Long Island Farmhouses

William Sidney Mount

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

An entry in Mount’s diary records that he began a painting of the houses of his brother and of one John Davis in Setauket, Long Island, in November 1862, completing it the following spring. Mount composed the work from the window of his portable studio, a specially made room on wheels, from which he directly captured convincing details and limpid natural sunlight. The dearth of genre content here is unusual for the artist, but he chose to commemorate the tranquility of the village in early spring, in contrast to the turmoil of the Civil War, which was raging at the time.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art