Early Art and Artists in West Virginia is copiously illustrated with 136 plates accompanying the essays on portraiture and landscape painting, which form the first half of the book. A similar number of smaller illustrations in full color bring life to a biographical directory in the second part of the book, which contains nearly one thousand known painters who worked in West Virginia. Many West Virginians will find their family names in this directory, and some will doubtless locate the information here that they have long sought in order to learn more about a painting in their family's possession. The book is supported by an extensive bibliography on the state's artistic heritage and a full index to both the directory and the essays.

2001 American Graphic Design Awards Winner

John A. Cuthbert, Curator of the West Virginia and Regional History Collection and Director of the West Virginia Historical Art Collection at the West Virginia University Libraries, has drawn upon years of personal study of the development of fine painting in West Virginia to write this history of the state's artistic heritage from its beginnings in the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. He suggests that we have focused so intently on our rich traditions derived from the culture of mountain folk that we have overlooked the fact that most of our state's population has always been concentrated in the river valleys and in the Eastern Panhandle where communication and transportation were readily available. In such circumstances, West Virginians were no less sophisticated than their neighbors in bordering states and portrait and landscape painters found ready patrons for their works here.