As Chicago grew into the world-class city it is today, its civic leaders took exceptional care in their cultivation of the arts. The establishment of the Art Institute, the widespread support of wealthy patronage, and the activity of numerous organizations including the Chicago Architectural Club, the Urban League, and the Chicago Women's Club, combined to make Chicago home to many painters. Since rising from the ashes in 1873, Chicago has supported generation after generation of inspired artists who painted land and cityscapes, and honored their patrons with portraits. The full length and breadth of their amazing work can at last be appreciated in the Powell and Barbara Bridges Collection.          
 
Susan C. Larsen provides a profile of the collectors and introduces the Bridges Collection, featuring an impressive range of canvases by Charles Francis Browne, Alice Kellogg Tyler, Frank Peyraud, Alfred Juergens, and other notable painters. Formerly the private treasure of the Bridges, Chicago Painting makes all 78 paintings of their remarkable collection available, in full color, to art lovers the world over. 
 
Wendy Greenhouse offers a host of insights into the lives and work of the artists who worked prior to the turn of the last century.  She surveys the "conservative" Chicago painters who resisted the avant-garde, showing that while the European avant-garde did exert an influence, excellent work continued to be done in traditional genres such as portraits and landscapes.  Painters the quality of Junius Sloan, Lucie Hartrath, George Peter Alexander Healy, Louis Betts, Ralph Clarkson, and Daniel Folger Bigelow are represented here.
 
Finally, Susan Weiniger guides us into the Modernist era Chicago painters--Gertrude Abercrombie, Frances Strain, Frederic Tellander, Rudolph Weisenborn, and others--whose works show conclusively that Chicago did more than import avant-garde painting. Chicago Painting 1895 to 1945 also includes updated biographies of 49 painters and commentary on each painting.