""The peculiar charm of their work results sometimes from what would be technical inadequacies from the academic view, distortion, curiously personal perspective, and what not. But they were not simply artists who lacked adequate training. The work of the best of them has a directness, unity, and a power which one does not always find in the work of standard masters." In the half century since these words were written by Holger Cahill, who assisted Abby Aldrich Rockefeller in her early collecting of American folk art, these powerful and charming images have been ever more enthusiastically embraced. The works presented here are of great variety: landscapes, seascapes, portraits of homes, farms, and factories, still lifes, religious and historical paintings, fraktur and decorative writings, and mourning pictures. Many of the artists are anonymous, but others, including Ammi Phillips, Erastus Salisbury Field, and Grandma Moses, are well known. A special section is devoted to Edward Hicks. Another section examines the work of Lewis Miller, whose lively sketchbooks are a remarkable resource for investigations into life and customs in nineteenth-century America. Three hundred eighty-three paintings and drawings, exquisitely reproduced and thoroughly examined and documented, are presented."--book jacket.