'Fruit in a blue delft bowl.' (1880) The Finnish painter Maria Wiik is an obscure artist even though her name is known through her friend Helene Schjerfbeck. In 1878 the art critic Carl Gustaf Estlander judged her work as 'downright excellent.'

Femme avec un chat.' Paintings made by Louis Anquetin in the 1880s and 1890s influenced a number of his contemporaries, especially van Gogh, Emile Bernard and Toulouse-Lautrec. Of these, it was Anquetin who received the first serious attention from art critics.

The work by Vanessa Bell was painted at the Chateau de Fontcreuse, Cassis, on the estate of which she and Duncan Grant had their house, La Bergére, in April 1932.

This painting by Stephen Bone captures the unconfined joy of a bonfire. I love it for its innocence; the child depicted is his son, Gavin Bone, who also became an artist and exhibited several times at the Royal Academy.

When Sorolla painted 'Niña en mar plateado,' in 1909, it was amongst the most luminous and freely handled works he had produced. In 1906, the newspaper 'La Nación' had written: 'Sorolla is one of the glories of Valencia...one of the glories of modern Spain.'

Although painted in oils, Berthe Morisot's 'Hanging the Laundry out to Dry,' (1878) shows characteristics of her earlier watercolours with which she was able to create a translucent atmosphere and feathery touch, which contribute to the freshness in her paintings.

Like his artistic hero, Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse merged the traditional and the avant-garde. 'In Still Life with Geranium,' (1906) he transformed a still life into an Arcadian landscape characteristic of the Fauves of which he was recognised as the leader.

Duncan Grant's interior was painted in London in 1939 at his studio, 8 Fitzroy Street; destroyed in an air raid the following year. The picture in the background is a study for 'The Flower Gatherers,' a mural for RMS Queen Mary - later rejected by Cunard.

In the summer of 1867, Claude Monet stayed with his aunt at Sainte-Adresse in northern France. The expansion of the country’s rail network turned this small, rural fishing village into a seaside resort for tourists, here Monet hinted at this transformation.

In the summer of 1867, Claude Monet stayed with his aunt at Sainte-Adresse in northern France. The expansion of the country’s rail network turned this small, rural fishing village into a seaside resort for tourists, here Monet hinted at this transformation.

In 'Southampton Water,' (1872) Whistler has reduced shipping vessels to ghostly forms in the deepening twilight, the only brightness comes from the reflections of lights and the moon. The setting serves primarily as a vehicle for his interest in the tonal harmonies of darkness.

Here Claude Monet’s future wife, Camille Doncieux, sits on an island in the Seine looking toward the hamlet of Gloton, next to the town of Bennecourt, from which she and Monet have rowed - Émile Zola had recommended it as a cheap retreat that was easily accessible from Paris.

'Cabin in the Cotton,' (c1931) exemplifies the tactile style of Horace Pippin who turned to painting as a mode of rehabilitation after severely injuring his arm while serving in World War I.

Writing about the time he visited now modern-day Kenya in 1910, Akseli Gallen-Kallela wrote: 'The visions around us change; everything is just days and nights that merge with the sun, the moon and the stars, in an air so gentle that one forgets one’s own existence.'

'Early Morning.' (1954) In Arthur Taylor's picture, a lone passenger heads to his train for an early morning commute to work. In the 1950s, the biggest passenger demand in the UK was for summer day trips to the seaside rather than the morning commute to the office.

The title Richard Hamilton's work is inspired by Béla Bartók's 'From the Diary of a Fly,' for piano, a piece which attempts to depict the actions of a fly caught in a cobweb, from the perspective of the fly.

Long before Cara Delevingne shot to stardom as one of the most sought after models of her generation, her great aunt, the socialite Viscountess Castlerosse, made headlines of her own. John Lavery was so impressed by her that he included her legs twice in this painting from 1938.

Lily of the Valley was one of Winifred Nicholson’s favourite flowers and one that she painted a number of times. The south parlour was the main sitting room at Boothby, Nicholson’s parents’ house in Cumberland, and where she lived from the beginning of WW2 until 1959.

Eliot Hodgkin is best known for his still life work in tempera, but before he got into his stride making these subjects, he painted scenes in London showing the devastation caused by air-raids during WW2 and the resulting wasteland. This work is entitled: 'Undergrowth.' (1941)

In 1890, two months before he died, van Gogh painted the garden of the landscape artist Charles-François Daubigny at Auvers-sur-Oise. Lacking a canvas, he covered a tea-towel with a thick, pink layer of ground to paint this moment in early summer.

The crisp differentiation of each element in the composition, the taut design, the modelling of the face in angular planes of bright colours and the tender characterisation are typical of Harold Gilman's portraits of women around 1916-1917.

Lucie van Dam van Isselt's still-lifes are a great favourite of mine. She studied at the Roval Academy of Art in The Hague from 1891 and from around this date began painting observational pictures with no frippery. 'Still life with herring and scissors,' is from 1945.

Georgia O'Keeffe named this work after the Irish writer Gerald Heard, whom she met at her home Ghost Ranch in New Mexico 1937. O'Keeffe found footprints around the dead tree and imagined Heard dancing there, prompting her to call it 'Gerald’s Tree.'

In 1924, the year this picture of the Grand Canyon was painted, Gunnar Widforss exhibited a large group of works depicting scenes from US National Parks. An art critic at the time considered Widforss as 'possibly the greatest watercolorist in America today.'

During the Great Depression, Douglass Crockwell made several paintings for the Works Progress Administration including this work from 1932, which celebrates the industrial workers at the newspaper plant in the town of Glens Falls, New York.

The window became a prominent symbol in 19thC art, representing a threshold between the interior and exterior, and a space for contemplation and longing. 'View of Rome from the Artist’s Room at the Villa Medici,' by Constant Moyaux was painted in 1863.

Made in 1867, three years before he was elected a full member of the Royal Scottish Academy (a fact he proudly proclaimed after his signature), this charming little picture shows William McTaggart before he developed the bold impressionistic style for which he is best known.

Reginald Mills became a member of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1930, the date of this work depicting the Cornish coastline. At the outbreak of WW2, he joined the Auxiliary Fire Service and made a series of dramatic paintings recording the London Blitz.

An appropriate picture to paint for Martin Yeoman, he has accompanied the King on official overseas tours when the former Prince of Wales visited the Gulf States and on tours to Hong Kong, India and Nepal. This work shows the rear aspect of Highgrove House.

Campbell Archibald Mellon captured the fleeting glories of the English seaside summer, the escape for many thousands to Gorleston in Norfolk. His paintings (this is c1930) often stressed a celebratory brightness or as here, a typically grey day on the coast.