The Museum’s American collection spans the colonial period through the mid-twentieth century and features portraits, landscape and still-life painting, decorative arts, and marble and bronze sculpture. With strengths in portraiture and the landscapes of the Hudson River School, artists whose work is in the collection include Gilbert Stuart, John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, Rembrandt Peale, Thomas Sully, Asher B. Durand, Albert Bierstadt, John Singer Sargent, and Robert Henri.
Other highlights within the collection include works by Martin Johnson Heade, George Inness, Edward Mitchell Bannister, Severin Roesen, Charles Ethan Porter, Winslow Homer, Lilla Cabot Perry, William Merritt Chase, Maurice Prendergast, William Glackens, Jane Peterson, Marsden Hartley, Milton Avery, Jacob Lawrence, as well as sculptors Hiram Powers, Bessie Potter Vonnoh, and Richmond Barthé.
Works on paper are most prominently represented by artists including John James Audubon, Gustave Baumann, Pierre Daura, and Eldzier Cortor. Highlights of the Museum’s sizeable collection of American art pottery consists of examples by Rookwood Pottery of Cincinnati, ceramics by San Antonio potter Harding Black, and early Texas stoneware from the historic Meyer Pottery Company.
The Museum also possesses a significant and growing Texas collection that includes landscape paintings by San Antonio’s Onderdonk family and Spanish émigré José Arpa y Perea; as well as works by Emma Richardson Cherry and Mary Bonner; mid-century Modernist paintings by Everett Spruce and Forrest Bess; works on paper by Eddie Arning; and early Texas furniture.
