In 2000, a book called Painters and the American West; the Anschutz Collection was issued, documenting a large private collection of paintings on American West subjects. The collection has now become a public museum in Denver. This second volume updates the material in the first, reproduces images from that book, and adds images of new acquisitions to the collection. The book is handsome and focuses on good quality reproductions of paintings at large scale. The foreword is by Sarah Hunt, who directs the museum. Short historical essays by James P. Ronda give context at the start of each chapter; Joan Carpenter Troccoli provides commentary on the paintings. The book attempts to place these paintings in the mainstream of both U.S. history and U.S. art history. It acknowledges the romanticism of many of the paintings toward Native Americans and toward their slaughter, and the fondness of many 19th-century painters for images of Manifest Destiny, and places these in historical context. The book does not discuss the challenges of a contemporary U.S. collection focused on these themes, however. Work by native artists is absent, connections with illustration are not discussed, and there is little work by painters who came from the American West. The mid-late 19th century predominates, with the most recent paintings ca. 1940. Overall, the collection records historical fantasy images by those who arrived from elsewhere to paint "the real West." The average quality of the paintings in the collection is high, and the reproductions are in glowing color. The chapters correspond to genres more than historical periods: American empire, western landscape, Indians (plains style), California gold rush, cowboys and cavalry, and the Taos school of southwestern subjects. Annotation 2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
