This dictionary examines over 5000 British portrait artists providing biographical information. It combines information needed by collectors, dealers, museums, libraries and auction houses. Research has been gleaned from parish registers, monumental inscriptions, census returns, marriage licences, wills, dictionaries and contemporary accounts. Engravers of the artists' work are also listed to assist researchers idenitfy anonymous sitters and provide art historians with an indication of the contemporary availability of an artist's compositions. The illustrations have been carefully selected in order to show as many rarely seen unpublished works as possible.