First published in New York in 1994 by Thames & Hudson.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 469-472) and index.

Introduction. Critical art and history -- Classicism and Romanticism. Patriotism and virtue : David to the young Ingres ; Classicism in crisis : Gros to Delacroix / Thomas Crow -- Tensions of enlightenment : Goya -- Visionary history painting : Blake and his contemporaries ; Nature and history in English romantic landscape painting ; Landscape art and romantic nationalism in Germany and America ; Architecture unshackled, 1790-1851 / Brian Lukacher -- New World Frontiers. Old world, new world : the encounter of cultures on the American frontier ; Black and white in America / Francis K. Pohl -- Realism and Naturalism. The generation of 1830 and the crisis in the public sphere -- The rhetoric of realism : Courbet and the origins of the avant-garde -- Photography, modernity, and art / David Llewellyn -- The decline of history painting : Germany, Italy, and France -- Modern art and life. Architecture and design in the age of industry -- Manet and the Impressionists -- Issues of gender in Cassatt and Eakins / Linda Nochlin -- Mass culture and Utopia : Seurat and Neoimpressionism -- The appeal of modern art : Toulouse-Lautrec -- Abstraction and populism : Van Gogh -- Symbolism and the dialectics of retreat --The failure and success of Cézanne.