This painting, inspired by a 1927 trip, depicts a lake in a valley beneath Yosemite’s Johnson Peak, south of Tuolumne Meadows. Describing the scene, Obata recalled, “Countless streams run down the frozen mountainside, lending a sublime melody. Man’s very soul and body seem to melt away into the singular silence and tranquility of the surrounding air.” Although Obata’s composition was inspired by a specific site, the generic title leaves space for the viewer’s imagination.

Obata’s Mother Earth depicts the artist’s young wife during her pregnancy. She stands in a grove of redwood trees, her long dark hair covering her body. The title evokes nature, fertility, maternity, and the cycles and seasons of life. Although his Japanese wife served as his model, Obata transformed this personal subject into a universal ode to nature, once observing: “Above the border line of nationality everybody must feel a deep appreciation toward Mother Earth.”

Cole took the narrative for this painting from Prometheus Bound, the classical tragedy. Prometheus was a Titan, a race of immortal giants. Jupiter charged him to create human beings, whom he fashioned out of mud and water in the image of the gods. Prometheus then stole fire from the gods to help the humans. The theft angered Jupiter, who had Prometheus chained to a rock; he was condemned to have his liver devoured by a vulture, only to have it regrow and be devoured again the next day.

The year she and the photographer Alfred Stieglitz were married, O’Keeffe planted a patch of flowers at the Stieglitz family summer home in upstate New York. Petunias is one of a dozen works she would paint from those plants over the next two years. She once declared, “Whether the flower or the color is the focus I do not know. I do know that the flower is painted large to convey to you my experience of the flower—and what is my experience of the flower if not color?”

While Homer based the majority of his Civil War paintings and illustrations on sketches, this portrait is based on a tintype photograph. Commercial portrait photography flourished during the war, and portraits of soldiers were treasured by the families who might lose their sons and brothers in battle. This portrait shows Albert Kintzing Post in a Union camp. A second lieutenant in the 45th Regiment of Massachusetts Infantry, Post survived the war but died a few years later at the age of twenty-nine while trying to save a boy from drowning.