Virtually every issue of American Heritage closes with one or another of the editors disgruntled because there is no room for a favorite painting—or because no piece of caption-writing cleverness could make it appropriate to the story that needed illustrating. The Winter Art Show, now in its fourth year, gives those paintings a second chance. Here, along with ones gathered in for specific articles, are many paintings that we came across during the year and just liked. The criteria of our choices are that a work be accomplished and that it show us something about the past—as, we feel, every picture in this year’s gleaning does, whether it is the arresting, superbly rendered whimsy on the facing page, or an ardent vision of the great 1893 world’s fair, or an impressively authentic look at American casualties huddled in the dusk after the assault on San Juan Hill.