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| Sebastiano Conca Sibyl 1726 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| attributed to Francesco Trevisani Portrait of Sir Edward Gascoigne ca. 1725 oil on canvas Lotherton Hall, Leeds, Yorkshire |
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| François Boucher Portrait of Madame de Pompadour ca. 1758 oil on canvas Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh |
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| Robert Edge Pine Portrait of historian Catherine Macaulay (as a Roman Matron) ca. 1775 oil on canvas National Portrait Gallery, London |
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Portrait of Marie-Adelaide de France in Turkish Dress 1753 oil on canvas Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence |
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| Nicolas de Largillière Portrait of Charles-Léonor Aubry, Marquis de Castelnau 1701 oil on canvas Minneapolis Institute of Art |
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| Pompeo Batoni Portrait of Joseph Henry of Straffan ca. 1750-55 oil on canvas Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Pietro Rotari Young Woman with a Book ca. 1756-62 oil on canvas Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Pierre Subleyras Portrait of a Man ca. 1745 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
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| Allan Ramsay Portrait of Emily, Marchioness of Kildare ca. 1764-66 oil on canvas Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool |
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| Jean-Baptiste Perronneau Portrait of a Boy with a Book (the Artist's Brother) ca. 1745-46 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Baptiste-François Desoria Portrait of Constance Pipelet 1797 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Maurice Quentin de La Tour Portrait of Duval de l'Epinoy ca. 1750 pastel Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon |
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| Thomas Lawrence Portrait of Richard Payne Knight 1794 oil on canvas Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester |
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| Nathaniel Dance-Holland Portrait of Tobias Smollett ca. 1764 oil on canvas Yale Center for British Art |
"About a dozen years ago, many decent families, restricted to small fortunes, besides those that came hither on the score of health, were tempted to settle at Bath, where they could then live comfortably, and even make a genteel appearance, at a small expence: but the madness of the times has made the place too hot for them, and they are now obliged to think of other migrations. Some have already fled to the mountains of Wales, and others have retired to Exeter. Thither, no doubt, they will be followed by the flood of luxury and extravagance, which will drive them from place to place to the very Land's End; and there, I suppose, they will be obliged to ship themselves to some other country. Bath is become a mere sink of profligacy and extortion. Every article of housekeeping is raised to an enormous price, a circumstance no longer to be wondered at when we know that every petty retainer of fortune piques himself upon keeping a table, and thinks it is for the honour of his character to wink at the knavery of his servants, who are in a confederacy with the market-people and, of consequence, pay whatever they demand. Here is now a mushroom of opulence, who pays a cook seventy guineas a week for furnishing him with one meal a day. This portentous frenzy is become so contagious that the very rabble and refuse of mankind are infected."
– Tobias Smollett, from The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771)