This gripping story of one of the great graphic satirists and watercolor artists of the British School is based upon new research. Rowlandson kept no diary, wrote few letters, and appears only infrequently in the memoirs of others. In more than a decade s research, using church and official records, newspaper reports, contemporary accounts, and sales catalogs, the authors shed light on Rowlandson s family background, his education and art training in London and Paris, his professional associations, his travels in Britain and abroad, and the work itself."