Picturing History, American Painting 1770-1930

New York: Rizzoli / Fraunces Tavern Museum, 1993. 9" wide by 12" tall. Bright, clean, tight, square, unmarked copy. No store stamp, owner's name or bookplate. No remainder mark No underlining. No highlighting. No margin notes. Flat spine. Beautifully illustrated with 160 art reproductions, 100 in full-color. From Library Journal: "Today the sometimes-tired icons of American History painting raise serious questions of democracy's contradictions. Twelve art scholars have contributed essays to this work offering a refreshing examination of everything from Leutze's 'Washington Crossing the Delaware' and Rothermel's 'The Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock' to Judy Chicago's 'Dinner Party.' They discuss the origins of the genre in Masaccio, Poussin, and David, before focusing on depictions of America's colonial period, the fight for independence, the Mexican and Civil wars, expansion, and the genre's demise with the coming of modernism in the 1930s. Throughout, the book shows the discrepancies between the democratic ideals expressed by the painters and social reality - though the book does not ignore the exceptions, like David Gilmour Blythe's themes of racism and political injustice in his mid-19th-century paintings. This highly recommended book is the most comprehensive available on the subject and makes a fine companion to Francis Haskell's History and Its Images, Art and the Interpretation of the Past (Yale University Press, 1993), which offers a complex look at the ability of world art, in any genre, to accurately reflect the past." - Daniel J. Lombardo, Jones Library, Amherst, Mass. List of chapter notes/sources. Bibliography. Index. First Printing of the First Edition. Oversize Softcover. Fine condition. 256pp.