Citizens and Kings: Portraits in the Age of Revolution, 1760–1830 is the companion publication to the best and most comprehensive exhibition of portraits, and indeed of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century European art, not to have come to the United States in a long time. The show, conceived by the late Robert Rosenblum and MaryAnne Stevens, was originally intended to travel to the Guggenheim Museum in New York in addition to the Grand Palais in Paris and the Royal Academy in London. But construction issues at the Guggenheim prompted the cancellation of the U.S. venue, and the exhibition stayed in Europe. The failure of Citizens and Kings to cross the Atlantic was particularly disappointing because the exhibition provided an unprecedented international survey of portraiture at a crucial moment in the history of both the subject and modern art. Two very fine exhibitions, Portraiture in Paris Around 1800: “Cooper Penrose” by Jacques-Louis David (Timken Museum of Art, 2003) and The French Portrait: Revolution to Restoration (Smith College Museum of Art, 2005), recently brought to light a selection of beautiful and rarely seen French portraits of the period, but neither exhibition traveled and both were limited in their scope. Both catalogues represent...