Four American portraits from the Cleveland Museum of Art will be on view during fall semester 2006. Works by John Singleton Copley, Benjamin West and Gilbert Stuart are installed near 18th- and 19th-century American and European paintings from the AMAM’s permanent collection. The CMA selection includes Boston painter Copley's outstanding 1765 portrait of Nathaniel Hurd, an important patriot of the American Revolution, and his Catherine Greene of 1769.

Benjamin West—the most successful American painter of his generation, who rose from a modest Quaker household in Pennsylvania to become president of the Royal Academy in London—is represented by a touching portrait of his wife Elizabeth Shewell West and their son, Raphael. Extremely generous and personable, West taught many younger American artists who ventured to his London studio, among them Gilbert Stuart, whose stylish portrait of Elizabeth Beltzhoover Mason is also on view.