American paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston1969

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, owns one of the nation's preeminent collections of American paintings. The first work of art acquired by the Museum upon its founding in 1870 was an American painting, Elijah in the Desert, by the esteemed local painter Washington Allston.

Since then the collection has grown to include some of the best-loved master-pieces of American art: John Singleton Copley's portrait of patriot Paul Revere: Gilbert Stuart's George Washington, the famous "Athenaeum" likeness of the first president; Fitz Hugh Lane's poignant Owl's Head from Penobscot Bay, Maine; Winslow Homer's stirring Grand Banks drama. The Fog Warning: John Singer Sargent's The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit; Mary Cassatt's The Tea; and, among twentieth-century masterpieces, Edward Hopper's Drug...