La force tranquille

There are many reasons that an artist’s ambitions can be thwarted, including the decision to become a teacher. Later this month, an exhibition will shine a light on talent obscured by a career in the classroom

BOHEMIANS A BLOOMSBURY INGÉNUE The lives ...

With a strength of character that belied her fragile looks, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun pushed the boundaries of royal portraiture and, after the French Revolution, challenged the loss of female influence via every frill and fold in her work

Muriel Spark’s irrepressible creative drive

When COUNTRY LIFE’s Henry Avray Tipping spotted a 17th-century four poster languishing in a Herefordshire attic in 1911, he set off a chain of events that saw the bed leave its ancestral home and land at The Met in New York

The artistic legacy of the John siblings