The Artist and the State, 1777–1855

Examining political uses of 'universal history', or the philosophy of history, in European art from 1777 to 1855, Guernsey discusses mural paintings and sculptural works produced in England and France during the time. He analyzes the ways artists including James Barry, Eugène Delacroix, Paul Chenavard, David d'Angers, and Gustave Courbet expressed linear or cyclical histories of progress and decline, and helped shape a significant mode of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century political art.