The Rockefeller collection of American art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco /

This is a superbly photographed and justly famous collection of mostly 18th- and 19th-century paintings. Facts published for the first time in English include provenance, related works, exhibition history, and bibliographic references. A long introductory essay on the history of the collection is filled with detail from curatorial files. However, instead of creating entries that discuss each painting, the editors extracted and reprinted text from secondary critical sources. Although some comments relate specifically to the painting, most concern the painter's general style. Some comments taken from archival material (manuscripts, correspondence) relate to subject matter. A previous black-and-white collection catalog, Edgar P. Richardson's American Art (1976) included specific, if not extensive, notes on each painting. Ronnie C. Tyler's American Canvas (1990) provided notes and selected bibliographic references on 44 of the 140 paintings. Unfortunately, none of these works includes every element of a scholarly catalog. This new work will prove valuable to scholars for the color illustrations and factual material. The reprinted text may interest undergraduates. Recommended. M. M. Doherty; University of South Florida