Elena Mikhailovna Matusovskaya possessed a great art history culture, a wide outlook, and maturity of thought. Choosing the specialty of an art critic-Americanist, she managed to find in her by no means unambiguous in her development of painting of the United States her true heroes, personifying the constancy in it of a powerful realistic line, then colored by romantic pathos, like Homer, Henry or Kent, then marked by the severity and sadness of a courageous worldview, like Eakins, Sloan, Raphael Sawyer or Wayes.