The Cummer’s American Collection represents an area of incredible strength and diversity. Portraits by Benjamin West, Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Sully, John Neagle, Louis Valtat, and Andy Warhol chronicle the development of that genre from the Grand Manner and American realism to Post-Impressionism and Pop Art.

Developments in American landscape painting are chronicled through a number of significant works. The Hudson River school and its influence is revealed in three paintings by Jasper Cropsey, John Frederick Kensett’s Marine View of Beacon Rock, Newport Harbor (1864), Edmund Darch Lewis’ Mount Washington, New Hampshire (1865), and two paintings by Martin Johnson Heade including Orchid with an Amethyst Hummingbird (c. 1870). Other works demonstrate the lure of Italy and the Grand Tour: George Inness’ Perugia (1870), Stanley W. Haseltine’s Sunset on the Grand Canal, Venice (early 1870s), George Loring Brown’s The Rock of Gibraltar (1865) and Thomas Moran’s The Doge’s Palace, Grand Canal, Venice (1898). Sculpture is represented through Frederick MacMonnies’ Pan of Rohallion (1894) and Frederic Remington’s Bronco Buster (c. 1900). Other highlights include Severin Roesen’s Still Life with Flowers, Fruit, and Bird’s Nest (c. 1865), and Winslow Homer’s Waiting for a Bite (1874).

Key American Impressionist works include Childe Hassam’s Afternoon in Pont-Aven (1897), John Singer Sargent’s In the Alps (1911) and Frederick Frieseke’s Before Her Appearance (1913). Turn-of-the century realist works include Henry Ossawa Tanner, Midday, Tangiers (c. 1912), Jonas Lie’s View of the Seine (1909), Thomas Eakins’ Portrait of Frieda Douty (1910), Robert Henri’s Guide to Croaghan (Brien O’Malley) of 1913 and Edmund Greacen’s Brooklyn Bridge, East River (1916). Later realism is represented by two important American Regionalist works: John Steuart Curry’s Parade to War, Allegory (1938) and Thomas Hart Benton’s June Morning (1945). Modernist trends are represented by Max Weber’s Still Life with Fruit and Vase (c. 1915), André Lhote’s Cubist Nude (1917), Marie Laurencin’s Woman with Guitar (1943), Romare Bearden’s Passion of Christ (1945), Hughie Lee Smith, End of the Festival (1954), Bob Thompson, The Tempest (1965), David Smith’s steel sculpture entitled Ring-toothed Woman (1950), and William Artis’ Portrait of a Woman (1960). Mid- and late-century movements are represented through the series Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century (c. 1980) and the Mao series (1973) by Andy Warhol and Howard Hodgkin’s Home (2001). More contemporary works include Mildred Thompson’s Magnetic Fields (1991), Janet Fish’s After a Wedding (2002), and Whitfield Lovell’s Pago Pago (2008).

Important 19th century European paintings and sculptures in the Cummer’s collection encompass a variety of movements and styles. Portraits represent the core of the Museum’s Neo-Classical holdings. They are Henry Raeburn’s Lady Harriet Don with Her Son (c. 1800), Benjamin West’s The Honorable Mrs. Shute Barrington (1808) and Portrait of Princess Pauline Borghèse and the Baroness de Mathisse (c. 1810) by René-Théodore Berthon.

Academic concerns are revealed through three major works by William Bouguereau including Return from the Harvest (1878), and Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Anacreon with Bacchus and Amor (c. 1893).

Developments in European landscape painting are chronicled through a large number of significant works, including Thomas Gainsborough’s Evening Landscape (1786), Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot’s Stream Beneath the Trees (mid-19th century), Paul Guigou’s Mouth of the Lourmarin River (1867), and Henri-Joseph Harpignies’ Landscape (1893). French Barbizon, Realist, and Impressionist works including the Guigou, Edgar Degas’ Scene with Ballerinas (c. 1890), and Camille Pissarro’s The Gleaners (c. 1889) put American Impressionist works in context.

Highlights from the Cummer’s Baroque Collection include Peter Paul Rubens’ The Lamentation (c. 1605), Theodoor Rombouts’ The Concert (c. 1620), Frans Snyders’ Still Life with Fruit and Flowers (c. 1630), Giocchino Assereto’s The Lamentation (c. 1640), Reynaud Levieux de Nîmes’ Theseus Discovering His Father’s Sword (c. 1643), Sassoferrato’s Praying Madonna (c. 1660), Jan Steen’s The Continence of Scipio (late 1660s), and Claude Lorrain’s Minerva Visiting the Muses on Mount Parnassus (1680).

Works from the Rococo period include Charles Natoire’s The Awakening of Venus (1741), Simon-Louis Boizot’s marble of Marie Antoinette as Venus (c. 1775), Marie Victoire Lemoine’s Portrait of a Youth (1785), and Cornelis van Spaendonck’s Still Life with Flowers and a Bas-Relief (c. 1793).

The Cummer’s collection contains significant examples of art from the late Medieval, Renaissance, and Mannerist periods from a variety of geographic areas in Europe. Key among the Italian examples are a rare autograph panel by the celebrated Florentine painter Agnolo Gaddi, the Madonna of Humility with Angels (mid-1390s), Gerolamo Giovenone’s Christ Among the Doctors (1513), Giorgio Vasari’s The Holy Family with the Infant St. John the Baptist (c. 1540), and Pier Francesco de Jacopo Foschi’s portrait of Bartolomeo Compagni (1549). Examples from Northern Europe include the Master of the Stötteritz Altar’s Madonna of Sorrows (c. 1470), Nicklaus Weckmann the Elder’s Madonna and Child (c. 1490-1500), Lucas Cranach the Elder’s St. Christopher and the Christ Child (c. 1518), and Pieter Aersten’s The Parable of the Marriage Feast (1550-1554).

The Cummer’s collection encompasses antiquities dating from as early as 2100 B.C. to works created 2008 A.D. Among the more important Ancient Mediterranean antiquities are a Stele of Iku and Mer-imat from the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, a Villanovan impasto Hut Urn (c. 9th century B.C.), a Greek Attic Black – Figure Amphora (c. 520-510 B.C.) depicting Dionysos and Maenads, a Roman mosaic (1st century A.D.) depicting Silenus, and a Roman cinerary urn (1st century A.D.).