In the 19th century, Americans adopted European fashions to appear cultured, sophisticated, and cosmopolitan. This portrait features the sitter’s elegant coat and hat, perhaps adapted from English and French styles that were shared through prints, letters, and imported clothing. Americans who aspired to be fashionable also had to navigate the complexity of maintaining the distinct identity of their new nation.

A freed slave and self-taught painter working in Baltimore, Maryland, Joshua Johnson is the earliest-known African American artist. This charming image portrays the daughter of a wealthy Baltimore merchant. She holds out a biscuit to her dog, who seems transfixed by the offering. The portrait is painted in a manner that brings us down to the young girl’s level — perhaps we view her from the perspective of another child.

William Ellery Channing was a Unitarian minister, author, preacher, and mystic. He is remembered for his influence on the development of American literature—a group of New England writers who flourished in the mid-19th century were associated with the Unitarian movement, including Emerson, Bryant, Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes. Although Channing was of small physical stature, he was remembered as a preacher of extraordinary power and magnetism.

This scene shows Cupid being comforted by his mother—the goddess of love, Venus—after a bee has stung his finger. West’s source for the subject was likely the 40th ode attributed to Anacreon, the ancient Greek lyric poet: “Cupid as he lay among / Roses, by a Bee was stung. / Whereupon in anger flying / To his Mother, said thus crying; / Help! O help! your Boy’s a dying. / . . . A winged Snake has bitten me, Which Country people call a Bee.”

Salmon’s painting shows a precisely rendered commercial ship (or merchantman) near the British port city of Liverpool. The painstaking detail allow experts to identify the type of ship and its location; this attention extends to the buildings on the waterfront: Salmon depicted significant, identifiable landmarks, including the spires of specific churches. The artist’s representation is so precise that the painting can be dated using these structures as a guide.

Daughter of a prominent Newport family and wife of a distinguished Providence merchant, Elizabeth Rodman Rogers is shown here in a vivid, spontaneous moment. She glances up from her book, finger still holding her place, as if a friend or family member has just walked into the room. This sense of intimacy was fashionable at the time the portrait was painted, and Earl was known for his “uncommon facility in hitting of the likeness . . . of giving life to the eye, and expression of every feature.”

Vanderlyn drew inspiration for this painting from Plutarch’s Lives, a classical book of biographies of famous Greek and Roman figures. Marius was a military leader and member of the Roman consulate who fell from power during the second century BC. In hopes of gathering an army to conquer Rome, he fled to Carthage in North Africa, where his life was threatened and he was denied asylum. Here, Vanderlyn painted the famous general in his defeat. The ruins suggest doom, decay, and unfulfilled aspirations.

The original version of this portrait of George Washington was purchased by Congress in 1832. Like other posthumous portraits of America’s founding fathers, this work both reflected and shaped the cultural forces that transformed Washington into a shared symbol of national identity and unity. Peale’s numerous replicas of this portrait helped to promote America’s ideal of democracy as its true religion—and Washington as its patron saint.

William Vassall’s wealth came from his family’s plantations in Jamaica, and he was known for his luxurious lifestyle. He is shown here with his son Leonard, who stands beside him and gestures to an open book he is holding. Sargent delineated the details of their finery, such as the son’s polished metal buttons and the father’s smooth silk stockings, and even a dusting of wig powder on his shoulders.

In this portrait, the artist represents the sitter through a collection of symbols that associate him with the mercantile elite of Baltimore: compass, map, and a book of Euclid’s geometry. Mordecai Gist’s assured gaze and self-confident pose reinforce the viewer’s sense that the man represented is comfortably engaged in a career that is his calling. He handles his tools with competence and familiarity, while his fashionable attire attests to his success.