An art museum last week issued a shrewdly challenging invitation to the public: "It has always been taken for granted that the English were the great masters, and the Americans just copied them. Go to the Museum and see if this is true." The art museum was the Rhode Island School of Design's in Providence. On its walls were hung 102 carefully chosen British and American paintings of the 1670-to-1825 period. The provocative question they raised: did colonial New England have a genuine native art, or did early American painters merely turn out...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
