As one of the great portrait painters of the 19th century, George Frederic Watts (1817-1904) is best known for his 'Hall of Fame' series showing the noted contemporaries of his day. This series forms the cornerstone of the National Portrait Gallery's collection in London, but the wider importance of Watts's portraiture has never been fully appreciated since many works are in private collections and some have never been published. Timed to coincide with the centenary of his death, this book is the first major study of this aspect of Watts's work and provides a unique opportunity to see many of the artist's grand full-lengths, often strikingly beautiful and most hardly known, as well as the wide range of his portraits, from society beauties to eminent Victorians, dating from the 1840s to the end of the century.