American painting and its tradition : $b as represented by Inness, Wyant, Martin, Homer, La Farge, Whistler, Chase, Alexander, Sargent

In the early years of the Republic, American art was a patchwork borrowed from England, dominated by formal portraiture that offered little sense of a native voice. When Thomas Cole, Asher Durand and their contemporaries turned to the untamed Hudson River valley, they forged a fledgling landscape tradition without any inherited curriculum, learning directly from the land itself. Their roughly educated experiments laid the groundwork for a school that would later inspire a host of painters, from the atmospheric vistas of Inness to the disciplined realism of Whistler.

The book follows how this young tradition wrestled with European ideas, borrowing from the Düsseldorf school, French naturalism and academic rigor while confronting its own technical limits. By the centennial exhibition of 1876 the original Hudson River ethos was already fading, giving way to a diverse mix of portraitists, genre painters and innovators seeking fresh ways to depict the American scene. Through analysis of works by Inness, Wyant, Martin, La Farge, Chase, Sargent and others, the study shows how the quest for a distinct artistic identity shaped the evolution of American painting.