James Jefferys (1751-1784) was more or less unknown until 1976, when an exhibition of drawings mainly from Maidstone Museum and Art Gallery, some signed, was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum and an article by T. Clifford and S. Legonix was published in the Burlington Magazine, vol. CXVIII, 1976, pp. 148-57. He was subsequently held responsible for a group of drawins hitherto attributed to 'The Mater of the Giants' (see N. Pressly in the Burlington Magazine, vol. 119, 1977, pp. 280-84) but this has not been universally accepted. Jefferys was in Rome and Florence in 1777 and his drawings have close affirmations to, and have often been attributed to, articles of the school of ........ artists who worked in Italy at about that time, Gavin Hamilton, John Hamilton Mortimer, James Barry, George Romney, Henry Fuseli and Alexander runciman. As can be seen, his style and his technique was fairly eclectic, but a body of work can now be attributed to his hand