This authoritative catalogue of the Corcoran Gallery of Art's renowned collection of pre-1945 American paintings will greatly enhance scholarly and public understanding of one of the finest and most important collections of historic American art in the world. Composed of more than 600 objects dating from 1740 to 1945.

On the basis of extensive archival research, the essays in this volume examine the minutiae of object transaction in the late nineteenth-century art market within its social network and broader historical context.

"From 1874 to 1882, John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) produced more than 200 paintings and water-colours aside from portraiture that chart his development as an artist. The breadth of his achievement includes figures in landscape settings, architectural studies, seascapes, subject paintings, and studies after old masters. From his powerful studies of models in Paris in the mid-1870s to his compelling paintings set in Venice in the early 1880s, the works published in this volume of the catalogue raisonne show the variety of his aesthetic responses." "Working in the studio and en plein air, Sargent travelled widely during the eight years covered in this volume, painting in Paris, Brittany, Capri, Spain, North Africa and Venice." "This is the first time that Sargent's early work has been mapped so comprehensively. With very few exceptions, this book illustrates all the pictures under discussion in colour. Each painting, including several which have never been published before, is documented in depth with full provenance, exhibition history and bibliography. Original research of primary documents and on-site investigations uncovered much new information, presented in critical discussions of subject matter, dating, style, and significance in the artist's career. The volume reproduces a wealth of Sargent's preliminary and related drawings and of comparative works by other artists." --Book Jacket.