Barbara Novak and the resurrection of nineteenth-century American painting.(Founding Mother)

Before Barbara Novak helped open the world's eyes to the glories of our country's nineteenth-century painting, the luminists were dismissed as provincial marine topographers and the Hudson River school regarded as embarrassing proof of a culturally inferior past. Nineteenth-century American painting is now so unquestionably accepted as part of the world art historical canon that many people are unaware that this is a relatively recent development. For them to be told that the person who legitimized the study of now-undisputed masters such as Fitz Henry Lane and Martin Johnson Heade is still alive and working might be akin to discovering that Betsy Ross is still stitching ...