Between 1830 and 1880, oil sketches by American landscape painters gradually emerged from the privacy of the studio as desirable and marketable works of art in their own right.

Landscape painting was of prime importance in America during the mid-nineteenth century, and artists such as Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, and Sanford Robinson Gifford traveled to distant, often inaccessible places in search of new images. The hazards accompanying such ventures added to the public's interest in the on-the-spot sketches, which also became marketing tools for the carefully composed paintings that would later be created in a studio setting.

The Painted Sketch is the first volume to focus on the sketches of major American artists of the period. Eleanor Jones Harvey, author and consulting curator of American Art for the Dallas Museum of Art, follows the artists from field to studio, examining the changing perception and growing public appreciation for these small works. Her study is based on much new research as well as on her close analysis of existing resources.