1585 White depicts American Indians
The English artist John White paints the everyday life of the Secotan Indians of America

1778 Brook Watson and the Shark
In Brook Watson and the Shark John Singleton Copley creates the most intensely dramatic of his modern history paintings

1827 Kaaterskill Falls
With Kaaterskill Falls 26-year-old Thomas Cole pioneers a heroic tradition in US landscape painting

1835 Hudson River School
A school of landscape painting emerges in New York, with emphasis on the scenery of the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains

1866 Winslow Homer's Prisoners from the Front
US painter Winslow Homer makes his name with the exhibition of a Civil War subject, Prisoners from the Front

1875 Eakins causes offence with The Gross Clinic
US artist Thomas Eakins' depiction of the gruesome aspect of surgery, in his portrait of Dr Gross, offends many viewers

1925 Hopper finds his characteristic style
House by the Railroad, by US painter Edward Hopper, introduces a new style of urban realism

1938 Grandma Moses shows her work
American naïve painter Grandma Moses has her first exhibition in a local drug store at the age of 78

1946 Abstract Expression
A new style of American painting, involving artists such as Arshile Gorky and Jackson Pollock, is given the name Abstract Expressionism

1947 Pollock's drip paintings
US artist Jackson Pollock's drip paintings cause a stir in New York

1953 De Kooning's Women exhibited
US abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning exhibits his series Women nos I-VI, on which he has been working since 1938

1962 Warhol and Campbell's soup
Andy Warhol creates a stir when his paintings of Campbell's soup cans are exhibited at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles

1965 Op art arrives
An exhibition in New York, 'The Responsive Eye', puts op art on the map

1988 Jean-Michel Basquiat dies
Leading New York Graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat dies of an overdose