Masterpieces of American Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This group of one hundred American paintings—representing about a tenth of the Metropolitan Museum's holdings of eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth-century paintings in the American field—has been selected to provide an attractive and fair impression both of these holdings and of American painting in general. Although no book based on a specific collection could claim to offer an accurate review of the history of American painting, because of inevitable gaps in any collection—as exemplified here by the slight representation of folk or naive painting—the overall breadth and strength of the Metropolitan collection are not only remarkable but also serviceable for suitably displaying the history and range of American painting.