From April 14 to June 12, the Frick Art & Historical Center will feature an exhibition of painting and sculpture by many of America’s most celebrated artists from the Eighteenth through the early Twentieth Century.

“American Beauty: Painting and Sculpture from the Detroit Institute of Arts, 1770-1920” features more than 90 masterworks that trace the development of the nation’s art and uniquely American definitions of beauty.

The exhibition includes some of the best-known works representing the major American art movements and trends of the period. Represented in this expansive survey are the colonial artist John Singleton Copley; Hudson River School artists Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church; American Impressionists Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam and William Merritt Chase; the Tonalists George Inness, Thomas Wilmer Dewing and James McNeill Whistler; Realist Thomas Eakins; and Winslow Homer who redefined the American genre scene.

“American Beauty” also includes iconic sculptures by Frederic Remington, Hiram Powers and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The exhibition concludes with several outstanding paintings by the Ashcan artists John Sloan, George Bellows and Robert Henri.

The exhibition is organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts to coincide with extensive construction work on its building. Following European tour at the National Gallery of Ireland, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the American Museum at Giverny, France, “American Beauty” traveled to three American venues. The Frick Art & Historical Center is the final US destination.

Europeans who settled in young America sought to forge a unique style of government, religion, society and culture. In their attempts to create a national visual identity, American artists were inspired by both their own experiences living in a developing nation, as well as lessons from abroad. While many alternated between homegrown creativity and international influences, certain characteristics reappear in their art: an adherence to truthful depiction, directness, idealism and a belief in progress.

“American Beauty” explores the development of American art through portraits, still lifes, landscapes and realistic genre scenes, as well as sculpture, beginning with America’s first “homemade” talent, John Singleton Copley. The artist is represented by five canvases, including one of three versions that he produced of “Watson and the Shark” (1777-78). This heroic and frightening work was born of Copley’s desire to create, while an expatriate living in London, an American history painting.

By the 1830s, landscape painting had become the vehicle for depicting an American identity. Throughout the rest of the century, portrayal of the American landscape took a variety of forms: mysterious and sublime wilderness; a new territory requiring scientific documentation; the pioneers’ territorial and natural destiny; or the individual’s private retreat.

“The Trapper’s Return,” 1851, by George Caleb Bingham, the most celebrated genre painter of the pre-Civil War era, captures a vanishing way of life on America’s frontier rivers, while Frederic Edwin Church’s large-scale masterpiece “Cotopaxi,” 1862, represents the glorious landscapes of the Hudson River School.

After 1867, increasing numbers of artists went abroad with a determination to learn from the best and to recreate the very nature of American art. James McNeill Whistler’s art and theories derive entirely from his experience in Paris and London as reflected in his “Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket,” 1874.

Sargent’s dazzling, full-length portrait, “Madame Paul Poirson,” 1885, is also featured. Other artists of the period such as William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, John Twachtman and Thomas Eakins studied abroad and returned home to apply the lesions they had learned in Europe to American themes.

In the opening decades of the Twentieth Century, America was the wealthiest and most modern country in the world, with New York City symbolizing the country’s financial and technological superiority. A group of artists called the Ashcan School captured both the grittiness and the vitality of the city. Led by artist Robert Henri, this pioneering group introduced new themes into American art. John Sloan’s “McSorley’s Bar,” 1912, illustrates his conviction that the real artist finds beauty in everyday life.

“American Beauty” is accompanied by a fully illustrated, 123-page catalog featuring essays by Detroit Institute of Arts director Graham W.J. Beal.

Admission is $10. The center is at 7227 Reynolds Street in Point Breeze. Hours are Tuesday-Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm. For information, 412-371-0600 or www.frickart.org.