Here is a nice article by Willard Spiegelman about America’s first museum to dedicate its collection to American Art … the New Britain Museum of American Art. Their collection includes more than 8270 works of art starting in the Colonial Era … and it is a very impressive list which includes: John Smibert, John Trumbull, Mather Brown, John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, Sarah Peale, Gilbert Stuart ,Thomas Cole, Thomas Doughty, Asher B. Durand, Fitz Hugh Lane, Martin Johnson Heade, John Kensett, Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Church.
Source: In Connecticut, Discovering American Art’s First Home
Thomas Hart Benton “Arts of the South”