This brilliant study of American art is again available with a new preface by the author, a few corrections in the text, and a revised and updated bibliography. Widely acclaimed for its perception and scholarship, the book concentrates on a number of leading artists, including Washington Allston, Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Fitz Hugh Lane, William Sidney Mount, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and Albert Pinkham Ryder. Examining each artist in an individual essay, Barbara Novak presents key ideas on the nature of American art of the nineteenth century, framing these ideas with reference to the eighteenth and twentieth centuries and relating American art to American and European traditions. She draws provocative and original conclusions about the roles in American art of spiritualism and mathematics, analyzes not only the painting but nineteenth-century aesthetic theory as well, achieving a unique synthesis of art and literature. Brief biographies of forty-eight artists mentioned in the text are appended and furnish a valuable reference source.

Bridging the fields of conservation, art history, and museum curating, this volume contains the principal papers from an international symposium titled "Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice" at the University of Leiden in Amsterdam, Netherlands, from June 26 to 29, 1995. The symposium—designed for art historians, conservators, conservation scientists, and museum curators worldwide—was organized by the Department of Art History at the University of Leiden and the Art History Department of the Central Research Laboratory for Objects of Art and Science in Amsterdam. Twenty-five contributors representing museums and conservation institutions throughout the world provide recent research on historical painting techniques, including wall painting and polychrome sculpture. Topics cover the latest art historical research and scientific analyses of original techniques and materials, as well as historical sources, such as medieval treatises and descriptions of painting techniques in historical literature. Chapters include the painting methods of Rembrandt and Vermeer, Dutch 17th-century landscape painting, wall paintings in English churches, Chinese paintings on paper and canvas, and Tibetan thangkas. Color plates and black-and-white photographs illustrate works from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.