BEST AMERICAN ART by Alexandra Jopp

Asher Brown Durand was a man who practices what he preached - "Go first to nature to learn to paint landscapes." The revolutionary aspect of that statement can only be understood in historical context. Coming at a time when American nature painting was dominated by European esthetics, he may well have been the first to advocate a direct response to nature, placing highest value on seeing and feeling for oneself. he urged painters to be influenced by weather, by atmosphere and light. And he took to the hills  and return with fresh, moisture-filled pictures. In 1855 he painted In the Woods, large and refined, and no doubt based on sketches completed in the field. From North Conway, New Hampshire, that year he wrote a letter describing in great detail the scene he found. In the Woods , 1855 Asher B. Durand (American, 1796–1886) The region of the White Mountains is justly famed for its impressive scenery: passages of the sublime and beautiful are not infrequent, and for th...

Fairfield Porter is an American Vuillard, a master of intricately composed, beautifully colored, light-filled canvases. He was born in Winnetka, Illinois, graduated from Harvard and has had a long, distinguished career as art critic as well as painter. He is author of a book on Thomas Eakins, wrote award winning articles on art for The Nation, and has also  lectured widely on esthetics at universities. It is as an artist, however, that Porter has achieved his preeminent reputation. During the long post World-War II period when abstract-expressionism dominated American art, Porter was one of the few painters of landscape to enjoy critical approval. He lived in Southhampton, Long Island, but summered regularly in Maine. Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) Interior With Dress Pattern Oil on canvas 1969 I like Maine very much but I do not always paint my best landscape there, because of something is beautiful in itself, that takes you away from making a painting. It makes you thin...

Charles Sheeler ,  River Rouge Plant , 1932. Oil on canvas, 20 × 24 1/8 in. (50.8 × 61.3 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York American painter and photographer of industrial subjects By Alexandra A. Jopp Charles Sheeler, one of America’s leading Modernists, found formal beauty in machinery, the principal emblem of modernity Charles Sheeler, a central figure in American Realism and one of the most interesting and ambitious American artists, was known for producing compelling images of the Machine Age. During his prolific career, Sheeler employed machines, factory complexes near Detroit, New York skyscrapers, locomotive engines, power plants and barns as subjects for his pictures and used painting, drawing, and photography in his works, often in combination. Trained in Impressionist approaches to landscape themes, he experimented with painterly compositions before finding and mastering his outwardly depopulated landscape style, now often called precisionism....

Portrait  John Singleton Copley was America's foremost painter of the 18th century. He was born in Boston, the son of Richard and Mary Copley, who had recently immigrated from Ireland. The death of young Copley's father and his mother's subsequent marriage to the English-trained engraver Peter Pelham in 1748 introduced the youth to an atmosphere where prints, paintings, and artist's supplies were familiar household accessories. Copley certainly receive dome training from his stepfather. The copies of old masters remaining in the studio at one time occupied by John Smibert gave him some idea of the traditions of European painting.  Copley's earliest works, some of them copies after allegorical prints, date from 1753 and 1754; by 1755 he had established himself as a professional painter in Boston, turning out stiff but competent likeness in the manner of John Greenwood and Joseph Badger. The appearance of Joseph Blackburn in New England  in 1754 had an immedi...

A View near Tivoli (Morning), 1832. Although he was not the first American landscape painter of quality, because Thomas Doughty and Thomas Birch, among others, were already at work, Thomas Cole enjoys the preeminent reputation as the best known, most widely admired, early 19th century painter of nature. Founder of the Hudson River School, Cole embodied in his life's  work a significant duality, revealing on the one hand a Platonic sense of nature as morally, religiously, and philosophically uplifting, and on the other a remarkable ability to capture the natural fact. This duality, which historian Barbara Novak identifies as "the real and ideal" was approaching resolution when Cole died. "Landscape with dead trees" is clearly a real painting, a very early effort, and one of three pictures which brought immediate success to Cole when first exhibited by a New York frame-maker in 1825. It was the product of the artist's first exploration up the Hudson Ri...

--> Robert Feke, who's mysterious life has been the subject of innumerable conjectures, was probably born at Oyster Bay, Long Island. Although early documentation is scarce, several brief contemporary references and the evidence supplied by his pictures help to identify the places of his activity. His earliest dated work - and his most ambitious - The Family of Isaac Royal (Harvard University Law School) - places him in Boston, working under the influence of John Smibert, in 1741. Robert Feke Isaac Royal and His Family 1741 Oil on canvas The Harvard University Law School possesses a group portrait (above) showing one man, three women, and a child, the back of which bears the following inscription: "Drawn for Mr. Isaac Royall whose Portrait is on the foreside Age 22 years 13th instant His lady in blue Aged 19 years 13th instant His sister Mary Palmer in [one word illegible] Aged 18 years 2nd of August His sister Penelope Royall in Green Aged 17 years 25 o...