The rarity of green hair heightens the sense of Surrealism that Chaissac blends with components of Cubism in his artistic practice. The strong black outlines suggest a human figure and are filled with fields of flat color to emphasize the childlike nature of the composition. Looking toward artists such as Picasso, Chaissac would find inspiration in “unschooled” artworks—for instance, children’s or folk compositions.

In his study of the artist’s life and work, Gene Hailey concluded, “In the narration of Piazzoni’s interesting life, the evaluators of his work have played upon the adjectives of beauty and truth, a symphony of heavenly music. Searching for a conclusion, the Lux Aeterna seems fitting. In this painting Piazzoni has epitomized the desire of his life; that of flooding the white-robed figure of truth and beauty, in the effulgence of eternal light.”

Dewing painted this portrait of Elizabeth Platt Jencks at the artists’ colony in Cornish, New Hampshire, which he helped establish. When he began this portrait, he had just returned from traveling in Europe, where he toured galleries and shared a London studio with James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Whistler’s influence is evident in Dewing’s fluid brushstrokes and muted tonality. Jencks stands against a mottled gray ground in a firm and confident pose, beautiful and strong.

Moran’s majestically spacious painting attests to the western American landscape as an apt setting for heroic nationalism. At the time this picture was painted, artists were traveling farther in search of ever more extraordinary scenes that could be understood in terms of the national will to explore this nation “from sea to shining sea.” Although Moran’s landscape is from 1906, it is based on sketches made during trips to Yellowstone in the 1870s.

Many of Fuller’s images of African Americans and gypsies feature the same exoticism found in this poetic image of a barefoot girl of ambiguous race, wearing fanciful jewelry and gently leading a calf. The son of a farmer, Fuller farmed for much of his own life, and his representations of rural girls, like those by his European contemporaries, have been interpreted as nostalgic yearnings for a simpler way of life that was being altered by modern technology.

Born in Centerville, California, Helen Newington Wills rose to fame in women’s singles tennis competitions during the 1920s and 1930s by winning multiple championships in the United States, France, and England. Athletic, intelligent, and artistic, Wills epitomized what Patigian regarded as the California Woman—a new type of classic feminine beauty. In this portrait, which he called Helen of California, he sought to model his subject as the embodiment of that ideal.

In 1850, inspired by the California Gold Rush and the success of his sculpture Greek Slave (ca. 1873), Powers modeled a standing female nude, which he called El Dorado. Retitled California and cut in marble in 1858, the full figure was the first sculpture by an American artist to be acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This bust is the first of four known versions, and it was acquired by M. H. de Young and presented to this collection in 1916.

The rarity of green hair heightens the sense of Surrealism that Chaissac blends with components of Cubism in his artistic practice. The strong black outlines suggest a human figure and are filled with fields of flat color to emphasize the childlike nature of the composition. Looking toward artists such as Picasso, Chaissac would find inspiration in “unschooled” artworks—for instance, children’s or folk compositions.

Pierre-Edouard Baranowski was Modigliani’s friend and an aspiring painter. To create this work, Modigliani painted over an earlier portrait composition. He started by outlining Baranowski’s face with blue-gray paint. Then he built up the modeling of the face using multiple layers of thick impasto. Gaps between the shirt and the face expose the dark colors of the previous painting and the hardboard support. The artist’s fingerprints are also visible in the paint around the edges of the work.