A Letter From The Publisher, Sep. 2, 1957

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At first Eliot wrote Sport stories, but soon he gravitated to Art (he went back to Sport once to do a cover story on the Red Sox' Slugger Ted Williams). Partly through his efforts, the Art department became the first regular art color section in a weekly magazine. Of his two TIME jobs, Eliot says: "Sport is easier to write. You can always tell who won. In art, the returns don't come in for a couple of centuries."

Although Eliot, more than any other person, was responsible for assessing the returns on American painting for the past three centuries, he refuses to take full credit. "Such a book would not have been possible without the tremendous resources of the magazine," he says. "Like all other TIME projects, it was a group effort."

One of the most important members of the group was Art Director Phillips. His job was to design a book to meet the following specifications: it would be larger than TIME-size; it would be printed in big, clear type; it would contain a record-breaking 250 full-color reproductions of the utmost fidelity, including more than 40 new plates; and each painting would be reproduced in its entirety.

Phillips, who studied at Yale's Art School and the Art Students League, saw that one of his biggest problems would be color fidelity. Although TIME'S art color pages are as true to the original paintings as high-speed magazine printing will allow, slower printing and fine book paper would enhance the color quality. Phillips planned to send proofs of all color pages to museums and picture owners to correct against the original paintings. Managing Editor Alexander had a better idea. "Go yourself," he told Phillips. Thus began for Mike Phillips an extraordinary journalistic odyssey. By plane, car and train he visited 65 U.S. cities from coast to coast, covering 25,000 miles in ten weeks, sending back corrections to the engravers.

Between trips, Phillips spent his time in New York, designing and laying out the book, binding and jacket.

He turned out eight jackets before he chose the present black and gold design showing Thomas Eakins' memorable painting of scullers on the Schuylkill. The bindings went through seven versions before he chose grey tweed for the regular edition, and white with gold stamping for the de luxe boxed edition. I am sure you will agree that the final result of all Phillips' travel and painstaking toil live up to Eliot's original concept: the first really handsome historical survey of American art ever published.

Finally, a word about Eliot's (and TIME'S) major reason for believing that a book on American painting was needed—the conviction that American art matters. Over the centuries, American art has reflected American life; it has been shaped by American forces. Its viewpoints and subject matter are its own. It does indeed open a thousand windows on our heritage. This week when I saw the proofs of American Painting, I could see what Eliot meant. In his introduction to the book, National Gallery Director John Walker puts it well in a few words: "The paintings in this book speak a universal language. They tell objectively and without propaganda the story of this country."