Catalog of an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, Sept. 14, 2008-Jan. 4, 2009, and at the Seattle Art Museum, Feb. 26-May 24, 2009.

"This book offers a tour of a collection of paintings of the American West still in private hands. The Anschutz Collection covers all the ground expected in a wide-ranging, major survey, yet still has plenty of room for surprises. Every phase in the history of American art since the 182Os is included. There are pictures of impressive quality by lesser-known artists and examples from all the major painters who have depicted the West. You'll discover works by artists such as Marsden Hartley, Childe Hassam, Jan Matulka, and John Henry Twachtman, who painted western subjects only rarely, and pictures by those whose subjects were predominantly western. The collection is particularly rich in paintings made in Taos and Santa Fe during the first half of the twentieth century, when major American artists often found inspiration and stylistic renewal in the Southwest. Among the American masters represented here are George Bellows, Albert Bierstadt, George Caleb Bingham, Ernest Blumenschein, George Catlin, Stuart Davis, Asher B. Durand, George Inness, John Marin, Alfred Jacob Miller, Thomas Moran, Georgia O'Keeffe, Frederic Remington, Charles Marion Russell, and Walter Ufer."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

First published in 1963, this classic text is accompanied by a new introduction and an epilogue that explore the increased diversity in American art since the book appeared.

Eanger Irving Couse (1866–1936) showed remarkable promise as a young art student. His lifelong interest in Native American cultures also started at an early age, inspired by encounters with Chippewa Indians living near his hometown, Saginaw, Michigan. After studying in Europe, Couse began spending summers in New Mexico, where in 1915 he helped found the famous Taos Society of Artists, serving as its first president and playing a major role in its success. This richly illustrated volume, featuring full-color reproductions of his artwork, is the first scholarly exploration of Couse’s noteworthy life and artistic achievements. Drawing on extensive research, Virginia Couse Leavitt gives an intimate account of Couse’s experiences, including his early struggles as an art student in the United States and abroad, his study of Native Americans, his winter home and studio in New York City, and his life in New Mexico after he relocated to Taos. In examining Couse’s role as one of the original six founders of the Taos Society of Artists, the author provides new information about the art colony’s early meetings, original members, and first exhibitions. As a scholar of art history, Leavitt has spent decades researching her subject, who also happens to be her grandfather. Her unique access to the Couse family archives has allowed her to mine correspondence, photographs, sketchbooks, and memorabilia, all of which add fresh insight into the American art scene in the early 1900s. Of particular interest is the correspondence of Couse’s wife, Virginia Walker, an art student in Paris when the couple first met. Her letters home to her family in Washington State offer a vivid picture of her husband’s student life in Paris, where Couse studied under the famous painter William Bouguereau at the Académie Julian. Whereas many artists of the early twentieth century pursued a radically modern style, Couse held true to his formal academic training throughout his career. He gained renown for his paintings of southwestern landscapes and his respectful portraits of Native peoples. Through his depictions of the domestic and spiritual lives of Pueblo Indians, Couse helped mitigate the prejudices toward Native Americans that persisted during this era.

They also consider the artists' responses to foreign prototypes, travel and training, changing exhibition venues, and audience expectations. The persistence of certain themes--childhood, marriage, the family, and the community; the attainment and reinforcement of citizenship; attitudes toward race; the frontier as reality and myth; and the process and meaning of making art--underscores evolving styles and standards of storytelling. Divided into four chronological sections, the book begins with the years surrounding the American Revolution and the birth of the new republic, when painters such as Copley, Peale, and Samuel F. B. Morse incorporated stories within the expressive bounds of portraiture. During the Jacksonian and pre-Civil War decades from about 1830 to 1860, Mount, Bingham, Lilly Martin Spencer, and others painted genre scenes featuring lighthearted narratives that growing audiences for art could easily read and understand.