My Favourite Painting: Clare Matterson

Clare Matterson of the RHS chooses an abstract image.

Drift, 2015, oil on canvas, 25½in by 32¼in, by Martin Battye (b. 1952), private collection.
Drift, 2015, oil on canvas, 25½in by 32¼in, by Martin Battye (b. 1952), private collection.
(Image credit: Martin Battye)

Clare Matterson on Drift by Martin Battye

‘I started my love affair with Suffolk in my thirties — falling not only for its big skies and shifting light, but also the textures and colours across shingle, sand and mud where rivers meet sea. When I encountered Drift, it captured what I had grown not only to love, but also to need, as respite from the city. The layering of colour and the strong lines are strangely representational of the mix of sky, water and land encountered on remote walks. The artist, Martin Battye, grew up in Suffolk, so I can only imagine that these landscapes are part of his being, giving him an uncanny ability to transfer to them canvas’

Clare Matterson is the new director-general of the Royal Horticultural Society.

Charlotte Mullins comments on Drift

Martin Battye is an abstract artist who creates light-filled, atmospheric canvases. In Drift, his grid-like format threatens to break down under the weight of paint, the skeins that form vertical ladders reduced to soft peaks on the bottom right as the peach ground pushes through. The surface feels alive, organic, as if it were breathing. Each of Mr Battye’s works is rooted in the colour theories of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Immanuel Kant’s philosophical musings on beauty; he says he is happy to let the paint guide him, to wallow in its tactility and inherent expressive power.

Drift is a heavily impastoed canvas dominated by blue and framed by a painted edge in flat peach paint. Mr Battye’s interest in Seurat’s experiments in colour informs his use of the complementary colour on the painted frame and the thin red edge that separates the peach from the blue, adding a crackle of energy. However, the painting itself has more of Monet’s nuanced use of colour and the turquoise paint pulses with white, cobalt, orange.

Mr Battye trained at the Winchester and Sunderland Schools of Art before a career in healthcare. Originally a landscape painter, he now paints full time again and concentrates on abstraction. He experiments with paint as an expression of light and space, at times switching styles to explore new ways to communicate. He quotes the Op Art painter Michael Kidner to explain what he is striving for: ‘Unless you read a painting as a feeling, then you don’t get anything at all…’


The Procession of the Magi, 1459–61, by Benozzo Gozzoli (about 1420–97), fresco, private chapel in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence, Italy.
(Image credit: Bridgeman Images)

My Favourite Painting: Teresa Dent

Teresa Dent of the GWCT chooses a glorious Renaissance masterpiece.

Bouquet of Flowers, about 1909–10, oil on canvas, 24in by 19½in, by Henri Rousseau (1844–1910), Tate, London.
(Image credit: Tate/Tate Images)

My favourite painting: Charlie McCormick

Charlie McCormick makes his choice: a Henri Rousseau classic.

Madonna and Child with Saints, Angels and Federico da Montefeltro (the Brera Altarpiece, Brera Madonna or San Bernardino Altarpiece), 1427–74, 98in by 59in, by Piero della Francesca (1415–92), Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Italy.
(Image credit: Bridgeman Images)

My favourite painting: Timothy Mowl

Timothy Mowl chooses The Brera Altarpiece by Piero della Francesca, a piece which he calls 'The Early Renaissance at its

The Wall by Anwar Jalal Shemza, 1958 (Collection of Birmingham Museums Trust) © The Estate of Anwar Jalal Shemza. All rights reserved, DACS 2021. Digital image by Birmingham Museums Trust.
(Image credit: © The Estate of Anwar Jalal Shemza)

My favourite painting: Nigel Prince

Nigel Prince, director of Artes Mundi, on a mesmerising image by Anwar Jalal Shemza.

Robert MacBryde, Still Life

(Image credit: Robert MacBryde, Still Life. National Galleries of Scotland. Bequeathed by Miss Elizabeth Watt 1989)

My favourite painting: Annie Sloan

The author and paint company founder loves this Cubism-inspired still life for its colour and contradiction.

Pneumatic, 1961, oil on canvas, 11¼in by Pneumatic, 1961, oil on canvas, 11¼in by 15in, by Juliet McLeod (1917–82), private collection.
(Image credit: Andrew Sydenham/Country Life)

My favourite painting: Mick Channon

The racehorse trainer Mick Channon chooses a painting of a horse.

A Lady at the Virginal with a Gentleman, about 1662–64, oil on canvas, 29in by 25½in, by Johannes Vermeer (1632–75). Royal Collection Trust ; © Royal Collection ; Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2021.
(Image credit: Bridgeman Images)

My Favourite Painting: Laurence Cumming

Laurence Cumming chooses one of the few works attributed with certainty to Johannes Vermeer.

Three Graces, 2012, by Kehinde Wiley (b. 1977), oil on canvas, 84in by 111in, private collection.
(Image credit: Kehinde Wiley. Courtesy of Roberts Projects, Los Angeles)

My favourite painting: Saad Eddine Said

Saad Eddine Said of the New Art Exchange chooses a fascinating modern painting that's full of classical influences.

Frankenthaler, Helen (1928-2011): Jacob's Ladder. 1957

Jacob’s Ladder, 1957, oil on unprimed canvas, 113½in by 70in, by Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011), Museum of Modern Art, New York, US.
(Image credit: www.scalarchives.com)

My favourite painting: Tarka Russell

The director of London's Timothy Taylor Gallery enthuses about the connection between Heaven and Earth depicted in this gigantic, colourful

Portrait of a Man, undated, oil on board, 5in by 7in, by Jean Béraud (1849–1935), private collection.
(Image credit: Andrew Sydenham/Country Life Picture Library. Country Life)

My favourite painting: Richard Anderson

Tailor Richard Anderson picks an image of a smartly-dressed gentleman.

Waking up in Naples, 1980-84 by Howard Hodgkin

Credit: Howard Hodgkin, DACS / Artimage 2021

My favourite painting: Martin Brudnizki

Interior designer Martin Brudnizki chooses Waking Up in Naples by Howard Hodgkin.

Sir John Finch and Sir Thomas Baines, 1665–70, both oil on canvas, 34in by 28in, by Carlo Dolci (1616–86), Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
(Image credit: Bridgeman Images)

My favourite painting: Dr Jean Wilson

Dr Jean Wilson, a specialist in the iconography and emotional history of English Renaissance funerary monuments, chooses Sir John Finch

Charlotte Mullins is an art critic, writer, broadcaster and regular contributor to Country Life. You can follow her on Twitter here.