Roger Firestone. They proceeded to buy every Cromartie in the gallery and would later promise their continued patronage indefinitely until James H. Cromartie fully realized what would soon become his signature note, Hard-Edge Realism. Cromartie recalls, “it was like somebody put me on a rocket and my work just took off.” The birth of Hard-Edge Realism Early in his career, James H. Cromartie reports to have often surveyed the printed works of Andrew Wyeth for hours on end attempting to decode a technique so seamless it did not even bear the stroke of a brush. It would be years before Cromartie, confident that he had finally mastered Wyeth's technique, actually stood in front of an original Wyeth only to find the canvas, so immaculately rendered in his books, covered in brush strokes. Thus, in simply attempting to emulate Andrew Wyeth, James H. Cromartie inadvertently spawned Hard-Edge Realism, “launching him on a journey that would take him around the world and into the company of many of society’s elite.” James H. Cromartie, himself, while accepting the popular use of the term, Hard-Edge Realism, believes his style to be more correctly stated as “surrealistic impressionism.” Cromartie, describes his work in Nantucket Portrait: Fun & Games with the Super Rich the Birth of Hard-Edge Realism thus, “if you compare a photograph with my paintings you would see a great difference. My lighting is better than real life. My composition is better than real life. I add things to the painting that might not actually be there if you took a photograph. Sometimes I leave things out that are there. My paintings have emotion and feeling in them that cannot be captured on film." Work as a Historical Artist James H. Cromartie's body of work includes commissioned historical portraits of the Smithsonian, Capitol, White House, and U.S. Supreme Court. The first of these commissions came in 1985 by personal request from the Smithsonian curator’s daughter, Sharon Boyd, to paint its iconic original building, The Castle. Prints of James H. Cromartie’s portrait of The Castle are today presented as gifts to visiting foreign dignitaries. Following the success of the Smithsonian portrait, Cromartie received a second commission to paint the U.S. Capitol from its eponymous Historical Society. At the unveiling, Senator Sam Nunn chided Cromartie for leaving out the flag over the domed Capitol; in response, Cromartie quickly proceeded to paint the flag right where Nunn