American artists

American-born painter Mary Cassatt grew up in Pennsylvania but spent the better part of her life and career in France, yet that did not prevent her from gaining a preeminent position among artists in the United States. At the height of her career, she focused almost exclusively on depictions of mothers and children, a subject that became her signature theme. By the outbreak of World War I, Cassatt had to give up painting entirely due to failing eyesight, but she preserved her original enthusiasm and devotion to art until the end of her life.

Norman Rockwell was an illustrator of tremendous ingenuity and energy, and his memorable scenes come together to create a brilliant patchwork quilt of American imagery. With the arrival of the full-color press and a wealth of illustrated magazines, Rockwell took his art to the masses and became the most beloved American illustrator of all time. His career begins in New York with Boy?s Life and continues with The Saturday Evening Post, along with his later, more socially conscious work for Look magazine.

Grandma Moses is a name synonymous with American folk art. Considered by many to be America?s preeminent folk painter, her winsome style, evocative of a simpler, bygone era, has endeared her to millions worldwide. The landscape is probably the most popular of Grandma Moses?s subjects. She captured the land she knew and loved in New England in many moods and seasons, often employing it as a backdrop for family and community activities. A true American icon, Grandma Moses painted timeless scenes that will continue to charm and delight for many generations to come.

During her long and distinguished career, which developed to its highest level in the deserts of the American Southwest, Georgia O?Keeffe pioneered an artistic style that dominated the art of twentieth-century America. Unique in its organic, abstract expression, her vision and passion identify her as a lifelong master of modern art. With crystalline clarity and a vivid sensuous feeling for both objects and landscapes, O?Keeffe painted life studies that were to distinguish her as an original and adventurous painter. Her studies of flowers, bones, cityscapes, and southwestern landscapes have become some of the most recognizable images in modern art.

Frank Lloyd Wright, born in Wisconsin, is the avatar of American architecture. Both before and after World War I, the boldness and innovation of Wright?s buildings, built largely in the Midwest, established his reputation as a leading architect. As his career progressed, Wright became discouraged with the confinement of cities and moved to develop his ideas for buildings in harmony with the natural world. Today, many years after his death, not only is Wright?s international reputation intact and growing, but buildings are yet being constructed based on his original designs.

Ansel Adams is one of America?s most popular and enduring photographers. His well-known photographs of America?s national parks, especially Yosemite and others in the West, are remarkable for their timeless celebration of the unblemished American landscape. Adams was an astute master of photographic technique who utilized perfectly the capabilities of his chosen medium to portray the untold beauty of the natural world. His photographs are an eloquent statement of an artist seeking order and truth and a permanent record of America?s wild beauty achieved by a man whose own nature was as immutable as the Earth he loved.

During a fifty-year period, an artistic movement developed in America that was based on Romanticism and inspired by the wild areas in the vicinity of New York?s Hudson River. The first native American school of landscape painting included artists Thomas Cole, Asher Brown Durand, and Thomas Doughty as well as Frederic Church, Thomas Moran, and Albert Bierstadt. While most of these artists did not think of themselves as belonging to a movement, they did share a sense of wonder at the grandeur of the New World?s remarkable scenic wilderness.

Considered by most to be one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century, Edward Hopper?s work can be found in almost every major museum, and his familiar urban images permeate pop culture in advertisements and on film. Best known for his oil paintings, the New York artist incorporated elements of both the Ashcan and the Impressionist schools of art to create his own, unique style. His favorite theme?the isolation of the individual within America?s rapidly progressing society?appears throughout his work, made all the more poignant by his original, realistic technique.