Gainsborough's Beautiful Mrs. Graham

This book explores the National Gallery of Scotland's world famous portrait The Honourable Mrs Graham by Thomas Gainsborough, one of the finest and most sensitive British portrait painters of the eighteenth century. An exquisite society beauty, Mary Graham (1757-1792) sat for Gainsborough for at least three portraits. Following her tragically early death from tuberculosis, her husband, later Lord Lynedoch, was so grief-stricken that he had the portrait stored in a London warehouse. It was not until after his death, more than forty years later, that an heir rediscovered the painting and bequeathed it to the Scottish nation on condition that it never leave Edinburgh. Gainsborough's Beautiful Mrs Graham comprehensively explores the personal, social and historical context of the painting and the family who owned it and goes on to examine the afterlife of a picture whose popularity has generated a whole industry of souvenir production.