Systematically organized collections of contemporary art, unusual at any time, were especially rare in the United States in the early decades of the nineteenth century, when the new nation boasted few art collectors of any kind, even fewer professional painters, and almost no commercial art galleries. One of the first planned collections of contemporary American art was put together in the space of a few months in late 1826 and early 1827 by the Stevens family of Hoboken, New Jersey, ...