While the European tradition loomed large for the artists of the new republic of the United States, the nineteenth century saw the development of styles of art that reflected the unique values of this brand-new country.
The images that Sarah Mapps Douglass and peers made in friendship albums may be the earliest documented signed art works by African American women.
Edmonia Lewis, an artist of Black and Indigenous heritage, uses a neoclassical style to depict Indigenous subjects from a popular novel around the time of the U.S. Civil War
Sculpted just before the U.S. Civil War, this monument to George Washington recalls an ancient Roman emperor and represents what the North and South could and could not agree on
Is this painting of five men, possibly formerly enslaved, working for the Union Army during the Civil War a product of racist stereotypes, or does it humanize its subjects?