The scenes are breathtaking, the figures are memorable, and the styles range from realism to mind-boggling abstraction. Welcome to “American Made,” a wondrous exhibit of paintings and sculptures from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection, on display at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens until April 16.

As Kevin Sharp, the director of the Dixon, told me at the beginning of my visit, the history of American painting and sculpture is the history of America. Across eight separate yet connected spaces, the stories of this country’s natural grandeur and social striving are depicted through works spanning the colonial era of the late eighteenth century through the 1950s.

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The remarkable team of experts at the Dixon, led by Sharp and the talented curator Julie Pierotti, brought under one roof more than one hundred items owned by Diane DeMell Jacobsen, one of the country’s foremost private collectors of American art.

As the eye and the mind take in the stories, the exhibit’s design reflects the revelatory aspect of the collection at every turn.

The show starts at the Dunavant Gallery, where we encounter a painting whose subject has turned his gaze away from the viewers, lost in deep contemplation. “Should we intrude?” we wonder, but then our curiosity gets the better of us, and we take a closer look.

It is the “Portrait of Booth Grey” (1766) painted by Benjamin West (1732-1820), the first colonial American artist to achieve international fame.

“Not the most welcoming crowd,” we may think, as yet another portrait depicts a figure whose gaze is directed away from the viewer, in a now familiar look of contemplation, while the sweeping contours of his military uniform complete the heroic look of the icon of republican virtue.

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It is Rembrandt Peale’s (1778 – 1860) porthole portrait of “George Washington” (c. 1846). Oh, how the New World imitated the old one, as the portraits bolstered identity, social status, and gender roles. Martha Washington’s direct gaze in Peale’s accompanying namesake portrait of the first lady (c. 1856), stops us in our tracks. Her knowing facial expression and the domestic visual background make one want to linger and confide. However, there is also this Victorian sternness and strength of character in her eyes, oozing with the 19th-century ideals of women as the guardians of society’s culture and morals.

From there, our gaze is pulled to the largest space of the exhibition, the Plough Gallery. As we enter, we are met by the awesome, crashing waves of Ferdinand Richardt’s (1819 – 1895) “A View of Niagara Falls” (1873). The sense of scale is reinforced by its tiny, barely perceptible human figures witnessing the brute force of the crashing water.

The waterfalls were only a taste of the Hudson River School, which dominates this space. Having developed under the influence of the English émigré Thomas Cole (1801–1848), the school sought to explore the potential of landscape painting and rival emotional gravitas of Europe’s older genres. We are transported by Cole’s pastoral landscape featuring the grandeur of Italian Roman ruins in “The Arch of Nero” (1846).

Then we spot Asher B. Durand’s (1796-1886) “Mountain Stream” (1848), with its lonely stag surrounded by the majestic tranquility of the untouched nature, as the dramatic content of the images gradually progresses over several paintings to the icy loneliness, and the sheer physical size, of William Bradford’s (1823 – 1892) “Ship Trapped in Pack Ice” (c. 1871).

This striking scene of the Arctic exploration was painted when public imagination was captured by these last remaining unexplored frontiers.

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Landscapes give way to depictions of people and scenes encountered by American expatriates abroad and painters at home. There is such a shocking thematic contrast between Americans navigating the grave economic times of the 19th century in Christian Schuessele’s (1824 – 1879) “Lesson in Charity” (1857) and the plentiful, care-free gathering of Parisian society depicted in a large-scale canvas of Julius LeBlanc Stewart’s (1855-1919) “Five O’Clock Tea” (1884).

The Crump Gallery introduces us to the American still-life tradition. Originally owned by this country’s wealthy citizens and the growing middle class, the paintings reflected both the luxuries they owned and the comforts to which they aspired.

Amidst the depictions of nature’s bounty, particularly memorable is John Haberle’s (1856 – 1933) careful rendering of a violin surrounded by details evoking celebrated Italian, German, and Austrian musicians in his oil painting titled “Music” (1896).

Dixon’s curator Julia Pierotti told me that her favorite painting in the exhibit is Robert Frederick Blum’s (1857 – 1903) “Ca’d’Oro, Venice” (c. 1881 – 1883), one of the series of his paintings of this Venetian palace, and currently housed in the Orgill Gallery.

Indeed, Blum’s reflection of the green-blue waters of the canal and sun-washed walls stained with history stun with their eternal appeal.

Particularly memorable was James Henry Daugherty’s (1889 -1974) “Steel Mill” (c.1930 – 1935), seen in the Willmott Gallery, which depicts a steel worker operating milling machinery. Painted during the Great Depression, and featuring the worker’s unmistakably heroic aura, this image recalls the messages of strength and resilience used by governments across the world to fortify their citizenry.

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And one last look at Bessie Potter Vonnoh’s (1872 -1955) award-winning “Allégresse” (modeled c.1920, cast c. 1930), in the Brinkley Gallery, refreshes with a sense of movement and joyous exuberance. The complex, multi-figure bronze sculpture conveys the principles of early modern dance in a remarkably life-like fashion.

As I exited the Dixon Museum I was greeted by its stunning, immaculately landscaped gardens. With the four hundred thousand flower bulbs planted here last winter starting to blossom, the beauty inside and outside the Museum assures us that all will turn out well in the end. And all that, in the style of the world’s greatest cultural centers, at no cost to the visitors. This is a gift not to be missed.