Published to accompany the exhibition of the same name held at Tate Britain, London, 28th February-27 August 2018 ; Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, 5th October 2018-14th January 2019.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

A new account of one of the most distinctive, long-lasting and fascinating chapters of modern British art: how artists have used painting to record their personal, sensuous, immediate and often intense experiences of life. Spanning a century, this history encompasses a diverse but related group of painters, mostly based in London, who focused on the depiction of the human figure and the everyday landscape they inhabited. Despite their great differences, these artists all shared a similarly intense and scrutinizing gaze, and remained loyal to their pursuit of intimate and powerful representations of reality.