American Paintings 1750–1900

On View: West Building, Main Floor

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166 artworks on view.

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This painting shows a man in a naval officer's uniform standing, facing us. He has light skin, thin blond hair, a long nose, deep-set eyes, and thin lips in a slight smile. He wears a black jacket with a wide collar and lines of gold decoration, gold buttons, and gold caps on the shoulders. Under the jacket he wears a high-necked white shirt or cravat and long white trousers. On the left, he holds a rolled-up white document on a table covered in red fabric. On the right, he holds what looks like a long, curved sword by his side, the scabbard black with gold detailing. The walls on the right and the ground below him are a light brown color, while the walls on the left seem to be covered in dark red fabric. Brown books and a black-and-gold hat sit on the table on the left, next to the rolled scroll.

Captain Charles Stewart

Thomas Sully

1811-1812

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1947.4.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M62
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Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned woman looking off to the left from her seat on a divan wears a carnation-pink gown and a fur-lined cloak in this vertical portrait painting. Her body is angled to our left, and she looks into the distance with close-set, large, gray-blue eyes. She has dark brows, a straight nose, a full lower lip, and a slight double chin in her long, oval face. Pewter-gray hair is brushed back from her high forehead and bound up under a loose swath of lace and pearls. Her loose gown is gathered under a gold, pearl-lined belt that follows the shape of her breasts along the top edge and is straight across the bottom edge. Tufts of snow-white cloth are pulled out at the neckline and at the elbow. The skirt falls loosely under the cloak, which is marine blue on the outside. The white fur interior is speckled with black, suggesting ermine. The woman holds two ends of what might be a bracelet made up of at least ten strands of fine, purple beads. Each end has a gold fitting, perhaps clasps. Her navy-blue seat curves from behind her shoulders down and across the background under a coffee bean-brown background. The woman is lit starkly from the left, throwing her ear and the far side of her face, to our right, into shadow.

Abigail Smith Babcock (Mrs. Adam Babcock)

John Singleton Copley

c. 1774

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1985.20.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M60
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Hulking mountains are mostly backlit against a watery blue sky edged with shell pink along the horizon, which comes about two-thirds of the way up this horizontal landscape painting. Light falls across felled and gnarled trees along the bottom edge of the canvas. Two thin trunks, one of them broken to a jagged point, rise along the left edge of the composition with their green leaves outlined against the sky. The land dips steeply away into a valley wending between forested mountains. Fog has settled along the valley like a river of mist. The mountains lighten from dark, earthy green and brown close to us to muted fawn-brown in the distance. A sliver of pale-yellow sun peeks over the summit of the nearest mountain, which is to our left. Clouds kick up over the distant mountaintops, and a few wisps of peach-colored clouds float across the blue sky above. The artist signed and dated the work in black paint on a branch on the ground in the lower center, “T. Cole 1826.”

Sunrise in the Catskills

Thomas Cole

1826

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1989.24.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M64
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This painting depicts three individuals in a room. An elderly man is seated on a wooden chair, reading a newspaper, with a child standing beside him. The man has balding gray hair, round spectacles, and is dressed in a black suit. The child, wearing a bright blue coat and hat, faces the man with their back toward us. They have short blond hair that falls to their shoulders in soft ringlets. The man looks down at the child with a slight smile. On the right, a woman in a black dress sits on another chair, knitting. She looks up toward the man and child. All three of these people have light skin. The room around them has red curtains, white paneled walls, rich brown furniture, and an ornate white fireplace on the far right.

The Brown Family

Eastman Johnson

1869

Oil on paper on canvas  Accession ID  1978.72.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M68
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This painting is a portrait of a woman. She has fair skin, a straight nose, and thin red lips, with her dark hair styled up with flowers. She is wearing a multi-colored dress with voluminous sleeves, a wide neckline, and a sheer golden scarf. The woman is sitting and holding a hooked staff in one hand and a thin ribbon in the other. Behind her is a landscape background with a large tree on the left and a cloudy sky on the right.

Elizabeth Gray Otis (Mrs. Samuel Alleyne Otis)

John Singleton Copley

c. 1764

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1980.11.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M62
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This painting shows a young woman seated on a wooden chair, seen from the knees up. Her body is slightly turned to the left, but her head is turned towards us. She has short, curly, blonde hair and a round face with a fair complexion. She has a straight nose, thin eyebrows, and thin pink lips in a neutral expression. She is wearing a white gown with a wide neckline, short sleeves, and blue bows on the shoulders, as well as a brown necklace with a circular golden pendant. In her left hand, she holds a small brown book with green edges, and her other hand rests on a brown table next to her, holding a pink rose. On the same table is a paper with several lines of indistinguishable text on it. The background is dark gray.

Adelina Morton

Joshua Johnson

c. 1810

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1980.61.4

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M63
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From a low vantage point, we look up a steep, rocky mountainside at a towering mountain peak in the distance in this nearly square landscape painting. Painted with tones of cobalt and topaz blue, caramel and clay brown, mauve pink, lavender purple, ivory, and cream white, the rocks and mountain nearly fill this composition against a deep, crystal-blue sky dotted with a few white puffy clouds. Water trickles along the rocky ground into a white waterfall near the lower left corner. Vibrant green moss grows on some of the smaller rocks that form a diagonal line down to the lower right corner. Larger boulders are painted with denim blue and harvest yellow beyond the smaller rocks. The rocky landscape slopes dramatically up into the distance, where it meets the sheer cliff face of a back-lit monolith that nearly touches the top edge of the canvas. Brushstrokes are visible throughout, especially along the center for the middle distance. Light pours over the scene from the left, but some of the middle ground is cast into shadow, perhaps by unseen ridges.

Simplon Pass

John Singer Sargent

1911

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  2014.79.31

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M70
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A young girl stands facing us next to a tall, stylized plant, perhaps a rose bush, in this vertical portrait painting. Looking at us with blue eyes, she has light, peachy skin, and her brown hair is parted down the middle and pulled back. Her shoulders are bare, and she wears a coral-red bead necklace. The dress flares out where it encircles her upper arms above short ruffled sleeves. A black apron is tied around her waist and falls to about her knees. The skirt of the dress is longer, falling to midcalf, and wide, white petticoats extend like pant legs below to white stockinged feet in black shoes. A white, lace-trimmed handkerchief is tucked into her apron, and she wears a black brooch at her chest. She holds a gray glass basket in her left hand, our right, filled with two red roses, a blue flower, and green leaves. With one hand, she touches a stem on the rose bush, which is planted in a red pot. One flower has fallen to the floor next to a brown and white cat, perhaps a kitten, in the lower left corner of the painting. The girl and cat stand on an emerald-green carpet, the edge of which runs from the lower right corner of the canvas toward the back of the darkened room.

Little Girl in Lavender

John Bradley

c. 1840

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1958.9.3

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M63
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A pink-toned sandy beach meets a placid body of pale blue water under a hazy sky in this horizontal landscape painting. To our left, the beach curves like a letter C to end in the near distance with a terracotta-orange rocky outcropping and a boulder, which comes halfway across the composition. Muted green trees grow atop the outcropping, and the left half is blanketed in moss or grass. A white rowboat has been pulled into the sand about halfway along the beach. One person sits or crouches inside, and a red cloth or net hangs over the side closer to us. A person wearing a straw hat, white, long-sleeved shirt, and brown pants carries a basket over one arm as they walk away from us, not far from the rowboat. The water is very light blue where it laps gently at the shore but is washed by diffuse sunlight to parchment white in the distance. The horizon, which comes a third of the way up the canvas, nearly blends into the milky white bank of clouds above. A few sailboats are near the horizon on the right half of the painting, and a few small patches of blue sky show through the clouds in the upper right corner.

Beach at Beverly

John Frederick Kensett

c. 1869/1872

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1978.6.5

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M67
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A dirt path winds through a field of gold-green grass back to a town built on low hills in this horizontal, densely hazy landscape painting. Several minuscule people walk on the path and at least one person rides a horse. More people are gathered by a domed, white structure in the distance, where the winding path meets a straighter road leading up into the town near the left edge of the canvas. At least six people sit or stand near a conical white tepee to the right, in the lower quadrant. Two horses and about two dozen smaller animals graze nearby. In the town, the cluster of low, flat-topped buildings, the one domed building with two slender minarets, and palm trees are painted in tones of muted mauve pink and peach. The sun is painted as a hot blaze of light low in the washed-out sky over rocky mountains, which stretch across the left half of the composition. The artist signed and dated the painting with angular red letters in the lower right corner, “S.R. Gifford 1874.”

Siout, Egypt

Sanford Robinson Gifford

1874

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1999.7.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M67
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Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned woman stands close to us with a red schoolhouse in the distance under a sunset sky in this vertical painting. The woman’s body faces us, but she turns her head to look off to the left with light brown eyes. She has a short, straight nose, full pink lips, and a round face. Her blond hair is pulled up under a round white hat layered with ruffles, which lies like a pancake over the top of her head. Her white dress is vertically striped with thin rust-red lines and has a long-sleeved, tight-fitting bodice and a long skirt. A dark gray belt is cinched around her narrow waist, and she wears a black, lacy ruffle around her neck. The woman’s arms hang by her sides, and she holds two paperback-sized books in her left hand, to our right. An earth-brown lawn stretches back to the schoolhouse, which has crimson-red walls, a chimney, and a dark gray roof. Three forms painted with a few streaks of dark or light gray or topaz blue suggest people standing near the door of the schoolhouse. Trees and a grassy lawn beyond the building are loosely painted with blended strokes. The sky is shaded pale lemon yellow and light peach with touches of rose pink. The artist signed and dated the lower right corner, “HOMER 1873.”

The Red School House

Winslow Homer

1873

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1985.64.21

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M68
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This painting shows a seated woman, her body turned slightly to the left and her head turned towards us. She is holding a small white mask in her right hand, balancing it on one of her knees. She has pale skin, high cheekbones, and pink lips in a neutral expression. She has short, dark, curly hair that is adorned with a pearl clip or headband. She is dressed in a light-colored gown with highlights of pink, green, and pale blue, with wide, flowing sleeves and fabric gathered at the bust. The background is a plain gray wall, with a hanging scroll or tapestry beside her on the left, containing shades of blue and gold.

Lady with a Mask

Thomas Wilmer Dewing

1911

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  2014.79.16

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M70
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