Paintings from America

Hammondsworth: Penguin Books. Near Fine in Very Good dust jacket. 1951. First Edition. Paperback. 46, (2), 56 pages; Clean and secure in original Wedgwood blue wrapper in very good dustjacket (minor wear at head of spine and bottom corner). OCLC 458841376 "[A] panorama of two hundred years of American painting, beginning in the 18th century and ending with artists who have died recently [prior to 1951]. ... a brief historical survey and to show the relation of the American artist to his environmentand the problems which confronted him in a colonial and provincial society. ... the creation of an American style in painting was determined by the gradual emergence of a new culture in a new world." John Walker III (1906 –1995) was an American art curator, and the second director of the National Gallery of Art, from 1956 to 1969. Walker received an undergraduate degree in art history from Harvard University in 1930, where he studied with Paul J. Sachs. He formed the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art, with Philip Johnson, Lincoln Kirstein, and Edward Warburg. He studied at Villa I Tatti in Florence with Bernard Berenson, and served as professor and assistant director of the American Academy in Rome from 1935 to 1939. Walker became chief curator of the National Gallery of Art in 1939 and was involved in identifying works of art looted by the Nazis following World War II. In 1956 he was named director of the National Gallery, succeeding David E. Finley Jr., and remained in the position until his retirement in 1969. During his tenure at the gallery, Walker cultivated donor relationships with collectors such as the Mellon family, Joseph Widener, Armand Hammer, and Chester Dale; his significant acquisitions included Rembrandt's Aristotle with the Bust of Homer, Fragonard's La Liseuse, El Greco's Laocoon, and the Ginevra de' Benci by Leonardo da Vinci. Walker was the author of six books, including Bellini and Titian and Titian at Ferrara, and an autobiography, Self-Portrait with Donors. Like his predecessor, David Finley, Walker served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, from 1967 to 1971. .