Complete and unabridged, with 60 full-page plates by Robert Dodd, John Constable and George Chambers. A gentleman and his wife, ruined and genuinely aristocratic, offer themselves to a magazine artist as models for aristocrats — and are useless, because they are the real thing and cannot be drawn. Five tales about art, artists and appearances, including the cockney model who poses better than any duchess. James wrote them in 1891–92, while he was trying to make his fortune in the theatre. Sixty plates of portrait and conversation pieces from 1750 to 1908, by painters including Henry Sargent and George Richmond, extend the tales' study of how sitters are posed, dressed and displayed.