From the time of Columbus's first voyage, the new world became a source of fascination. Europeans were eager to know what this mysterious region looked like, and the early Americans wanted pictures of their new land, their new cities and settlements. What lay beyond the Mississippi? How did New York look in 1835? St Louis in 1860?

To meet the demand, artist-explorers like Mark Catesby in the 1720s, and George Catlin and Richard Kern a century later, risked - and in Kern's case, lost - their lives to depict the exotic wildlife, native peoples, and extraordinary landscape. Meanwhile, commercial artists began producing meticulous portraits of towns and cities. More sophisticated artists - Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Albert Bier-stadt, Thomas Moran - realized they were living through a unique experience and found original ways of looking at a new world.

American Canvas presents a grand portfolio of paintings, drawings, and prints, accompanied by excerpts from accounts by travellers, novelists, and the artists themselves. Both realistic and imaginative painters have their counterparts among writers, and the texts, carefully chosen from a wide variety of sources, include not only familiar names such as Dickens and Mark Twain but also lesser known yet equally observant travelers. The commentaries are themselves the raw material of history at its most vivid and entertaining.

The result is a powerful first-person evocation of the United States up to about 1876, when the centennial prompted Americans to assess their past, while the spread of photography heralded a new pictorial tradition for the future.

23cm x 28cm, 208 pages, Hardcover, 1990 (Condition: As New / Fine)

Condition Definition:
As New / Fine = New or almost without defect
Very Good = Showing signs of wear
Good / Fair = A bit worn but complete, with defects noted
Poor = worn with visible defects