The end of the Civil War didn’t give America a new identity so much as it forced the country to create one out of the rubble. From a fractured people bloomed the American Renaissance, a period of art and architectural evolution that took place from the mid–1870s until the outbreak of the First World War. These four decades saw Beaux-Arts creations like the San Francisco City Hall and the Grand Stairway of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, along with a focus by artists on the human figure. Pencil sketches, pastels, oil studies, and other works that demonstrate this renewed interest in the body are on display at the Yale University Art Gallery. Among the artists are Edwin Austin Abbey, Edwin Blashfield, Daniel Chester French, and Violet Oakley. —Jack Sullivan