Business leader and arts patron Sir Edwin A. G. Manton (1909–2005) and his wife Florence, Lady Manton, assembled an outstanding collection of 18th- and 19th-century British art. A gift to the Clark Art Institute from the Manton Foundation in 2007, their collection features more than three hundred oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints, including works by John Constable, J. M. W. Turner, Thomas Gainsborough, and William Blake.

In a series of wide-ranging essays, prominent scholars consider the major works and themes in the collection, relating them to larger issues within the field of British studies. Individual essays are devoted to Constable's oil sketches, cloud studies, and magisterial painting The Wheat Field; the growth of the watercolor tradition; print portfolios and narrative series; Thomas Rowlandson's satiric drawings; and Gainsborough's use of experimental materials as revealed through recent scientific analysis. The volume concludes with an illustrated checklist of the works in the collection.