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

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The sale of a Fabergé imperial egg and a 15th-century triptych made headlines last year, but one of the most powerful pieces was a painting by Richard Parkes Bonington showing what he could have become, had he not died so young

Saving the best for last: the author is ...

The most sensual pictures of women sprang from Ovid’s verses, the Aeneid gave Turner his longest-lasting subject matter and Edward Burne-Jones saw himself in Arthur’s deathless slumber. Carla Passino explores how literature influenced art

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