Placing Faces ─ The portrait and the English country house in the long eighteenth century

This book explores the rich but understudied relationship between English country houses and the portraits they contain. It features essays by well-known scholars such as Alison Yarrington, Gill Perry, Kate Retford, Harriet Guest, Emma Barker and Desmond Shawe-Taylor. Works discussed include grand portraits, intimate pastels and imposing sculptures. Moving between residences as diverse as Stowe, Althorp Park, the Vache, Chatsworth, Knole and Windsor Castle, it unpicks the significance of various spaces – the closet, the gallery, the library – and the ways in which portraiture interacted with those environments. It explores questions around gender, investigating narratives of family and kinship in portraits of women as wives and daughters, but also as mistresses and celebrities. It also interrogates representations of military heroes in order to explore the wider, complex ties between these families, their houses, and imperial conflict.

This book will be essential reading for all those interested in eighteenth-century studies, especially for those studying portraiture and country houses.

Gill Perry is Professor of Art History at the Open University.

Kate Retford is Senior Lecturer in History of Art at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Jordan Vibert is a Freelance Researcher specialising in eighteenth-century art and culture.

Hannah Lyons is a Researcher and Information Assistant at Tate Britain, London.