American Paintings Before 1945 in the Wadsworth Atheneum

WARNING

You are viewing an older version of the Yalebooks website. Please visit out new website with more updated information and a better user experience: https://www.yalebooks.com

Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser; With contributions by Amy Ellis and Elizabeth R. McClintock

American Paintings Before 1945 in the Wadsworth Atheneum

View Inside Format: Cloth
Price: $195.00

YUP

Our shopping cart only supports Mozilla Firefox. Please ensure you're using that browser before attempting to purchase.

Also Available at

Description Reviews

Founded in Hartford, Connecticut, more than 150 years ago, the Wadsworth Atheneum is the oldest continuously operating public art museum in the United States, and it contains one of the most important collections of American art anywhere. Each work in its world-renowned collection of American paintings is reproduced in this gorgeously illustrated two-volume set, including masterworks by nearly every leading artist of the seventeenth through twentieth centuries. Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser tells the extraordinary history of the museum, offers informative biographies of both famous and obscure artists, and provides comprehensive entries on each painting. The story of the nineteenth-century private collectors who established the public collections, the contemporary artists who influenced the selection of paintings, and the unusual acquisitions in the first half of the twentieth century renders a fascinating profile of cultural development in the United States.

The Atheneum's holdings of more than 550 American paintings, with outstanding Hudson River school landscapes and an especially rich representation of Connecticut artists, began with museum founder Daniel Wadsworth's donation of his private collection of American landscapes. Later gifts included the post-Civil War picture gallery left by Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt, widow of the inventor-manufacturer Samuel Colt. This beautiful catalogue enables even those who cannot visit the museum to enjoy the fine collection of the American wing.

Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser is curator of American paintings, sculpture, and drawings at the Wadsworth Atheneum and author of Ralph Earl: The Face of the Young Republic, published by Yale University Press.

"These volumes are an important contribution to the literature on the history of American painting and to the study of patronage and culture. Elizabeth Kornhauser has made excellent use of rich material."—Linda S. Ferber

"A major contribution to the history of American art, this is Yale's latest offering in an ever growing and impressive output of quality art books."—Art Times

"[A] dauntingly substantial and impressive production."—Art Newspaper

"Kornhauser's essay traces the history of the Atheneum's development and discusses major acquisitions made under each director; it will be useful to students and scholars interested in American patronage and collection of the arts. . . . The book serves as a useful reference tool as well as contributes to the history of art collecting in America."—Choice

"An entertaining story, evocative of American life and taste. From the portraits of Copley and Stuart to the abstractions of Arthur Dove and Marsden Hartley, the Atheneum’s survey of American painting is broad and of high quality."—Andrew Wilton, Burlington Magazine

ISBN: 9780300066722
Publication Date: January 31, 1997

904 pages, 9 x 12
556 b/w + 150 color illus.

Also of Interest More from this Author