This exquisite work is a preparatory sketch for a sleeping soldier in Ubaldo Gandolfi's monumental fresco of the Resurrection, (c1760) painted in the eleventh chapel of the Portico di San Luca, Bologna in Italy.

Leon de Smet's painting from 1941 is of his house in Sint Martens Latem in Belgium where a second wave of a group of multi generational artists had assembled from the end of the 19thC. His depiction of interiors was a major subject matter for him throughout his life.

'Ice Cream Man.' In July 1911, after an artistic epiphany on honeymoon in Concarneau, Brittany and a chance meeting with the Irish artist, Roderic O'Conor, Alfred Wolmark embarked on the pioneering 'colourist' path that he followed for the next two decades of his working life.

Stanley Spencer recorded in his 1938 Desk Diary that he began 'Magnolias,' in March of that year. On 5th April 1938, he wrote to his dealer Dudley Tooth saying that the painting was 'as good as anything I have done.'

'Logan's Rock, St Levan,' (c1916) perfectly demonstrates the height of Laura Knight’s development in Cornwall, this work is part of a series of paintings she composed between 1915 and 1919 all sharing an elevated viewpoint, dramatic diagonal composition and vibrant colour.

'Punting on the Cam.' The granddaughter of Darwin, at the start of the 20thC Gwen Raverat was at the centre of Cambridge intellectual aristocracy. A friend & patron of Stanley Spencer, a close friend of Virginia Woolf and Rupert Brooke, as well as a fine actress and painter.

In 1938, Evelyn Dunbar was commissioned by Country Life magazine to produce drawings (and later oils) for its Gardener’s Diary and made witty personifications of each month. The month of April sees a figure wearing a striped smock, holding a coldframe with a cuckoo in her hat.

With 'Reading at Supper,' from 1957, we are reminded of the importance Joan Eardley put on finding what she called the story behind human subjects - for her, a truly successful painting had to go deeper than a mere visual record.

Flowers, still lifes and domestic interiors are the primary subjects of Ethel Sands’s painting; here they are combined with books on a bookcase at the Château d’Auppegard near Dieppe in France where Sands and her partner, the Nan Hudson, spent summers together from the 1920s.

Waller Hugh Paton's picture from 1859 makes a symbolic, optimistic salute to the advancing technology of the mid 19thC. He was no doubt aware of Turner's 'Rain, Steam, Speed,' painted in 1844 which commented on the changing face of the landscape and society over a decade earlier.

'Icebergs.' Albert Bierstadt's primary motivation travelling to the Artic was to record the then unblemished world that he witnessed. This painting was made during his transatlantic voyage made in 1883 aboard the steamship Britannic.

The items in this still-life (c1750) feel handled, because of the way they have been handled by the paintbrush in Chardin's hand, he has also suggested the objects' various textures and substances through the play of light across surfaces and successive applications of paint.

John Nash became well known for his work painted in watercolour during WW1; post-war he started painting in oils. His work owed much to French landscape painting; an evocative style with a sense of tight construction, as is evident in this painting of the Isle of Skye (1974)

In the first months of 1960, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell left Sussex to stay with friends in France. On fine days, they painted outside; wet or cold days found them indoors painting still lifes such as this work by Duncan Grant.

'An Orchard in Spring.' (c1908) Hugo Baar was a Moravian painter who trained in Vienna and later joined the Secessionists. Though an individulist, his work can seem a little like that of Klimt but without the meticulously rendered detail.

Throughout the Edwardian period, Harold Knight overhauled his portrait painting. The formulaic face-painting of the Victorians gave way to expression of character; the sense that a subject has been seized from life’s continuum became the essential criteria of a good portrait.

Spencer Gore’s painting depicts the dining room at 31 Mornington Crescent, London, circa 1910. At the time, Gore and his wife, Mollie, were renting two rooms from the local vicar, one of which served as his studio.

Arnold Mason's drawing shows the artist Winifred Knights asleep. In 1920 (the date of this work) Knights won the Rome Scholarship and the couple became engaged; she later married the painter Thomas Monnington.

Laurits Andersen Ring was one of the leading artists of the Danish Golden Age; much of his work is indebted to Symbolism while frequently conveying themes of social realism as in this painting from 1908 'Whitewashing the Old House.'

'Lazarus Breaks His Fast,' (c.1927) is the self-portrait Walter Sickert made after his recovery from suffering a stroke. After this illness, he began to use photographs as a basis for paintings and not just to help composition as he had in the 1890s.

Norman Stevens was one of the great painters and printmakers of his generation. He studied at Bradford School of Art alongside Hockney, John Loker and David Oxtoby and was the first of this group to continue his studies in London. This is 'Spring,' from 1976.

'Still life.' (1937) One of Giorgio Morandi's friends, the writer Dino Campana, wrote in one of his short stories: 'the surest way to amaze ourselves is to stare fixedly at a given object. At one point, it will seem to us, miraculously, that we are seeing it for the first time.'

With its low horizon, simple composition and focus on the rendering of the clouds, sea and sand, Boudin's picture (1888) of Trouville is reminiscent of the work by the 17thC Dutch realist landscape artist Salomon van Ruysdael, an artist he greatly admired throughout his life.

Alfred Steven's dramatic 'Steamboats at Sea,' (1882) was painted off the Normandy coast at Honfleur, where he spent occasional summers. It was a work appreciated by Whistler who offered to purchase it at way beyond the price Stevens was asking for it, but was refused.

Evelyn Dunbar’s admiration for Stanley Spencer’s vision emerges in her painting, depicting an army tailor and ATS Tailoresses from 1943. Dunbar was modest about her achievements; the lack of gallery representation led to some neglect of her work until recent years.

Augustus John's portrait of the English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy dates from 1923 and was painted in the study at Max Gate in Dorset, the house Hardy had designed and built for himself.

In Stanley Spencer's 'Cottage at St Ives,' (1937) the scene has an abundance of circumstantial and realistic detail. Its quality is drawn from his intense absorption, his unerring control of space, and his ability to depict every detail before him almost without discrimination.

'The Icknield Way.' (1911) The originality of this work represents Spencer Gore's response to European Post Impressionism in several shows staged in London, in particular Manet and the Post Impressionists and the Italian Futurist Painters in the same year this was made.

In February 1918, when the Zeppelin raids on London began, air raids were still something of a novelty and people had to find refuge where they could. William Nicholson's painting is of the ballroom at the Piccadilly Hotel, one of the first steel-framed buildings in London.

If you get a chance, go to see the brilliant 'Stanley Spencer in Suffolk,' exhibition at Gainsborough House in Sudbury, the show finishes 29th March. This is 'Southwold,' (1937) a favourite resort of Spencer's first wife Hilda Carline.

'Breakwater, San Sebastian.' (1918) Most of Sorolla's paintings at the beach in San Sebastian are different from his Mediterranean scenes. In Valencia, the figures belong to the sea, but here they watch it from the promenade, like an audience watching a performance in a theatre.

'Singer Building at Night.' (c1910) Charles Vezin worked at a dry-goods firm for the first part of his career then began painting, dedicating himself to art for the remainder of his life. He's known for his Impressionistic scenes of the New York skyline, such as this work.

'Auricula in Pots.' (1956) Charles Mahoney's knowledge and passion for gardening influenced much of his work, he also wrote and illustrated a volume of Gardener’s Choice with the artist, Evelyn Dunbar.

The impact of Sorolla's teaching on Arthur Grover Rider is obvious from this work - the sunlight, the subject matter, and the rendering of the sea. Rider moved to Los Angeles in 1924 and lived and worked near Laguna Beach throughout the 1930s where this work was painted.

'Fowey, Cornwall.' (1910) Joseph Southall dedicated himself to the use of tempera inspired by early Italian renaissance art. He was founder member of the Society of Painters in Tempera who yearned for a ‘purity of vision and form,' they saw was lacking in Impressionism.

'Open Doors with Metronome,' (1980) Charles Hardaker has the historical resonance of so many illusionistic works by Vilhelm Hammershøi; the doors principally help to introduce a dimension of reality.

Painted in 1911 in Paris, this work shows May Guinness developing her style further towards Fauvism. The First World War interrupted her studies in France so she enlisted as a nurse and was later awarded the Croix de Guerre for her bravery during the Battle of Verdun.

'Fowey Harbour, Cornwall.' (1887) Frank Brangwyn was among the new generation of artists who painted radically different coastal pictures in Britain in the 1880s, their vision sharpened and modernised by the new reportage methods which came with hand-held photography.

Painted in 1874 by Alfred Sisley, 'Autumn Mists,' embodies the breakthrough moment of high Impressionism. This work would have been painted quickly as Sisley tried to capture the fleeting, transitory effects of mist and the random patterns it threw across this scene.

The strongest palpable association with Henri Manguin's 'Still life with Cyclamens,' (1912) is with the early works of Matisse, whose vivid layering of patterns and flattened perspective Manguin admired.

From unpromising, semi-amateur beginnings, Paul Cézanne retreated to Provence on a struggle to create a new way of picturing the world. 'What I am trying to translate to you is more mysterious; it is entwined in the very roots of being, in the implacable source of sensations.'

'Still life with Plastic Cup and Spoon.' (1974) There is something sacramental about the arrangement of the objects in this work by David Tindle; using tempera enables him to paint the crisp creases on the tablecloth.

Relatively little is known of the early career of the Suffolk painter Henry Bright. A pupil of John Sell Cotman, and a friend of Turner, he was a master at depicting the effects of sunlight and shadow. This pastel is 1850-ish.

'Au bord de la rivière Marseilles.' Adolphe Monticelli painted hundreds of pictures from the 1870s with heavily textured, richly coloured surfaces; Cézanne was fascinated by his work, as was Van Gogh who compared his 'orchestration of tones,' to that of Delacroix.

None of Morandi's pictures are simple once you start to think how they were made. Once you get beyond admiration of his skill you start to wonder about him working in his bedroom and living with his sisters in a flat in Bologna, and how he produced purity of form like this.

'Mrs James MacLehose.' A focus on draughtsmanship is very much evident in William Strang’s work. He produced over 500 portrait sketches in the early 1900s, these proved so popular that he made two trips to New York in 1904 and 1905 to make drawings of his American patrons.

George Clausen painted this picture in 1889 in the village of Cookham Dean in Berkshire; the model was Mary Baldwin who was around 16 at the time this work. Clausen was one of the 'rural naturalists,' many of whom were influenced by the French pastoralist Jules Bastien Lepage.

'Still Life with Mustard Pot.' By the the early 1860s, Henri Fantin Latour was producing three genres of painting that would sustain him throughout his entire career: portraiture and imaginative or mythological scenes and still life painting with which he had the most success.

'A Relaxing Afternoon.' (1927) It’s worth pointing out that Vilhelm Hammershøi wasn’t alone in producing quiet interior paintings. Sigvard Hansen was part of a group including Peter Ilsted and Carl Holsøe who are sometimes called the Copenhagen Interior School.

Alfred Stevens pioneered the image of the modern 19thC woman through the use of contemporary dress and subject matter in his paintings. In many of his works, there's a careful inclusion of symbolism in the background of the picture.