1777
A01=Simon Edge
Anyone for Edmund?
Author_Simon Edge
Category=FBA
Category=FU
Category=FV
comedy
contemporary fiction
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_historical-fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
historical
humorous
mysery
satire
Simon Edge
The End of the World is Flat
The Hopkins Conundrum
The Hurtle of Hell
thomas gainsborough
Product details
- ISBN 9781785631306
- Weight: 240g
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 25 Jul 2019
- Publisher: Eye Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
Simon Edge was born in Chester and read philosophy at Cambridge University. He is the author of two previous novels: The Hopkins Conundrum, longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award, and The Hurtle of Hell. He lives in Suffolk.
