An American Point of View: The Daniel J. Terra Collection

A Pennsylvania native who made his fortune in fast-drying printer's ink, Terra (1911-1996) was praised by Ronald Reagan as a man who was ""doing more for American art than any other man in the history of the country."" While that may be a stretch, Terra did amass a very respectable collection of American paintings during his lifetime, and he worked hard to share his enthusiasm with others; cultural conservatives considered his private philanthropy to be a model of post-public support for the arts. His Terra Museum of Art in downtown Chicago was inaugurated in 1987, and five years later he founded the Musee d'Art Americain in Giverny, France; this fine catalogue collects the highlights of his collection from both museums. Revealing a traditional but intelligent aesthetic, the Terra paintings present a vision of American life at its most bucolic and gentile, as well as its most Europhilic. The paintings, which are accompanied by mini-essays about the artists and their oeuvre, tend to hew closely to European developments in Impressionism, Japonisme and Cubism. The vibrant reproductions include the work of numerous American greats-John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt and Winslow Homer, just to name a few. Though the collection becomes more uneven as it enters the 20th century, overall it is a smart, tasteful slice of American visual history. 99 color plates and 97 b&w illustrations.