A Right Royal Face-Off

Download or read book A Right Royal Face-Off written by Simon Edge and published by Eye Books (US&CA). This book was released on 2020-08-28 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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, while 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 the grandees who sit for him. However, he changes his tune when he is commissioned to paint King George III, his German queen and their vast family. He discovers a taste for royal company—but who will be chosen as court painter, Tom or Sir Joshua? Meanwhile, two and a half centuries later, a badly damaged painting turns up on a downmarket antiques TV 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?