David Stacey is an independent art historian with a lifelong interest in British paintings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He has contributed articles to the British Art Journal, The Burlington Magazine and other academic journals on the art history of this period. He graduated with a degree in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford and has a postgraduate degree in The History of Art from Birkbeck College, University of London, which led him to study the under-researched area of Art History discussed in the book. He has worked as an international water resources consultant in South and South-East Asia and the Middle East and is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He has two children and lives in London.