The Story of American Painting

by Abraham A. Davidson

Book Overview

9"x11 1/2" 168 page illustrated hardcover book on American painting. Publisher-Harry N. Abrams in 1974 This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0810904985
• ISBN13: 9780810904989
• Release Date: January 1974
• Publisher: ABRAMS
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.

Customer Reviews

From The Inside Flap:

The Story of American Painting" recounts an adventure in art that in many aspects parallels the rise of the American nation. Unique in its blend of the art and the lore of our country, it traces the development of painting from the mid-seventeenth century to the 1970s -- from the time of the first colonies until today. Every painting discussed is illustrated, many in full color. This gallery of pictures, some famous and familiar masterpieces, others less well known but of equal interest, creates an absorbing panorama of American people, places and events. It is a fitting companion to H. W. and Dora Jane Janson's ever-popular "Story of Painting." The fast-moving text is divided into nine chapters, each devoted to a particular branch or type of painting. Each pursues its subject from the earliest stage to the most recent. Chapter One, for example, considers first the native roots in American folk painting through Grandma Moses. Chapter Two deals with American history as reflected in paintings ranging from such eighteenth-century classics as Benjamin West's "Penn's Treaty with the Indians" to modern masterpieces like Ben Shahn's "The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti." Successive chapters are similarly concerned with individual strands in the fabric of American art: portraiture, nature painting, genre painting, fantasy and symbolism, urban landscape, Abstract Expressionism, and the many currents of contemporary art. The great figures and events of American history are represented: Paul Revere's portrait painted by Copley; the exhuming of a mastodon in 1806, an American archaeological first, painted by Charles Willson Peale; scenes of the opening of the West painted by George Caleb Bingham; the haunting imagery of the visionary tradition as represented by such artists as Albert Pinkham Ryder and Louis Eilshemius. All these motifs -- artistic, historical, social, and fantastic -- are skillfully coordinated by the author, Abraham A. Davidson, Associate Professor at Temple University and Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. The range, style, and subject matter of the paintings he deals with are immense, and all the stellar names are represented: Winslow Homer, James Whistler, Thomas Eakins, Jackson Pollock, Joseph Stella, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Andy Warhol -- to name only a few. Indexed for easy reference, "The Story of American Painting" is a book for every American to own and cherish.