A Right Royal Face Off

aw_product_id: 
24546416671
merchant_image_url: 
https://cdn.waterstones.com/bookjackets/large/9781/7856/9781785631306.jpg
merchant_category: 
Books
search_price: 
8.99
book_author_name: 
Simon Edge
book_type: 
Paperback
publisher: 
Eye Books
published_date: 
25/07/2019
isbn: 
9781785631306
Merchant Product Cat path: 
Books > Fiction > Modern & contemporary fiction
specifications: 
Simon Edge|Paperback|Eye Books|25/07/2019
Merchant Product Id: 
9781785631306
Book Description: 
It is 1777, and England's second-greatest portrait artist, Thomas Gainsborough, has a thriving practice a stone's thrown from London's royal palaces. Meanwhile, the press talks up his rivalry with Sir Joshua Reynolds, the pedantic theoretician who is the top dog of British portraiture. Fonder of the low life than high society, Gainsborough loathes pandering to grand sitters, but he changes his tune when he is commissioned to paint King George III and his large family. In their final, most bitter competition, who will be chosen as court painter, Tom or Sir Joshua? Two and a half centuries later, a badly damaged painting turns up on a downmarket TV antiques show being filmed in Suffolk. Could the monstrosity really be, as its eccentric owner claims, a Gainsborough? If so, who is the sitter? And why does he have donkey's ears? Mixing ancient and modern as he did in his acclaimed debut The Hopkins Conundrum, Simon Edge takes aim at fakery and pretension in this highly original celebration of one of our greatest artists.

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