LS Lowry is arguably England’s greatest artist. He painted a subject area that no one had ever painted before, the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, and became popular with the general public to

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

“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

Best books… Roy Foster The emeritus professor of ...

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

A new catalogue in four volumes explores the extraordinary riches of the sculpture in the Royal Collection. Its author, Sir Jonathan Marsden , selects 10 favourite works that reflect the diversity of this astonishing collection