From George Stubbs’s golden vision of the labourer’s place in society to Ford Madox Brown’s heroically monumental celebration of manual labour, artists gave individual interpretations of work, as Michael Hall reveals

Spotlight on readers’ excellent images and how they captured them

“Johannes Vermeer is the most laconic of the Dutch old masters,” Andrew Graham-Dixon once remarked, adding that this “may explain why he has been the cause of so much volubility in others”. A quarter

Alíz Kovács-Zöldi considers…

It’s a petrolhead’s dream: wrestling a rusty old padlock and prising open a creaky door to unearth a classic car ripe for a loving restoration. It’s called a barn find, and there are YouTube channels

Exhibition of the week Anna Ancher: Painting Light ...