Description:
Top of dust jacket has a curl. Fitted with archive quality dust jacket protector. Presentation copy including signed compliments slip from The American-Australian Foundation for the Arts. America, less than fifty ears from declaration of national independence, turned its persistent gaze away from Europe in the East toward the expanse of its native unsettled West. All that was purely America shone in the late-day sun, untouched and untroubled by the shadow of European culture. The westward explorations launched at the beginning of the nineteenth century piqued the curiosity of eastern seaboard residents seeking information about the peculiar character of a remote frontier. Early enthusiasm for the Indian portraits and documentary renderings of the western trails by painter-explorers gave way to changing attitudes by mid century. Inspired by a new spirit of national idealism, America's first school of formally trained artists created grand and monumental landscape paintings of the West. A land of… Read More