Visual art of the United States or American art is visual art made in the United States or by U.S. artists. Before colonization, there were many flourishing traditions of Native American art, and where the Spanish colonized Spanish Colonial architecture and the accompanying styles in other media were quickly in place. Early colonial art on the East Coast initially relied on artists from Europe, with John White the earliest example. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, artists primarily painted portraits, and some landscapes in a style based mainly on English painting. Furniture-makers imitating English styles and similar craftsmen were also established in the major cities, but in the English colonies, locally made pottery remained resolutely utilitarian until the 19th century, with fancy products imported.
Charles Willson Peale was an American painter, soldier, scientist, inventor, politician, and naturalist.
Rembrandt Peale was an American artist and museum keeper. A prolific portrait painter, he was especially acclaimed for his likenesses of presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Peale's style was influenced by French neoclassicism after a stay in Paris in his early thirties.
Alexander Stirling Calder was an American sculptor and teacher. He was the son of sculptor Alexander Milne Calder and the father of sculptor Alexander (Sandy) Calder. His best-known works are George Washington as President on the Washington Square Arch in New York City, the Swann Memorial Fountain in Philadelphia, and the Leif Eriksson Memorial in Reykjavík, Iceland.
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1805 and is the first and oldest art museum and art school in the United States.
The Lansdowne portrait is an iconic life-size portrait of George Washington painted by Gilbert Stuart in 1796. It depicts the 64-year-old president of the United States during his final year in office. The portrait was a gift to former British Prime Minister William Petty, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, and spent more than 170 years in England.
Raphaelle Peale is considered the first professional American painter of still-life.
James Peale was an American painter, best known for his miniature and still life paintings, and a younger brother of noted painter Charles Willson Peale.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building in 2020, it is the 12th largest art museum in the world based on square feet of gallery space. The permanent collection of the museum spans more than 6,000 years of history with approximately 70,000 works from six continents.
The New Britain Museum of American Art is an art museum in New Britain, Connecticut. Founded in 1903, it is the first museum in the country dedicated to American art.
Maxim Karolik, born in what is now Ukraine, he became a featured tenor for the Imperial Russian Grand Opera. He toured in Europe as a young man. He left Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution and moved to the United States to continue study of music.
Anna Claypoole Peale was an American painter who specialized in portrait miniatures on ivory and still lifes. She and her sister, Sarah Miriam Peale, were the first women elected academicians of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Rubens Peale was an American museum administrator and artist. Born in Philadelphia, he was the son of artist-naturalist Charles Willson Peale. Due to his weak eyesight, he did not practice painting seriously until the last decade of his life, when he painted still life.
Sarah Miriam Peale was an American portrait painter, considered the first American woman to succeed as a professional artist. One of a family of artists of whom her uncle Charles Willson Peale was the most illustrious, Sarah Peale painted portraits mainly of Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. notables, politicians, and military figures. Lafayette sat for her four times.
Margaretta Angelica Peale was an American painter, one of the Peale family of artists. The daughter of James Peale, she was the sister of Sarah, Anna, and Maria Peale. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she was taught by her father, and painted primarily still lifes, some of which were copies of his work.
Anna Miller Corbell (1896–1993) was an early 20th century American artist, known for her panoramic landscape paintings of the American Southwest. Corbell was active as a painter for over thirty years. Her subject matter largely consisted of the Southwestern desert with mountain views. Describing herself as "not a modern painter," she worked in a palette of pastel hues to capture the colors and light of the Arizona desert.
Harriet Christina Cany Peale was an American landscape, portrait, and genre painter of the mid-nineteenth century. Although sometimes described as a copyist, a greater share of her oeuvre has been made public in recent years, allowing Cany Peale to earn recognition for her genre and landscape paintings. She has been located in contemporary scholarship as an artist of the Hudson River School.
Mary Jane Simes was an American portrait painter who worked in both oils and painted miniatures. She was born in Baltimore in 1807 and died in 1872. Mary Jane Simes is a member of the Peale family, an important lineage of artists and cultural workers in 18th and 19th century America. She is a descendant of Charles Willson Peale, who established one of the first museums of art and natural history in the United States. Her aunts were Anna Claypoole Peale and Sarah Miriam Peale, who were known as miniaturists and oil painters, respectively. Simes lived with her aunt Sarah during a portion of her childhood. Her career as an exhibiting artist ended upon marriage to John Floyd Yeats.
Rosalba Carriera Peale was an American portraitist, landscape painter, and lithographer. She was the eldest daughter of artist Rembrandt Peale and granddaughter of Charles Willson Peale.
Joseph Harrison Jr. was an American mechanical engineer, financier and art collector. He made a fortune building locomotives for Russia, and was decorated by Czar Nicholas I for completing the Saint Petersburg-Moscow Railway.
