"This book accompanies the first major exhibition held in Britain to focus on the more intimate types of Georgian and Regency portraiture. While oil paintings and sculpture dominated the public arena of portraiture, more private portraits were being created for domestic consumption and display. Nearly two hundred works, drawn from the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland and the British Museum, by leading artists including Gainsborough, Ramsay, Wilkie and Lawrence, are illustrated and catalogued within thematic sections on self-portraits, depictions of family and friends and commissioned portraits of the rising middle classes and the celebrities of the day. The two introductory essays by the co-curators Stephen Lloyd and Kim Sloan discuss aspects of the intimacy in viewing."--BOOK JACKET.