The Sheldon's holdings sound a roll call of America's significant painters, from luminaries such as Albert Bierstadt, Willem de Kooning and Thomas Eakins to others such as FairfieldPorter, Maurice Prendergast and Ben Shahn.
It was even felt by artists who, like Pierre Bonnard and FairfieldPorter, never produced an abstract painting in their lives, but were nonetheless influenced by the way in which practitioners of abstraction created what Mr. Diebenkorn called "invented landscapes, " nonobjective images that evoked the world of tangible reality while steering clear of literal representation.