The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1871, has grown from an outpost of culture on the midwestern prairie to one of America's greatest museums. This volume presents 149 of the museum's finest European and American paintings, from the Renaissance to the 1990s.. "A generous sampling of the Art Institute's world-renowned collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings is featured, including Claude Monet's Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare, Pierre Auguste Renoir's Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg), Vincent van Gogh's Bedroom, and Georges Pierre Seurat's Sunday on La Grande Jatte - 1884.. "The selection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American paintings captures the unique flavor and variety of the art of the growing nation, from colonial portraits and rustic landscapes to such memorable pictures as Winslow Homer's Herring Net, James McNeill Whistler's Nocturne: Blue and Gold - Southampton Water, Frederic Remington's Advance Guard, or The Military Sacrifice, and Mary Cassatt's Child's Bath.. "The twentieth-century paintings included here illustrate the vast territory encompassed by the art of this century: The Old Guitarist and other works by Pablo Picasso; Surrealist paintings such as Rene Magritte's Time Transfixed; the work of pioneer American modernists Georgia O'Keeffe and Marsden Hartley; and such iconic images as Edward Hopper's Nighthawks and Grant Wood's American Gothic.. "The quality and variety of the selection in this book reflect the scope of the Art Institute's painting collection. Each of the 149 works is illustrated in full color and is accompanied by a brief, informative text. An introductiondescribes the origins of the museum and the growth of its collections.