In this distinguished work, which Hilton Kramer in The New York Times Book Review called "surely the best book ever written on the subject," Barbara Novak illuminates what is essentially American about American art. She highlights not only those aspects that appear indigenously in our artworks, but also those features that consistently reappear over time. Novak examines the paintings of Washington Allston, Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Fitz H. Lane, William Sidney Mount, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and Albert Pinkham Ryder. She draws provocative and original conclusions about therole in American art of spiritualism and mathematics, conceptualism and the object, and Transcendentalism and the fact. She analyzes not only the paintings but nineteenth-century aesthetics as well, achieving a unique synthesis of art and literature. Now available with a new preface and an updated bibliography, this lavishly illustrated volume--featuring more than one hundred black-and-white illustrations and sixteen full-color plates--remains one of the seminal works in American art history. Illuminates what is essentially American about American art. The author highlights not only those aspects that appear indigenously in American art works, but also those features that consistently reappear. She also examines the paintings of Washington Allston, Thomas Cole, Asher B Durand, Fitz H Lane, William Sidney Mount, among others. Preface to the New Edition ix Preface to the Previous Edition xi Preface to the Original Edition xiii Acknowledgments xv CHAPTER 1 Prolegomena to the Nineteenth Century: Copley and the American Tradition 1 CHAPTER 2 Washington Allston: An American Romantic Tradition 25 CHAPTER 3 Thomas Cole: The Dilemma of the Real and the Ideal 41 CHAPTER 4 Asher B. Durand: Hudson River School Solutions 59 CHAPTER 5 Luminism: An Alternative Tradition 71 CHAPTER 6 Fitz H. Lane: A Paradigm of Luminism 89 CHAPTER 7 Martin Johnson Heade: Haystacks and Light 103 CHAPTER 8 William Sidney Mount: Monumental Genre 115 CHAPTER 9 George Caleb Bingham: Missouri Classicism 125 CHAPTER 10 Winslow Homer: Concept and Percept 137 CHAPTER 11 Thomas Eakins: Science and Sight 159 CHAPTER 12 Albert Pinkham Ryder: Even with a Thought 175 CHAPTER 13 William Harnett: Every Object Rightly Seen 185 CHAPTER 14 The Painterly Mode in America 197 CHAPTER 15 Epilogue: The Twentieth Century 217 Notes 239 Brief Biographies of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Artists 271 Bibliography 285 Illustration Credits 295 Index 305