I've lived in New York for 13 years. One of my favorite aspects of living here, often overlooked by casual visitors and other residents alike, is the profound sense of American history one can conjure up simply by walking around. If you're taking a stroll along the winding streets of lower Manhattan, you might pass a church where George Washington once prayed. You might stumble on Federal Hall (really the US Customs House--the 19th-century descendent of the original Federal Hall, our nation's first capitol).

My favorite museum in the city is The Met. The Metropolitan Museum of Art houses collections in the fine arts, decorative arts, antiquities, and design. This past weekend I was to meet Adrienne and Aunt Joyce there in the afternoon, but I arrived about ninety minutes before the others. I've spent more time in the European paintings department than anywhere else in the museum--the old masters ground me, teach me about life, fill me with wonder, and offer the most sublime aesthetic pleasures.

But having visited them recently, I felt this rainy Saturday afternoon might be better spent getting better acquainted with the American Wing, the paintings in particular. Having worked in the art world my whole adult life, I've learned my fair share about 19th-century American painting, but I haven't spent much time looking at it outside of the paintings that fill some clients' galleries. Let me tell you, wandering the Met's American collection was a revelation. I looked at beautiful Copleys, Whistlers, and Sargents--portraits that capture souls in paint. But this adventure really begins and ends with George Washington.

Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828) George Washington, begun 1795
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I saw the famous portrait of Washington by Gilbert Stuart (take a look at a dollar bill for an engraving of this image). It seems an obvious point to make, but Washington was actually a person. He was a New Yorker for a time, and he was the first President. The Stuart portrait truly gives life to his flesh, which is pink and loose and aging. It's funny to think of Washington as an actual man, instead of as some iconic piece of history. He made important decisions whose effects are still felt today in our country and around the world. He was a regal soul who rejected monarchy, a natural leader who led his people not only to victory in a war but to the victories of self-government and freedom.

Thomas Cole (1801–1848) View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm — The Oxbow, 1836

John Frederick Kensett (1816–1872) Lake George, 1869

Next came room after room of landscape paintings--some from the painters' travels around the world, but most from time spent learning the secrets of this vast land that stretches from our Eastern Seaboard to the futuristic sunsets of California. As I walked from painting to painting, seeing Cole's Mount Holyoke, being pulled into Kensett's Lake George, pulled into Eakins's Philadelphia, pushed up the sheered cliffs of Bierstadt's Rocky Mountains, and led down the wooded path of beeches painted by Durand, I was taken on a tour of the history of possibility. For America was founded on the ideas of possibility, opportunity, self-realization, and the pursuit of happiness--together we call these Liberty. The land was an inspiration not only for these painters, but for our nation's founders, who saw in this landscape a deep richness that would be reflected back in all their generous words and actions. The citizen's whom they led took that gift of generosity and built the wonderful country that has been handed down from generation to generation over the last 230 years.

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) The Champion Single Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull), 1871

Asher Brown Durand (1796–1886) The Beeches, 1845

Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902) The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak, 1863

It is only natural that my ruminations on Washington the Man, and on America the Land, led me to compare what was before me in the paintings with what surrounds me in the political and natural landscapes of 21st-century America. A different man, also named George, is president. This man is a mean soul who fancies himself king. He's a man who in pushing his way to the front leaves behind every notion of true leadership. Our great land is being overdeveloped, abused and eaten away by capitalistic greed, exposed by our smog-filled air to heat that is literally scorching the earth under our feet. The idea of possibility is perhaps still with us, though buried under decades of cynical thought--possibility replaced in many American hearts by apathy, self-realization replaced by self-centeredness, and precious liberty replaced by ugly fear.

Emanuel Leutze (1816–1868) Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851

By the time I made my way into the grand gallery holding Emanuel Leutze's heroic painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware, I had pretty much worked myself up into a fragile emotional state, and sitting in front of this huge painting I burst into tears--happy to have The Met as a wealth of aesthetic and historical education, but also sad that we have apparently lost so much of what we once had. The forward motion of the painting, with Washington in profile looking toward the future, and with Old Glory representing something new and good, made me feel both pride for the expansion of freedoms our country has known and regret for the losses of liberty which have been part of the push and pull along the way. If today we are in a time of contraction, with fear overcoming liberty, paintings such as this one must serve to remind us to keep pressing forward. The gallery was filled with people--Americans and foreigners both--studying this monumental work. They were talking excitedly, looking pensively, and in my case, sitting and quietly crying.

But emotional breakdowns over politics are common--those of us who try to pay attention to what's happening in the world reach a saturation point every now and then, but our tears spilling over cleanse our souls. I believe that by reflecting on these past glories--both the actual history and the aesthetic reflections of them--we can more easily hold onto the inspiration to fight for what we know is right, for what we know is just, and for what we know is deserved by the citizens who inhabit this land.