A notable addition to the growing body of work that examines art and work as social constructs, Art and Work traces the development of commercial illustration and the graphic arts industry in Canada from the late eighteenth century to the 1940s.

Beginning with the origins of the graphic arts industry in Britain, Angela Davis describes the development of technology, commercial organization, and professionalization of artists in Canada. She focuses on the artists involved in the creation and reproduction of a "popular" art form. The evolution of commercial illustration and the graphic arts industry, Davis asserts, had a dramatic impact not only on the popular press and advertising but also on illustrators, engravers, photo-engravers, and lithographers, who still considered themselves to be artists but found that they were now working in an industrial atmosphere similar to that of other workers.

Art and Work reveals that the foundations of Canadian art and popular culture rest not only on the European traditions of "fine" art but also on the commercial art produced in the early graphic arts houses.