In his magisterial survey of British art, commissioned for the gold standard Pelican History of Art and first published in 1953, Ellis Waterhouse paused in his discussion of Thomas Gainsborough and made the following admission: “Unpleasant as it still is for some of us to introduce the shade of Marx into the history of art, it may contribute to the understanding of Gainsborough” (261). This passage attests to the anxiety of the art historian in...