New England, in the Northeast, comprises six states: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. While each is unique, they share the region’s rugged coastline. Authors and painters show reverence for — and fear of — New England seascapes.

From the 19th-century whaling adventures in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick to the 2000 film The Perfect Storm, New England watermen are inextricably linked to a mercurial Atlantic Ocean.

N.C. Wyeth — a celebrated illustrator for books and commercial brand advertising — frequently visited Maine. After he and an artist friend purchased a house in Port Clyde in 1920, he began painting the surrounding environs. He and his family spent summers in Port Clyde for many years, and Wyeth was drawn to the nearby Monhegan Island, 10 miles off the Midcoast, as a subject for his landscape paintings. 

Here, the artist’s style has moved away from illustration and toward the then-popular American realist genre. Though the focus is on the rocky cliffside, a ship battles the waves in the background of the composition, giving viewers a sense that New England’s intrepid fishermen face challenging waters, and even peril, as they pursue their livelihoods.

The U.S. mid-Atlantic stretches from New York to Virginia, comprising the area between New England and the South. Each mid-Atlantic state is both an agricultural powerhouse and home to densely populated urban areas.

The Hudson River Valley, in New York, has long been a meeting ground for these two polarities: city folk and farmers alike. And over the centuries, its scenic views have also attracted scores of serious artists.

The Hudson River School, New York City artists active during the mid-19th century, was America’s first organized artistic group. Its members believed the region’s Eden-like vistas — specifically those of the Hudson River Valley in New York — held spiritual significance. Their paintings, featuring beatific light, verdant forests and majestic mountains, reflect America’s religiosity.

Here, Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School, captures an overlook in the Catskill Mountains that seems untouched by humans. This is Cole’s first wilderness painting, and it inspired other Hudson River School members to paint similar compositions.

The Southeastern part of the United States encapsulates the lower, easternmost quarter of the country. From the bayous of Louisiana to the beaches of North Carolina, it stretches to the Mississippi River, where the Midwest begins. This vast and varied region has long inspired writers, musicians, and playwrights.

Before railroads and highways, the Mississippi River was the primary route to move goods from the North to the South. Even today, 60% of U.S. grain exports are shipped down the Mississippi and through the Port of New Orleans to reach the rest of the world.

Artist George Caleb Bingham grew up outside of St. Louis, near where the Missouri River converges with the Mississippi. This Bingham painting — part of the White House’s collection — shows a steamboat run aground on the banks of the Missouri River and, in the foreground, a boatman navigating a raft on which he ferries the boat’s rescued passengers.

A spirit of industriousness and cooperation is evident in Bingham’s painting, similar to prominent themes found in the works of author Mark Twain, who wrote during the same period about similar places.

The Midwest extends from the northern reaches of Minnesota down to Missouri. It is home to Chicago and Detroit and all the cornfields in between. Historically, German Americans settled this part of the country, becoming farmers and educators, and later industrialists. Today’s Midwestern economy is still largely agricultural, with its top exports being corn, soy, and dairy products.

Grant Wood, who is best remembered for painting American Gothic, was born and raised in Iowa near Cedar Rapids. He painted New Road alongside another, Haying, as a way to showcase the idealized agricultural landscape of the farming communities of rural Iowa.

The rolling hills and fields, stretching as far as the eye can see, share a feeling of American optimism — Wood’s reminder during the Great Depression that greener pastures lie ahead.

The Great Plains comprise North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and parts of Oklahoma. The Plains are sparsely populated but are a hearty, beautiful terrain. This region is home to 200 species of birds and 3,000 species of plants.

Thomas Hart Benton spent the first half of his career painting murals of historic scenes. By the end of World War II, when he was in his 50s, he made a name for himself painting landscapes in the American Regionalist style.

This particular landscape of a farm in rural Kansas depicts two farmers, who have bundled corn stalks, sowing winter wheat with their mules. The expansive sky is characteristic of the Great Plains region, and the sweeping fields of wheat show a part of America’s “breadbasket.”

The beauty of Great Plains farms and industrious spirit of rural Americans are also immortalized in song through the 1931 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Oklahoma!

The Southwestern United States, a backdrop for films such as John Ford’s Stagecoach and 3:10 to Yuma, has always fascinated artists. The Southwestern states of Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah are known for their striking deserts with red-rock formations.

Georgia O’Keeffe, one of America’s best-known artists, first established herself in New York City during the 1920s with paintings that magnified flowers. When she later started visiting Santa Fe, she quickly made a name for herself as a landscape artist. By 1949, O’Keeffe moved permanently to Ghost Ranch in Abiquiú, where she produced many Southwestern landscapes until her death in 1986. 

Bear Lake, the subject of this painting, is north of Taos, New Mexico. The painting shows an abstract version of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains swirling in the distance as the setting sun casts a glow over the water. O’Keeffe’s bold color choice and geometric forms capture the daring spirit of Americans who pioneered through the high-desert plains of the Southwest.

The Western United States is home to Wyoming, Colorado, and Montana and the largest state in the region, California. While California’s economy incorporates the Hollywood film industry and Silicon Valley’s tech sector, the state, with its 840-mile coastline, also boasts many natural wonders and nine national parks (the most of any state).

Yosemite is perhaps the most famous of California’s parks. Located in the central eastern part of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range and established in 1890, the park now attracts 4 million visitors per year.

Cartoonist Harry Cassie Best felt such awe for California’s mountains that he pursued landscape painting, even maintaining a studio near Bridalveil Falls in Yosemite. The paintings he created there, including Half Dome and Royal Arches, became renowned. President Theodore Roosevelt purchased one for the White House during his administration.

Best’s son-in-law, photographer Ansel Adams, shared Best’s love of Yosemite and in the 1920s went on to create his own artistic images through photography of the park.

The works of Best and Adams exemplify Americans’ sense of wonder and desire to preserve outdoorsmanship through the National Park system.

Cedar trees, forest floors carpeted with pine needles, gentle mist, ferns growing in bunches — these are hallmarks of the Pacific Northwest, a region comprising the states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. 

American explorers, following in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark, settled in the area in the 1840s. Among them were artist William Samuel Parrott’s parents, who arrived in Oregon’s Willamette Valley by way of Missouri in 1847 as a part of the Oregon Trail movement. They eventually moved to southern Washington and became one of the founding families in the Klickitat Valley. 

Parrott, one of the first painters to capture the Pacific Northwest, was self-taught. A true American innovator, Parrott used bristles from his sister’s hairbrush to make paintbrushes and repurposed charcoal and other natural materials in lieu of paint to show the grandeur of the Columbia River.

His many artworks of the mountains and volcanoes in the region include this view of Mount Hood, the tallest mountain in Oregon.