Samuel Isham History of American Painting

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Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. AS the United States of America is the youngest of the great nations of the world, but recently come to full rank among them, so the development of the arts within it has been short and has not yet reached completeness. The whole course of American painting from its beginnings down to the present extends over no great Space of time, and a few long artist-lives Span it in a surprising manner. One does not have to be beyond middle age to remember Professor S. F. B. Morse, yet Morse was a student under West, the almost legendary founder of the craft, who got his first colors from the painted savages of the forest; and West, moreover, was still living when Daniel Huntington, even now painting among us, was born. Yet the course of our art though Short has not been unbroken. It has not the interest of organic growth, of logical development, but has continually deserted one set of models to follow another, retaining at each change hardly any tradition of its former ideals. In general, however, it divides itself with sufficient distinctness into three periods, which may be characterized as the Colonial, the Provincial, and the Cosmopolitan.