This collection reasserts the importance of class analysis to a critical art history in the key phase of bourgeois history from 1790-1850. A group of specialist scholars examine related developments in Britian, France, Germany, and the United States. Themes covered include exhibitions, art criticism, patronage, taste, and the political resonances of specific artworks. Each section of the book has an introduction sketching bourgeois class formation in the society concerned, and reviewing the historical literature about it.