Misha Glenny and guests discuss a familiar feature of our beaches: seashells, from their astonishing shapes and patterns that teach us about Earth’s oceans, to the ways that humans have treasured shells throughout history. Seashells appear in the mythologies of countless cultures ...Show more
Vigée Le Brun
Misha Glenny and guests discuss the French portrait painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755 - 1842). From her teens she delighted her high society subjects in and around Paris, notably Marie Antoinette who she painted around 30 times, and she invariably found ways to show her sitte ...Show more
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Dutch artist famous for starry nights and sunflowers, self portraits and simple chairs. These are images known the world over, and Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) painted them and around 900 others in the last decade of his short, brilliant life a ...Show more
Vincent van Gogh was one of the most important and influential figures in the history of art. Though he created thousands of drawings and paintings, his was a life of commercial failure, instability and unhappiness. But who was Van Gogh before he discovered his passion for art? W ...Show more
The Dutch post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh is one of the most influential painters in western art. His series of still life sunflowers are known around the world today but during his lifetime in the 1800s he lived in poverty, selling very little of his work, some say j ...Show more
The Dutch post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh is one of the most influential painters in western art. His series of still life sunflowers are known around the world today, but during his lifetime in the 1800s he lived in poverty, selling incredibly little of his work, som ...Show more