To read this book is as pleasurable as a long lunch with a first-rate raconteur... Hamilton writes beautifully... Seldom have I learnt so much from a single book while simultaneously being so excellently entertained. --Lucy Hughes-Hallett, The Times Wonderful... If you were setting out as an artist in 19th-century London, this is the book you would want as your vade mecum... Full of interesting ideas and odd apercus... Entirely joyous --Lynn Barber, Sunday Times Hamilton's fascinating and richly researched book surveys the art world from a number of different angles... It is lucid, insightful and simply gripping... This is a brilliant account of learning, or failing, to survive in a market of extraordinary brutality. - Philip Hensher, Spectator Entertaining and original ... As a whole, like a plum pudding, this book is both nourishing and full of succulent bits and pieces. --Martin Gayford, Daily Telegraph A great sweep of a book, gathering numerous colourful studies of painters, engravers and sculptors, as well as patrons, dealers and members of the spectating public. --Seamus Perry, Literary Review A gripping story not of artistic movements but of practicalities: who bought the art, who copied it, and how much difference new paint colours made... Hamilton is terrific on the story of how pigment production moved into the new scientific age --Kathryn Hughes, Guardian Hamilton is a lucid and frequently droll guide to this symbiotic world. His book is not about paintings but about the trades such as curating, pigment-making and publishing that grew up around them. There was plenty of colour off the canvas, too. --Mail on Sunday Any number of novelists and historians could find inspiration in this vivid account of how the audience for art in Britain broadened during the nineteenth century... This is grand entertainment as well as serious history. --Evelyn Toynton, Prospect

James Hamilton is an art historian and biographer. He was formerly Alistair Horne Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford, and University Curator at the University of Birmingham, where he is Hon. Reader in History of Art. He has curated many exhibitions in galleries in Britain and abroad, from Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1974) to Turner and the Scientists (1998), Turner's Britain (2003), Turner and Italy (2008) and Volcano (2010). His biography of Turner was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Award.