Following in the methodological footsteps of his prize-winning Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Painter in Society, Richard Wendorf’s new book on British art in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is an experiment in cultural history, combining the analysis of specific artistic objects with an exploration of the cultural conditions in which they were created. Themes include an investigation of what happens when a painter dies, the role of writing around and within visual objects, and the nature of evidence in art history. Extended interpretations of some of the most iconic images in British art, including Constable’s Cenotaph, Raeburn’s Skating Minister, Stubbs’s Haymakers and Reapers, and Rossetti’s Prosperpine, Venus Verticordia, and Blessed Damosel, are part of a broader investigation of the ways in which we practice art history today. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art