Long Island Landscape Painting, 1820-1920

Aside from their artistic merit and facile charms, these pictures of a bygone Long Island have great sociological interest as a documentary portrait of a way of life now largely eclipsed by suburbia and industrialization. After the Civil War, wealthy New Yorkers built baronial estates on Long Island. The tourist industry was flourishing by the turn of the century, and artists like William Merritt Chase and William Sidney Mount came to paint the ever-changing skies and pastoral views. Cider making, eel spearing, card players and farmers, steamboats and summer homes are among the subjects depicted. The Tile Club, a group of artists and writers that included Chase and Winslow Homer, explored Montauk Point's gardens and beaches. The island also left its mark on William Glackens, who did Impressionist seascapes, as well as Childe Hassam and George Bellows. The superb quality of the 98 full-page color reproductions make this slender volume notable. Beautiful maps of Long Island serve as endpapers. November 8