This volume is devoted to the American naive paintings in the National Gallery of Art, which has one of the most important collections of this kind in the world. Created outside the academic mainstream, these paintings show an extraordinary diversity of individual expression and serve as vivid documents of American culture. Most of the works formerly belonged to the collection of Colonel Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, who donated more than 300 paintings and about 100 drawings to the Gallery over nearly thirty years. Most date from the nineteenth century and a substantial number are by well-known folk artists, including Erastus Salisbury Field, Ammi Phillips, and William Matthew Prior. The breadth and depth of the collection is such that it is possible, in several cases, to trace the progress of an individual artist's style. Although the majority of works came to the Gallery without identification, through painstaking research it has been possible to make attributions, which are published here for the first time. Many of the works in the Gallery's collection of American naive paintings are reproduced here in color. The extensive catalogue provides a full history of the objects and artists, with technical notes as well as biographical and bibliographical information.
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