Joshua Reynolds
The playful portraitist
In front of the banner advertising the RA Summer Exhibition, the swagger statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) by Alfred…
Things that go bump
Pregnancy has always been a public spectacle – and as the Foundling Museum’s new exhibition shows, a dangerous one
Cracking jokes with Dr Johnson
I cast my Readers under two general Divisions, the Mercurial and the Saturnine. The first are the gay part of…
Fifty-one hours in Dr Johnson’s rumbustious company
When a man is tired of Samuel Johnson, he’s tired of life. James Boswell intended his biography of Dr Johnson,…
A dazzling vision
There are a number of reports by his contemporaries of Thomas Gainsborough at work. They make you realise what a…
Sound and fury
There was a genteel brouhaha last year — leaders in the Times, letters to the Telegraph, tutting in the galleries…
Demonised Barber of Fleet Street
We know a great deal about Samuel Johnson and virtually nothing about his Jamaican servant, Francis Barber. The few facts…
Rubens wronged
The main spring offering at the Royal Academy, Rubens and His Legacy: Van Dyck to Cézanne, teaches two useful lessons.…
