This work completes the three-volume catalog of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's outstanding collection of American painting. Volume I focuses on an important collection of some 315 paintings by nearly 120 artists dating from the early eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. The museum's collection features eighteenth-century portraits and history paintings by such important artists as John Smibert, Joseph Blackburn, John Singleton Copley, Benjamin West, Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, and John Trumbull. Works of art by the founders of the Hudson River School, Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand, along with America's most successful genre painters, William Sidney Mount and George Caleb Bingham, are also included in this catalog. The catalog proceeds chronologically, providing a thorough discussion of each painting, a biography of the artist, bibliographical references, an exhibition history, and information on provenance.