For more than two centuries, artists have captured New York’s harbors, skylines, festivities, street scenes, and buildings in paintings that shed brilliant light on aspects of the city’s history.

This beautiful book introduces nearly 160 of these urban scene paintings. Drawn from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York, the works reflect the shifting moods, restless energy, and harsh contradictions of this consummate metropolis. The cityscapes – painted by such well-known artists as John Sloan, Asher Durand, and Ben Shahn as well as by less familiar names – span the full stylistic range of American painting from the post-Revolutionary period to the present day. Early works include marine paintings, topographical views, genre paintings with New York City settings, and depictions of metropolitan manners. Twentieth-century Manhattan is documented in paintings informed by the Ash Can School vision, easel paintings and mural studies produced in New York City under the aegis of the W.P.A., and paintings dating from the 1930s and 1940s that distill the temper of a city gripped by the Depression. The most recent paintings include works by East Harlem artists who powerfully transcribe the struggle for survival in the barrio as well as satirical vignettes of the modern metropolis typified by 'The Street Painters.'

The essays and catalogue entries that accompany the paintings provide a rich historical context for each image.