American futurist Joseph Stella was an avid draftsman who lived by his chosen motto “nulla dies sine linea.” Not a day without a line. It’s a wonderful phrase that goes to the heart of art-making and the ardor that sustains it. The aphorism belongs over the entrance to the National Academy Museum for the duration of “Marks of Distinction.” The presence of Stella, a painter we see too infrequently, is one indication of this exhibition’s range and intelligence.

Built 20 years ago to house Dartmouth’s impressive and developing collection, the Hood is a recent arrival among venerable New England colleges with substantial holdings of American art. The college began collecting American art in the 18th century with such things as depictions of Daniel Webster (class of 1801) or other illustrious alumni, campus views, and American Indian artifacts. Today the collection, expanded largely by donation, is distinguished and diverse, sensitive to historical shifts in attitudes toward content and technique.

Its abiding strength is the perspective it offers on the continuum of cultural phases from the 18th and 19th centuries to the mid-20th. Sociology and ideology blend with aesthetics in ways that are largely invisible until we see the connecting threads laid out. Here they are, from the classical preferences of the early republic, through reflections of Jacksonian democracy, to American responses to Impressionism, Modernism, and all their progeny.

Take Benjamin West’s ink-and-chalk drawing “Archangel Gabriel of the Annunciation” (1784). Fluent and vivacious, it illustrates the talent that brought West extraordinary recognition in his lifetime. (He was co-founder with Joshua Reynolds of the Royal Academy and served as its elected president from 1792 to 1805 – amazing for an American in King George’s England.) A continuous, flawless pen line delineates the angel’s graceful profile and the finely hatched modeling of face, neck, and hands. Memorize that animated line, and you’ll learn more than any apostle of art appreciation can teach.

John James Audubon’s “American Buzzard” (c. 1810-20) is a glory of stop motion naturalism and considered design, delicately realized in pencil and pastel. Audubon’s rhythmically out lined raptor describes a species with neoclassical clarity and poise, marrying artistic expression to the love of scientific inquiry that characterized intellectual life in the early republic. It embodies pre-Darwinian understanding of the natural world as an aesthetic design.

A sheet of studies from Martin Johnson Heade’s “Thousand Islands Sketchbook” (c. 1860) offers an intriguing glimpse into the beginnings of luminism. The solid intimacy of these beautiful worm’s-eye views, which concentrate solely on line, mass, and shadow, gives no hint of distance, color, or light. This hints that the luminous atmospheric effects characteristic of Heade’s landscapes (not to mention the Hudson River School) were studio devices appended to topographical observations.

For the splendor of unadorned nature, turn to John Henry Hill’s 1866 watercolor of Lake Winnipesaukee. Water and vegetation are fastidiously stippled; the result is a shimmer that re-creates brilliantly the effects of air stirring leaves and ripples. Hill exemplifies what makes the Hood a delight: Its refreshing enthusiasm for fine regional artists or once-recognized names that fought hard before they went down.

Sargent’s nude figure drawing, a study for “Hell” (c. 1910) commissioned for a Boston Public Library mural, is a perfect counter to contemporary tendencies to see description and expression as polarities instead of crucial complements or – better – a unity. His bent, twisted figure (note the masterful handling of a foreshortened shoulder), and the agitated contours that suggest as much as they describe, convey anguish more creditably than Joan Mitchell’s untitled generic blur from the late 1950s. Her incoherent smudge is celebrated by the curators as “lyrical desperation,” a nonsense phrase from Frank O’Hara, laureate of Bohemia-in-the-Hamptons. (If you want lyricism, go directly to Blanche Lazzell’s 1920 charcoal of foxgloves.)

Mere copying of external appearances is not good drawing. But neither is pointless wandering in the hope of hitting on something worthy of the sheen on an artistic soul. Jackson Pollock’s untitled, so-called psychoanalytic drawing is arbitrary and ultimately boring. It calls to mind Robert Henri’s comment that when a drawing is tiresome “it may be because the motive is not worth the effort.” As Pollock found out, artists’ emotions are irrelevant except when they’re driving. What matters is the work’s ability to kindle response and the nature of the object toward which feelings are directed.

Be sure to see William Trost Richards’s dense pencil drawing “Palms” (1856).The abstract splendor of Richards’s tonal contrasts, their flickering shadow play, hold faith with the capacity of line and tone to elevate the mundane. Walter Murch’s magical charcoal and wash “Study #18” (1962) dissolves its motif – a ball set atop a rectangle partially covered by folded cloth – in light. Edges disappear; disembodied, translucent forms float on air to take shape only in the mind of the viewer. And do not miss George Ault’s precisionist “Back of Patchin Place” (1927) or Stuart Davis’s 1928 riff on an equestrian statue in Paris, which translates Henry IV into Sancho Panza on a sway-backed Rocinante near the Samartine department store.

Some of my favorite American draftsmen (Rico LeBrun, Leon Kelly, Edna Boies Hopkins) are owned by the Hood. Many have been left home in favor of more recognizable names. Nevertheless, the flavor of the collection is intact. Both the National Academy Museum and Dartmouth earn our gratitude.

Until December 31 (1083 Fifth Avenue, between 89th and 90th Streets, 212-369-4880).