American Paintings 1750–1900

On View: West Building, Main Floor

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166 artworks on view.

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This painting depicts a man from the waist up. He is looking at us, his body turned slightly to the left. The man has fair skin, blue eyes, short gray wavy hair, a cleft chin, and prominent ears. He is dressed in a black coat with a high collar and a white cravat. The background is a blend of muted colors in brown, pale pink, and gray hues.

James Monroe

Gilbert Stuart

c. 1817

Oil on wood  Accession ID  1979.4.3

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M60
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This painting depicts a seated man at a desk. His body is facing towards the right, but his face is turned towards us; he has round facial features, gray wavy hair, and a slightly flushed complexion. He is wearing a dark blue coat with gold buttons over a white shirt. His visible hand holds a paper and rests on his desk, which is covered with more papers on top of a green tablecloth. On the desk, there is also a wooden tray with silver jars. The background is a plain olive color.

Richard Yates

Gilbert Stuart

1793/1794

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1942.8.29

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M60
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This painting shows a man standing confidently with one hand on his hip and the other resting on a large, rusty anchor. His body is slightly turned to the right while his head is turned towards us, and one of his knees is slightly bent. The man has fair skin with rosy cheeks and a neutral expression. His hair is white and styled in faint curls that fall down around his chin and the tops of his shoulders. He wears an olive-green coat with brass buttons, a matching waistcoat over a white cravat, knee-length, olive-green breeches, white stockings, and black shoes with brass buckles. He stands on the edge of a sandy shore, and to the left are a pile of barrels and crates. The background includes a cloudy sky and a glimpse of the sea with waves and distant cliffs visible in the distance.

Patrick Tracy

John Trumbull

1784/1786

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1964.15.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M62
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Three pale-skinned, blue-eyed children wearing green suits stand in a row facing us in this horizontal portrait painting. They all have round faces and full, pink cheeks. The tallest child is to the right, and he has shoulder-length cinnamon-brown hair. The other two come up to his shoulder and have blond hair. The tallest puts one arm on the far shoulder of the middle child, and the two smaller children hold hands. Each wears a pine-green, one-piece outfit with pewter-gray buttons, a wide, ivory-white collar lined with ruffles, and black, shin-high boots. The boy on our left holds a branch of dark red cherries. The middle child holds a pink rose, and the tallest a basket filled with pink roses. A black dog holding a gray and mauve-pink bird in its mouth stands in profile facing our left in the lower right corner of the canvas. The room around them has a tan-colored floor and gray walls. The room opens onto an alcove to our right with a rectangular window. A slender tree is along the left edge of the opening and a few pale, pink-tinged gray mountains line the bottom edge. Clear blue sky fills the rest of the window.

The Westwood Children

Joshua Johnson

c. 1807

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1959.11.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M63
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This is a painting of a dockside scene with workers and cargo. The painting portrays a group of laborers taking a break, gathering around various goods and supplies near docked ships. The dock is bustling with items like a horse-drawn cart, baskets, and crates scattered around. The men wear simple trousers, shirts, and jackets in shades of brown, red, white, and light blue. Some wear hats and smoke pipes. Most have pale skin, although one man on the left appears to have dark brown skin. In the background are sailing vessels and a steamboat with smoke rising from a chimney against a pale-blue sky.

The Longshoremen's Noon

John George Brown

1879

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  2014.136.2

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M65
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We look slightly down onto a bay that curves away from us into the distance and to our right in this horizontal landscape painting. C-shaped, shallow waves lap at the sandy beach from our right. Several people standing and playing in the water wear hats and long-sleeved shirts. Two women there hold up their skirts as they wade in the ankle-deep water, a small brown dog close behind them. Another person wearing white walks on the wet sand, and four more gather a short distance away, to our left, perhaps on a blanket. Opposite us and far away, brown horses pull a carriage along the beach. The taupe-colored sand is hemmed in by a curving band of celery-green grasses, which in turn surround dunes or hills and a rocky formation. A tree-lined hill gives way to the rocky promontory that juts onto the beach where the shoreline curves to our right. The promontory has a crack near the bottom, resembling the open mouth of a turtle. Beyond this, touches of white paint suggest buildings deep in the distance, in front of slate-gray hills lining the horizon. In the top two-thirds of the picture, flat-bottomed, white clouds drift across a sky that deepens from nearly white along the horizon to pale blue across the top edge of the composition. The artist signed the painting in the lower left corner, with spiky, left-leaning letters in lavender purple: “W. Whittredge.”

Second Beach, Newport

Worthington Whittredge

c. 1878/1880

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  2004.58.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M67
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A young, pale-skinned girl wearing a white dress stands against a darkened background in this vertical portrait painting. Her body faces our left in profile, and she clasps her hands in front of her pelvis. Her face turns a bit to us, her chin pulled back so she looks at us with large, black eyes from under her brows. She has a delicate nose, pink lips, and a pointed chin. Her cinnamon-brown hair is pulled halfway up, away from her forehead, and falls down over her shoulders. Her dress has a high collar, a loose bodice, and long sleeves. It is cinched at the waist and falls like a bell to just below her knees. She wears black stockings and shoes. The room in which she stands has a brown floor, and the wall behind her is forest green. The portrait is loosely painted so brushstrokes are visible, especially in the girl’s face and dress.

Little Girl in White (Queenie Burnett)

George Bellows

1907

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1983.1.2

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M69
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About two dozen men, women, children, and a baby sit in rows of wooden benches or on traveling trunks in this horizontal painting. Their skin is mostly pale with some ranging more toward pink and others toward tan. A woman nursing a baby sits in the center of the composition. Her blond hair is pulled back, and she wears a white blouse under a red vest and a long black skirt. Her shirt is pulled down to expose one breast, and the feeding baby wears a white bonnet and clothing, and is wrapped in a gray-patterned blanket. The woman sits on a wooden trunk in front of a young girl, who sits on a second chest just behind her and to our left. This girl has strawberry blond hair held back under a black headband, and she wears a blue shawl over a brick-red dress. Three silver pans, a silver jug, a glass bottle, and tin cup sit next to her trunk. She leans forward and looks intently off to our left. A man with a red beard wears glasses, a brown suit, and a flat-topped straw hat sits farther back in the room on the far side of bulging sacks and more trunks. He looks into the distance off to our right. Three men wearing black suits and two wearing black bowler hats sit facing each other just over this man’s shoulder. In the right two-thirds of the painting, more men wear fedoras, bowler hats, or brimless caps. Their clothing ranges from vests over button-down shirts to suits and ties. Some wear overcoats, and some are bearded. One man wears a military-style hat, a double-breasted black coat, and smokes a pipe with a white bowl. He looks toward the nursing woman, as does a standing man farther in the room. The men sit alone or chat in groups of two or three, and one sleeps, propped up against a fabric bag. A few more women are among the group, including one older woman who wears a yellow scarf tied over her head to the left. A sign hanging on a column behind the nursing woman begins with the text, “Emigrant Landing Depot” over columns of fine print. The walls of the room are mottled fog and cream white, and one visible window is small within the thick wall. The floor is wooden planks and there is a brown stain near the lower right corner.

In the Land of Promise, Castle Garden

Charles Frederic Ulrich

1884

Oil on wood  Accession ID  2014.136.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M65
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Four women and two children, all with pale skin, carry baskets as they walk along a beach under a brilliant blue sky in this horizontal painting. The scene is painted with visible dabs and blended strokes. The women all wear long-sleeved shirts, calf-length skirts and aprons, head coverings, and gray clogs. The group walks to our left, amid shallow pools that reflect the topaz-blue sky. At the front of the group, to our left, a young woman wears a white kerchief tied at the back of her neck, under her blond hair. She wears a navy-blue shirt and a gray skirt, and she carries a shallow, woven, straw basket against her left hip, closer to us. On her other side, a barefoot child walks beside her. The child wears a white, long-sleeved shirt tucked into tan-colored shorts and a wide-brimmed, golden yellow hat. He holds a basket at the small of his back. To our right, near the center of the composition, a pair of women walk with their heads tipped toward each other. The woman closer to us has bright, copper-blond hair under a white bonnet tied under her chin. A black shawl crosses over her white shirt, and black coverings are pulled up over the forearms of her white shirt. Her beige apron mostly obscures her crimson-red skirt. Wearing dark stockings, she is the only woman whose shins are not bare. The woman next to her, farther from us, wears a dark gray head covering and skirt, and a navy-blue shirt. The chin straps on the bonnets of both of these women flutter in the breeze. Behind that pair, to our right, and older woman also wears a black shawl and sleeve protectors over a white shirt. Her apron is aquamarine blue and she lifts it over a brown skirt. She has stopped to gaze down at the second child, standing next to her. Sunlight sets the child’s blond hair aglow as he reaches down to tug at the leg of his dark gray shorts. He wears a teal-blue, long-sleeved shirt and is also barefoot. Touches of white paint on the beach around the group makes the sand seem to shimmer. More people approach the beach from the upper right corner, where the dune leads back to a lighthouse. The structure is a hazy, slate-gray silhouette against the bright white clouds in the vivid blue sky above. The beach slopes down to our left into the distance, where sailboats and people are suggested with a few swipes of paint. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “John S. Sargent. Paris 1878.”

En route pour la pêche (Setting Out to Fish)

John Singer Sargent

1878

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  2014.79.32

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M70
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This painting features a woman from the waist up, her body angled slightly to the right, looking out at us. She has pale skin with rosy cheeks, blue eyes, arched gray eyebrows, and pink lips that are slightly upturned. Her curly gray hair is partially visible under a large straw-colored bonnet with a blue interior and a large blue bow. She wears a light blue garment with a darker blue neckline and a light brown shawl draped over her arms. Her left hand is taking off or putting on a light brown glove on her right hand. The background is mostly dark brown and olive-green tones, except for a blue patch near the bottom right corner that looks like a cloudy sky.

Henrietta Marchant Liston (Mrs. Robert Liston)

Gilbert Stuart

1800

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1960.12.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M60
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A young woman with pale skin, dressed in a black and white servant’s uniform, stands reading a book behind a collection of urns, a figurine, and a stationary box arrayed on a tabletop in this vertical painting. Seen from about the hips up, the woman faces our left in profile as she gazes down at the open book in her hands. She has a turned up nose, smooth skin, and her lips are slightly parted over a rounded chin. Her blond hair is pulled up in a bun, and she wears a black dress with a wide, white collar and a white apron tied around her waist. A feather duster with a black handle is tucked under her left arm, closer to us, so the dark feathers fan out behind her. She stands in the corner of a room with light tan walls. Between us and the woman and running parallel to the bottom edge of the canvas, a wooden gaming table inlaid with a black and white checkerboard pattern on its top holds five objects. To our left, the hinged lid of a white rectangular box has been opened to reveal white note cards and envelopes. The inside of the box lid is painted cobalt blue. Next to the box is a white ceramic jar with a rounded body and a flat, dark lid. At the middle of the table and a little closer to us, a brown vase with a tall, inward curving neck sits next to a figurine of a person wearing a blue and pink kimono. Lastly, a white lidded jar painted in blue with a person and a landscape sits to our right. The artist signed and dated the painting in dark, capital letters near the upper left corner: “PAXTON” and “1910.”

The House Maid

William McGregor Paxton

1910

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  2014.136.11

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M70
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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.”

Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd White (Mrs. Henry White)

John Singer Sargent

1883

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  2014.136.68

Not on view
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