Brooklyn Museum, New York

The Brooklyn Museum holds one of the oldest and finest public collections of American art in the world. Begun in 1846 with the gift of Francis Guy's Winter Scene in Brooklyn (circa 1819–20), the collection was formally established in 1855 when a purchase fund bequeathed by the key Museum founder, Augustus Graham, was used to commission a landscape by Asher B. Durand. The American holdings have grown to include paintings, sculptures, watercolors, pastels, drawings, and prints ranging in date from circa 1720 to 1945. (American art dated after 1945 is assigned to the collection of Contemporary Art.) Highlights of the paintings collection include, from the eighteenth century, iconic portraits of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart and Charles Willson Peale.