What do I do next?  What work is required?

  • Click on all the images and links, follow the links, and read / contemplate the material on this page
  • Write a 1,000-word journal on your thoughts on what you have read & e-mail it to your instructor at beyondutopia@yahoo.com
  • Think about what you've found out about the artist & why the artist creates -- comment on it
  • Explain why you think the artist created the work of art, and how it reflected his or her world

unit one: art
examples -- please click on images/text & read
discussion -- please read with text

return to art&autobiography

Nehemiah Partridge
Pre-Revolutionary Artist

Thomas Smith -- Self-Portrait
Pre-Revolutionary Artist
Worcester Art Museum

Early American Furniture-Makers
Decorative Arts -- Metropolitan Museum of Arts Collection

Early American Paintings
Thumbnails & Timeline

American Art, Architecture, and Crafts -- online collection

Museum of Fine Arts -- Boston

John Singleton Copley:
Biography
How John Singleton Copley became America's portraitist

Benjamin West
Quaker American Painter
Quaker Quotes

Gilbert Stuart
The Genius of Gilbert Stuart

Do you like these works? Why or why not?  What do they tell you about how the artist viewed his or her environment or culture?

What do you think of the vision of America and American culture reflected in these works?  Does it depict an optimistic view of life?  Why?

If you painted or produced more culturally inclusive works, what would you include?  How could you represent cultural inclusion in a positive way?  What would you show?  When?  Where?

American Impressionism & Realism

Henry Ossawa Tanner

Mary Cassatt

Alfred Stieglitz

Thomas Moran

Seven Famous African-American Masters of American Art

     Joshua Johnston (l796-1824)
     Robert S. Duncanson (l817-1872)
     Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937)
     Horace Pippin (1888-1946)
     Augusta Savage (1900-1962)
     William H. Johnson (1901-1970)
     Jacob Lawrence (1917- )