Masterpieces of American Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This group of one hundred American paintings - representing about a tenth of the Metropolitan Museum's holdings of eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth-century paintings in the American field - has been selected to provide an attractive and fair impression both of these holdings and of American painting in general.

Although no book based on a specific collection could claim to offer an accurate review of the history of American painting, because of inevitable gaps in any collection - as exemplified here by the slight representation of folk or naive painting - the overall breadth and strength of the Metropolitan collection are not only remarkable but also serviceable for suitably displaying the history and range of American painting.