The modern gallery spaces feature a slew of notable American artists like Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, Andrew Wyeth and Winslow Homer (a Mainer).

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Also on this level are seascapes by Winslow Homer, pictures by Thomas Eakins and James McNeill Whistler and stained glass by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

ECONOMIST: Art of the Americas

Or stop by Greensburg on your way back to Pittsburgh for its Westmoreland Museum of American Art (www.wmuseumaa.org), featuring works by Winslow Homer and Mary Cassatt, among others.

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Bill Gates, who doesn't spend much quality time in the art market, did buy a beautiful Winslow Homer for a record price, but this wasn't Alan Bond flexing his flabby muscles.

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There may be an irony in Sargent's often taking a backseat to Winslow Homer (1836-1910) as America's most masterly watercolorist, but that may have more to do with the latter's primary focus on American themes as compared with Sargent's expatriate life and subject matter.

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At the Queens Museum, where the significance of water is one of the themes, several competent, if mundane, marine paintings compete with Winslow Homer's superb 1888 etching, "Perils of the Sea, " whose presence here is puzzling, since it was inspired by the artist's stay at an English fishing village.

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