7374 Abrams, 1977. Hardcover quarto, 631pp., 93 colour and 736 monochrome illustrations. Prelims lightly foxed, upper page edges spotted; boards show very light shelf wear at edges, but bright and solid; dustwrapper slightly creased/frayed at edges, few small chips, but bright and intact. Very good/near fine in good dustwrapper. Professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. In the three centuries that followed the first permanent settlement at Jamestown, art in America advanced to the threshold of its present international eminence. The foundations of this extraordinary cultural flowering are examined by Milton W. Brown with a rare combination of wit, scholarship and clarity.. He relates the history of painting, from portraits by self-taught limners to the American Impressionists working at the turn of the 20th century. He shows how sculpture developed from early crude memorial figures to the aristocratic public monuments of Saint-Gaudens and Ward. He traces the course of architecture from modest frontier shelters to the dizzying heights of the skyscraper. Along the way, he provides telling analyses of the sources, styles, and influences of hundreds of artists, and documents his absorbing story with 829 illustrations, 93 of them in colour and many rarely or never before reproduced. Here is the American spirit - big, daring, expansive - manifested in the creative expression of the nation's artists. Professor Brown's lively admiration for the high dreams and remarkable achievements of American artists along the road to America's present artistic eminence shines through. $90.00AUD
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