Portraiture is a unique genre that is common ground both for American art history and for history told through the biographies of the people who shaped it. Offering 78 wide-ranging examples from the incomparable National Portrait Gallery's collection, A Brush with History showcases the American portrait tradition from the country's beginnings to the present.
The book contains essays by the museum's Deputy Director Carolyn Kinder Carr and by Curator of Painting and Sculpture Ellen G. Miles. The full-page color portraits display such works as John Singleton Copley's Self-Portrait, Henry Inman's Sequoyah, Edgar Degas's Mary Cassatt, and Thomas Hart Benton's Self-Portrait with Rita. This handsomely designed volume also includes a foreword by Alan Fern, Director Emeritus of the National Portrait Gallery, and an essay by the Gallery's Research Historian Margaret Christman on the history of the National Portrait Gallery.