This volume, the second in the series to catalogue the Gallery's collection of decorative arts, mainly draws from the renowned collection of the Widener and Steele families. It focuses primarily on Chinese ceramics from the Qing period, including earthenware, stoneware, and polychrome porcelain. In addition, rugs and carpets from the collection of Peter A.B. Widener are catalogued and published here for the first time.

More than one hundred works are catalogued in the second of two volumes devoted to the National Gallery of Art's holdings of nineteenth-century American paintings, including virtually all of the important portraits in the collection. Distinguished in part by the concentration of works by three preeminent artists, Thomas Sully, John Singer Sargent, and James McNeill Whistler, this collection also includes John Quidor's "The Return of Rip van Winkle," Albert Pinkham Ryder's "Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens," and Rembrandt Peale's "Rubens Peale with a Geranium." The author has skillfully untangled the misattributions, misidentifications, and inaccurate provenances surrounding many of the paintings.