2.1. Art History Resources on the Web (Chris Witcombe)

http://witcombe.sbc.edu/ARTHLinks6.html#unitedstates

A good place to start looking for Art on the internet is the gateway "Art History Resources on the Web." Developed and regularly updated by Chris Witcombe, prof. of Art History at Sweet Briar College, Virginia, this site offers links to museums all over the world. The link leads us to "Part 10: Museums & Galeries > United States."

2.2. CGFA (Carol Gerten Fine Arts)

http://sunsite.auc.dk/cgfa/american.htm#am16

CGFA is a superb digital collection of paintings from all over the world, well-designed and constantly updated by Carol Gerten-Jackson. Artist can be selected by nationality, by time period, and also alphabetically. The site thus provides a complete historical survey of American painting. The best-known artists are represented with several of their works, and a short biographical sketch. The paintings, at first presented in thumbnail size, can be blown up to full-screen size. Some well-known examples from the selection of American Painters:

2.3. Artcyclopedia (John Malyon)

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/

This site has the ambition "to become the definitive and most effective guide to museum-quality fine art on the Internet. (…) We have compiled a comprehensive index of every artist represented at hundreds of museum sites, image archives, and other online resources. (…) Update March/2000: We have now indexed 700 leading arts sites, and offer more than 24,000 links directly to an estimated 80,000 works by 7,000 different artists. (…) We only provide references to sites on the World Wide Web where artists' works can be viewed online."

The database can be searched by Artist Name, by Artwork Title or by Art Museum.

The database can also be browsed by Movement (e.g., Pop Art), by Medium (e.g. sculptors, painters), by Subject (e.g., landscape painters) and by Nationality

2.4. Artchive (Mark Harden)

http://www.artchive.com/

"The Artchive offers browser access in HTML format to the archive for all of my fine art scans. There are now more than 2,000 scans from over 200 different artists. (…) The Image Viewer allows you to resize the image to fit your screen, display as a thumbnail, zoom in up to 200%, or even change the background color. This gallery will include the best in art criticism. I will scan an excerpt of both text and images from a masterpiece of art criticism and present it online as if you were reading the book."

There is a special index for American Art with a chronological list of some 40 artists (with a short biographical note and an image list for each of them). The scope is far more limited than that of Artcyclopedia, but the quality of the Artchive reproductions is simply superb.

It is not possible to show examples here, because you must enter this website via the home page and then use the search engine. (The individual paintings have no separate url-addresses.)

2.5. Tigertail Virtual Museum (Robert Uzgalis)

http://www.tigtail.org/TVM/X2/america.html

This "virtual museum" has in its collection a special site for American painters from 1600 to 1900. For about 20 of them reproductions are included in "jpg-format": Copley (4), Stuart (1); Sulley (1); Audubon (1); Durand (2); Cole (4); Lane(2); Mount (2); Bingham (2); Kensett (1); Inness (3); Beard (1), Church (4), Bierstadt (2); Homer (18); Moran (2); Eakins (7); Chase (3); Remington (5). All thumbnail pictures can be blown up to full-screen size reproductions.

E.g., Frederic Church: "Niagara Falls" (note: if you want to go directly to this jpg-address, you have to cut-and-paste it into the url-window of your browser) http://www.tigtail.org/TVM/X2/f.%20new%20world/3.%20post-civil%20war/church_niagara_falls.jpg

2.6. Natale Williams Art Site

http://www.best.com/~martyw/American.html

This site devoted to Art History and maintained by Natale Williams, starts off with a basic Art course ("Art 101"). Search is possible via an artist index and via timelines throughout Art History.

A subsection devoted to American Art is under construction -- in alphabetical order (so far A-C). Thus Audubon, Bierstadt, Bingham, Cole and Copley are already included with a representative painting, and with links to their work at selected other sites. Special attention is devoted to Church, with 30 reproductions of his landscape paintings. Williams also moderates a discussion group on art: "ReNATssance Art" http://www.best.com/~natalew/main.html

2.7. NGA (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC)

http://www.nga.gov/onlinetours/onlinetr.htm

The National Gallery of Art has a large number of online collection tours. The guides offer historical background about the artists and the works shown. All reproductions can be blown up to full-screen size. In some cases an in-depth study is offered, with links to other works by the artists.

2.8. MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/department.asp?dep=2

"The collection of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum is one of the finest and most comprehensive in the world. More than one thousand paintings, six hundred sculptures, and 2,500 drawings -- exceeding four thousand works in total -- by approximately seven hundred different American artists constitute an encyclopedic survey of fine art in the United States, from the late colonial period in the eighteenth century through the early twentieth century. (…) Extraordinary in quality and exhaustive in scope, the department's collection of paintings has impressive concentrations of eighteenth-century portraits and Hudson River school landscapes, as well as notable works by America's foremost painters, including George Caleb Bingham, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Eakins. The sculpture collection is equally distinguished and is especially strong in Neoclassical and Beaux-Arts works." (Netscape)

2.9. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

http://www.guggenheim.org

"Frank Lloyd Wright architected this building, now designated the youngest New York City landmark. As you walk the spiral walkway toward the dome above, you will view works from artists of the 19th and 20th century including: Brancusi, Braque, Calder, Chagall, Robert Delaunay, Giacometti, Kandinsky, Klee, Leger, Miro, Picasso, and Van Gogh."

Special exhibit:

2.10. ArtMuseum (Whitney Museum of American Art)

http://whitney.artmuseum.net/

This site offers a very interesting guided tour of the exhibition "The American Century: Art and Culture 1900-2000", narrated by Maxwell Anderson, the director of the museum. (RealPlayer necessary).

2.11. Sheldon Collection

http://sheldon.unl.edu/HTML/INDEX/biglist.html

The web site of the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden (the art museum of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln) "provides only a select sampling of images from the more than 12,000 original artworks contained in the renowned collection housed at Sheldon (…) one of the most comprehensive collections of 20th-century American art in the country.

The collection can be searched by Artist, by Title and or on a Timeline.

Example:

2.12. The Butler Institute of American Art

http://www.butlerart.com/collection.htm

This museum, founded by the industrialist Joseph G. Butler, Jr.(in Youngstown, Ohio) in 1919, has a collection of paintings of about 150 American artists. The works are reproduced and analysed together with background information on the artist. These paintings are not so well-known as those of big museums, but the critical comments are very useful, also for the other works of these artists. Some examples.

2.13. ArtLex

"Art dictionary for artists, students and educators in art production, criticism, history, aesthetics, and education(…) You will find definitions of more than 3,300 terms here, along with thousands of images, pronunciation notes, great quotations, and links to other resources on the Web. To the left, below the INDEX is a list of SHORTCUTS to some of the longer articles.(…)

Names of artists and titles of works are noted only within articles about terms. They are not listed as terms themselves." A typical example is the search term "Ashcan School" (see below)

http://www.artlex.com