One of a series of systematic catalogues of the National Gallery of Art's collection, this comprehensive volume discusses in detail 310 objects that comprise one of the world's outstanding repositories of American naive paintings. Works by renowned folk artists such as Edward Hicks, Erastus Salisbury Field, and Ammi Phillips are represented in depth and placed in stylistic as well as historical context. This catalogue is an indispensable tool for historians of Amerian painting and folk art, and for students of American life and culture. Thorough documentation and commentary are provided for the first time on some of the most intriguing images produced in America in the past two hundred years.

The energy and optimism of the new nation are abundantly apparent in this catalogue. It features some of the icons of American art, such as John Singleton Copley's The Copley Family and Gilbert Stuart's portraits of the first five presidents. Numerous paintings, including Benjamin West's Colonel Guy Johnson and Karonghyontye (Captain David Hill), are discussed from a new perspective, the result of information culled from letters, wills, and other previously unpublished documents. The author offers new interpretations of some works, among them Charles Willson Peale's portrait of the Baltimore couple Benjamin and Eleanor Ridgely Laming. The volume is richly illustrated, with carefully selected comparative illustrations.

Heda's Banquet Piece, Frans Hals' Willem Coymans, and Rembrandt's Lucretia. Paintings by these and other masters attracted the American collectors P. A. B. Widener, his son Joseph, and Andrew W. Mellon, whose bequests form the heart of the National Gallery's distinguished and remarkably cohesive collection of ninety-one Dutch paintings.

Describes the methods used to make artistic, literary, documentary, and political forgeries and the recent scientific advances in their detection. Includes over 600 objects from the British Museum and many other major collections, from ancient Babylonia to the present day.

Examines how changes from the Industrial Revolution prior to World War I brought about radical transformation in society, changes in education, and massive migration in population that led to one of the bloodiest events in history.