Abstract
Abstract: This essay considers the large and unwieldy question—"What is portraiture?"—in order to understand more clearly the achievements in sculpture, painting, and print that characterize a period art historians have described as the "golden age" of the British portrait. The essay redefines portraiture to include all of the major and minor portrait types across media; it devises corresponding rhetorical modalities for those different material environments; and it proposes a system of dynamic interplay rather than one of static taxonomy. Crucial to this effort is the reconceptualization of the material object itself as an entity capable of modal effect separate and apart from image or likeness. Equally important is the recognition that the interplay in question can be understood as a process by which portraiture measures, exchanges, and stores portrait values in ways similar to those of monetary systems.
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