In 2010, the Anschutz Collection became the American Museum of Western Art--The Anschutz Collection, a public museum." Painters and the American West, Volume II "is a companion and sequel to the award-winning "Painters and the American West: The Anschutz Collection, "published in 2000. The present volume includes the finest works featured in the earlier book, along with major recent acquisitions by Alfred Jacob Miller, Charles Deas, William Ranney, Emanuel Leutze, Thomas Eakins, Thomas Anshutz, Henry Farny, N. C. Wyeth, William Herbert "Buck" Dunton, Edward Hopper, and many others.
In the foreword to this book, Sarah Hunt, director of the museum, tells the story of the Anschutz Collection's transition from a closely held treasure to an educational and esthetic resource for Denver and western art enthusiasts everywhere. In the book's introductory essay, distinguished scholar and curator John Wilmerding provides cultural and literary context for the museum's holdings, which include exemplary works by virtually every significant painter of the American West from the 1820s through the mid-twentieth century. Historical essays by acclaimed historian James P. Ronda introduce the six chapters of the book, setting the stage for in-depth examinations of individual masterworks by Joan Carpenter Troccoli.
Scholars have brought new insight to western American art in the past decade, and the European view of the westering experience as a defining characteristic of American history and culture is beginning to take hold among art historians on this side of the Atlantic. Western American art is shedding its outsider status and assuming its rightful place as an integral component of the history of American art--and American life. The 150 masterful images from over a century of painting that are showcased in this book expand our understanding of the place of the American West in the story of humankind.

This magnificent volume, featuring more than 750 illustrations, is the first definitive account of the Tonalist movement. Based on original research, it tells the fascinating story of how the progressive Tonalist landscape first dethroned the Hudson River School in the late 1870s and went on to become the dominant school in American art until World War I. More provocatively, it also situates Tonalism at the beginnings of American modernism, revealing how the movement's later exponents laid the groundwork for the artists of the Stieglitz Circle, and subsequently Milton Avery, Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman, and Wolf Kahn. A History of American Tonalism places the key figures of the movement - such as George Inness, James McNeill Whistler, and John Henry Twachtman - in their cultural context, which was influenced by such thinkers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Burroughs, and William James. It also examines the lives and careers of more than 60 other Tonalist painters, lesser known but highly talented. This new edition of A History of American Tonalism is augmented with more than 100 new illustrations, as well as a new overview of the stylistic principles of Tonalism. It will continue to be essential in understanding not only the Tonalist movement but American art as a whole.