During the 1870s rowing became a tremendously popular sport in the United States. An enthusiastic rower, the young Thomas Eakins painted, sketched, and drew an extraordinary series of rowing pictures that were the most ambitious project of his early career. Eakins' 24 rowing works, which include some of the most celebrated and recognized images in the history of American art, are brought together and examined as a group for the first time in this book. Together they shed light on the artist's creative process and subsequent achievements as well as on social, cultural, and artistic concerns central to nineteenth-century audiences.

Helen A. Cooper, along with essayists Martin A. Berger, Christina Currie, and Amy B. Werbel, discusses various aspects of Eakins' rowing series, explaining his affection for the sport, his adoption of the images of popular culture into the realm of fine art, his commitment to novel, "modern" subjects, his preoccupation with perspective and measurement, and his belief that the most profound artistic truths were best expressed through the human figure—particularly the male figure. A comparison of the rowing pictures reveals that over the four years in which they were created, Eakins moved subtly from the analytic and descriptive toward the more feeling and suggestive. As a group devoted to a single subject, the series is unmatched in the oeuvre of this masterful painter.

The American experience—from its colonial beginnings to the modern age—has captured the imagination of all Americans, including its artists. This book explores works from the renowned collections of American paintings, decorative arts, prints, and photographs at the Yale University Art Gallery and creates a vivid portrait of a young country defining itself culturally, politically, and geographically.

Distinguished scholars shed new light on American history by examining some of the most familiar and revered objects in American art—paintings by Trumbull, Peale, Copley, Eakins, Church, and Homer; silver by Revere and Tiffany; furniture by Roux and Connelly; and photographs by Muybridge, among others. The authors discuss how issues of cultural heritage, patriotism, politics, and exploration shaped America’s art as well as its attitudes and traditions.

John Trumbull's paintings of the key events of the Revolutionary War are among the most familiar and revered images in American art. In 1832 Trumbull gave to Yale College his most important history paintings and portraits. This gift established the Yale University Art Gallery, making it the first college art museum in the Western hemisphere. In celebration of this event, the Gallery has mounted the first major exhibition of Trumbull's work. The fully illustrated catalogue that accompanies the exhibition opens with a biography of Trumbull by Helen A. Cooper. Following it are interpretative essays by Jules David Prown on Trumbull as a history painter, Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque on the artist's conflicting attitudes toward portrait painting, Patricia Mullan Burnham on the religious subjects, Bryon Wolf on the landscapes, Martin Price on the literary themes, and Egon Verheyen on the Capitol Rotunda commissions. The essays are followed by extensive catalogue entries on 170 paintings and drawings.