From gleaming presents to inebriating parties, discover five artists’ interpretations of the festive season

The Dream by Henri Rousseau

Painting a local cricket match, Sherree Valentine-Daines received an invitation that changed her career and led her to become artist-in-residence at Goodwood

Opera is dead. And has been for quite a long time. I don’t care what anybody says about Poulenc and Prokofiev, I cannot be persuaded that any listenable music theatre has been written since Puccini. (

Sandra Lodi with her Ferrari 296 GTS Spyder ...

Johannes Vermeer brightened his native Delft with luminous pictures of women caught in intimate moments, but the serenity of his work, of which he produced remarkably little, is at odds with a life mired in debt, as Carla Passino discovers