Collections

American Paintings

Shelburne Museum’s extensive collections of American paintings tell a story about how the fine arts developed and came of age in the United States. From colonial portraits to nineteenth-century folk art, from Hudson River School landscapes and important seascapes to innovative works of American modernism, the collection includes outstanding examples of work by artists like Albert Bierstadt, William Merritt Chase, Thomas Cole, John Singleton Copley, Martin Johnson Heade, Winslow Homer, Eastman Johnson, Andrew Wyeth, and many more. The paintings collection is particularly renowned for extensive holdings of works by George Henry Durrie, Fitz Henry Lane, Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, Carl Rungius, and Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses.

The collection also includes more than 600 paintings by landscape and sporting artist Ogden Pleissner. About forty of his works are on rotating exhibition in the Pleissner Gallery, which also displays the artist’s Manchester, Vermont, studio, recreated at Shelburne Museum in 1986.