Only in painting did Americans prove that they could compete with the finest artists of Europe, achieving an international reputation and financial success equal to that of any of their peers working in Britain, Italy, or France. The success of Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley, while noteworthy in itself for their innovations in artistic style, genre, and themes, reveals a great deal about the cosmopolitan ideal against which American arts and letters proved, to colonists and foreigners alike, so inferior and provincial. To begin with, they were among the few artists born in the colonies who can accurately be called professionals, supporting themselves (quite handsomely) from the sale of their art alone. In defying the expectation that American artists had little to contribute to the international development of arts and letters, however, their careers ironically reinforced the idea that...