This work discusses the art of Gustave Courbet in the years directly after the 1848 revolution, showing how complex Courbet's intuition of the social and political issues of the time really was, and how appropriate were the pictures he painted for the Salon of 1851.

Questioning those who view Impressionism solely in terms of artistic technique, T.J. Clark describes the painting of Manet, Degas, Seurat and others as an attempt to give form to France's modernity and seek out its typical representatives, be they barmaids, sightseers or the petits bourgeois.

The experience of modernisation - the social changes that swept millions of people into the capitalist world - and modernism in art, literature and architecture are integrated in this account.

The 16th revised and updated edition of this introduction to art, from the earliest cave paintings to experimental art. New artists have been incorporated such as Corot, Kollwitz and Nolde, and six fold-outs present large-scale works such as Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece.

A history of the French Revolution, this book gives an account of the first few years of the great Revolution in France, and of the decades that led up to it.