The Portrait in eighteenth-century America /

This is the record of a 1987 Smithsonian conference of the same title, and it ably demonstrates the validity of Wayne Craven's contention in his enlightening essay on Colonial portraiture that the genre offers a "beckoning frontier for the established scholar and the graduate scholar." The contributions of the other ten participants, alike extensively published in the field, establish new avenues of research in the iconographical, commercial, cultural, and--most especially--societal aspects of portrait painting. Indeed, discussion of its significance in the definition and attainment of that elusive yet enduring goal, gentility, forms an underlying theme uniting the diverse papers, which range from the pre-Revolutionary British context to the 20th-century American art market in Colonial portraits. The papers are as readable as they are stimulating, and, although illustrated only by black-and-white photos, are supplied with ample endnotes and a comprehensive index. The contents merit a broad professional and graduate readership and will prove invaluable for advanced undergraduate students of portraiture and American art. R. W. Liscombe; University of British Columbia