Living in North London, raised by parents who gave me a great deal of liberty, I discovered the Tate and the National Galleries when I was very young, and in my early teens they became among my favourite places to visit. I could not have wished for a better grounding in the subject of art, … Continue reading The Fighting Temeraire

This is one of the many versions of 'Sunflowers' that Vincent Van Gogh painted. It's the one found in London's National Gallery which I visited frequently from my childhood on. It was one of those pictures I used to gravitate towards every time I visited; it was magnetic, irresistible.I loved it partly because I had … Continue reading Sunflowers

'The Cornfield', John Constable, 1826: another of the pictures from the National Gallery that have come to mean so much to me.It's an odd thing about Constable, that while we think of him as a painter of decorative English landscapes, a little old-fashioned and traditional maybe, many of his contemporaries criticised him for his modernity, … Continue reading The Cornfield