These 44 paintings, on view at the James A. Michener Art Museum, speak for antimodernism. They're nativist not only in subject matter, in the way they portray ordinary people, but also in their reliance on the belief that, after the hugely influential Armory show in 1913, some American artists rejected Europe as a source of inspiration.

"Painting the People" is, for the most part, realist, narrative, and uncomplicated. The images don't need to be deconstructed or puzzled out. They're paintings "for people" in the sense that specialized knowledge or art experience isn't required to enjoy them.

And enjoy them you should, because this exhibition represents a fertile period when artists turned their attention to grass roots and city sidewalks. The main styles represented are regionalism (also called American Scene) and social realism. To paraphrase Pogo, we have met the inhabitants of these pictures, and they are us.

The exhibition comes to the Michener courtesy of area collectors Lee and Barbara Maimon. Already interested in antiques, they began a paintings collection in the late 1980s during a foraging trip to New Hope. There they discovered the Pennsylvania impressionists who dominated the village art colony.

Over about a decade, the Maimons built up a solid collection of works by some of the better-known regional painters. Then, as often happens when collectors become deeply immersed in following their passion and developing their expertise, they broadened their scope to include the country at large, particularly artists who addressed American life at the anecdotal level.

As Barbara Maimon says, "We like pictures that are true to human experience, that give us a glimpse of people's lives."

Not everything in the exhibition comes from the regionalist-social realism era. There are relatively recent works by the African American artists Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, and Benny Andrews. Joseph Delaney's Easter Parade, like Andrews' Cotton Choppers, dates from 1965.

A few paintings, such as Louis Bosa's Fish Market amd Lawrence's Supermarket - Toys, display mild modernist tendencies. Yet the populist spirit of the show is consistent throughout.

"Painting the People" engages emotions, memories, and shared experiences. The pictures often reinforce one another in evoking what many Americans have shared over multiple generations, such as a trip to the circus, the hubbub and excitement of Election Day, a beer at the neighborhood tavern, or the draining weariness of hard manual labor.

Michener curator Brian Peterson, who selected the show, has emphasized these consonances with thematic juxtapositions that subordinate period and visual style to broader cultural affinities. For instance, a small watercolor by Thomas Hart Benton of cotton-pickers in Georgia, made in 1931, hangs in perfect harmony next to Andrews' Cotton Choppers.

In another section, a wall of beach, circus, and carnival images by artists such as William Glackens, Lois Mailou Jones, Ben Shahn, Palmer Hayden, and Clarence Carter celebrates favorite leisure pursuits. It's germane to note here that African American artists such as Jones and Hayden aren't singled out by race. This show is color-blind, which was not true for the American art world during the period it covers.

The quality that impressed me most about the Maimons' collection is a marvelously acute eye for top-shelf paintings, regardless of who made them. Furthermore, the collection feels personal, coherent, and authentic in the sense that it doesn't suggest an agenda beyond the pleasure of acquisition and ownership.

For the most part, this isn't a collection of illustrious reputations, although it has its share of those. I've already mentioned a few, but here are a few more - Isabel Bishop, Philip Evergood, Rockwell Kent, Reginald Marsh, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and the brothers Raphael and Moses Soyer.

It's lesser-known but demonstrably talented artists who make this show such a delightful discovery. These include Carl Hugo Beetz, whose pool-hall scene might fool you into thinking it's by Marsh; Cecil Bell; and Don Freeman, whose Waiting for the Express-Union Square delivers piquant social realism (and pairs nicely with another evocative subway scene, Evening News, by Francis Luis Mora).

John R. Grabach's Spring Planting is an iconic, classically composed tableau of suburban husbandry, symbolic of renewal and hope for the future. Clyde Singer's boisterous crowd scene, Democratic Rally, recalls a similarly energetic election-gathering painted by George Caleb Bingham in 1852, The County Election.

This allusion confirms another characteristic of the regionalist-social realist artists, that they were essentially updating the 19th-century genre tradition as practiced by Bingham and his contemporaries.

Singer also draws us into a bibulous Christmas Eve party at McSorley's tavern, a stark contrast to the grimy bone-weariness depicted by James B. Turnbull in Miner's Lunch. Speaking of bars, there's a deliciously moody picture by Simka Simkhovitch of a prizefighter and his girl sitting quietly at at table contemplating, perhaps, their future.

Often in an exhibition of this kind I find myself circling back repeatedly to one magical image. Here it's 14th Street by Bishop, a simple composition of a woman walking away from, or through, a group of anonymous pedestrians. The image is graphically realist but also symbolic of being alone in a crowd, a common urban experience.

All these paintings impart to the exhibition both the frisson of discovery and the delight in being in the company of so much unexpectedly delicious painting. "Painting the People" celebrates both a noteworthy collecting achievement and a praiseworthy initiative by the museum to bring it to public attention.

Thomas Chimes service. A memorial service to honor Philadelphia painter Thomas Chimes will be held at Locks Gallery, 600 Washington Square South (215-629-1000), on Sept. 9 at 5 p.m. Chimes, one of the city's most distinguished artists, died in April at age 88.

Art: Populist Paintings

"Painting the People" continues at the James A. Michener Art Museum, 138 S. Pine St., Doylestown, through Oct. 18. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 10 to 5 Saturdays, and noon to 5 Sundays. Through Sept. 11, admission is $6.50 general, $6 for seniors, and $4 for visitors 6 to 18. Beginning Sept. 12, admission will be $10 general, $9 for seniors, $7.50 for college students with valid ID, and $5 for visitors 6 to 18. Information: 215-340-9800 or www.michenerartmuseum.org.