Young America: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Young America traces the transformation of the colonies into nationhood from about 1760 to the decade after the Civil War. Portraits by John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Charles Willson Peale, and Thomas Sully from the Revolutionary War era and later reveal values of people in New England and the mid-Atlantic. By the 1820s, landscapes by Thomas Cole, Thomas Birch, and Alvan Fisher tell of growing national ambitions, while still lifes and genre paintings address a range of subjects.