More than one hundred works are catalogued in the second of two volumes
devoted to the National Gallery of Art's holdings of nineteenth-century
American paintings, including virtually all of the important portraits
in the collection. Distinguished in part by the concentration of works
by three preeminent artists, Thomas Sully, John Singer Sargent, and
James McNeill Whistler, this collection also includes John Quidor's The
Return of Rip van Winkle, Albert Pinkham Ryder's Siegfried and the
Rhine Maidens, and Rembrandt Peale's Rubens Peale with a Geranium.
The author has skillfully untangled the misattributions,
misidentifications, and inaccurate provenances surrounding many of the
paintings.