes of black and white, and minuscule touches of red. The horizon comes halfway up the composition. Cream-white clouds float across a muted, topaz-blue sky above the trees. — Thomas Eakins, The Biglin Brothers Racing, 1872, oil on canvas, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, 1953.7.1

This painting depicts a snowy forest scene with a path running through tall, leafless trees. On the path in the center of the painting, two men are pulling a sled loaded with barrels towards the right, while a small child sits on the barrels, holding a wooden bucket. The men wear long pants, vests, and hats in shades of blue, brown, black, red, and tan, while the child wears brown pants and a green jacket with a white scarf and a blue hat. All three people have light skin and brown hair. The forest around them is dense, made up of mostly brown trees and branches with a hint of pale gray sky in the background. Behind the people, in the trees, there also appears to be a small wooden structure with a faint orange fire. — Eastman Johnson, On Their Way to Camp, 1873, oil on board, Paul Mellon Fund and Gift of Jo Ann and Julian Ganz, Jr., 2008.66.2

James McNeill Whistler, Mother of Pearl and Silver: The Andalusian, 1888(?)-1900, oil on canvas, Harris Whittemore Collection, 1943.6.1

George Bellows, Little Girl in White (Queenie Burnett), 1907, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1983.1.2

A woman with pale, peachy skin and dark brown hair, wearing a long sleeved, floor-length white satin dress, stands facing and looking out at us in a room hung with shimmering, ivory-white drapery in this vertical portrait. The woman’s body is angled slightly to our left and her hair is piled on top of her head. She has dark eyes, a straight nose, and her rose-red lips are closed. She wears pearl earrings, a string of pearls at her throat, and a brooch with two large pearls at her chest. The deep V-neck of her dress is edged with layers of sheer fabric that drapes over her shoulders. Some areas of the dress are loosely painted but gives the impression of lace edging along the collar and bows down the front of the bodice and at the elbows of the half sleeves. The train of the dress bunches around her feet behind her to our left and is either gathered at her left hip, on our right, or her dress has a voluminous bustle there. She holds a partially open fan in her right hand, on our left, and black opera glasses in the other hand, nestled into the bustle. She wears a gold bangle on her left wrist and a glittering blue stone ring on the ring finger of that hand. She stands before a chaise longue—a half chair, half sofa—edged with gold and upholstered with gold fabric. A swath of ivory-colored fabric hangs behind her like a curtain. The artist signed and dated the work in the lower right corner in dark brown paint: “John S. Sargent 1883.” — John Singer Sargent, Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd White (Mrs. Henry White), 1883, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of John Campbell White, 1949), 2014.136.68

In this oval painting, a cluster of ripe red raspberries is surrounded by green leaves. The raspberries are in the center of the painting, surrounded by the leaves that extend towards the edges. Some berries hang from thin green stems over the leaves, towards the light brown ground. The background includes some shadowed green plants and a brown sky. — Lilly Martin Spencer, Raspberries, c. 1859, oil on canvas, Gift of William and Abigail Gerdts, 2005.161.1

This painting features a shoreline with the dark green ocean on the left and a small ship sailing in the distance. The color palette is soft and muted, with shades of blue, green, yellow, and very light gray. The shoreline is a sandy beach with gentle waves coming in from the left side of the painting and wet sand on the right reflecting the sky above. The vast sky is pale blue-gray with some white clouds, and some small seabirds are visible flying above the water. — William Trost Richards, On the Coast of New Jersey, 1883, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund, 1883), 2015.19.119

Hiram Powers, The Greek Slave, model 1841-1843, carved 1846, Seravezza marble, Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran, 1873), 2014.79.37

Rembrandt Peale, Washington before Yorktown, 1824, reworked 1825, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, Mount Vernon, Virginia, 1944), 2014.136.64