A companion to the exhibition Group Dynamics: Family Portraits and Scenes of Everyday Life at the New-York Historical Society, an unprecedented exploration of group portraiture drawn from the Society's extensive collection of paintings, photographs and sculpture, this fully illustrated catalogue features ninety works of art and two interpretive essays. Group Dynamics surveys more than a century of American portraiture, from the early colonial era, when wealthy citizens had themselves portrayed in the grand manner of aristocratic English and European traditions, throughout the nineteenth century, when the invention of the daguerreotype and other photographic techniques made portraiture readily available to all. Bringing these extraordinary works of art together for the first time, Group Dynamics offers an insightful look at the ways in which the individuals portrayed on monumental canvases and souvenir tintypes interact with each other within the frame, and with the viewer, both in their own day and today.
