“White is the whole reason for me painting”.So says John Blackburn, who is celebrating his ninetieth birthday with his seventh exhibition at Mayfair gallery Osborne Samuel (September 8 – 23).

It would be worth betting that the sitter for this painting, Girl with Powder and Puff, by Laura Knight, is none other than Eileen Mayo, an artist in her own right who earlier this year was given a retrospective show at Towner Gallery. This would probably date the painting to c1926-30, when Mayo regularly sat for Knight, as well as her husband Harold.

How long have you been involved in the art market? I started at Christie’s in 1980 in the Old Master Department, followed by around 32 years at Agnews.

Mary Fedden didn’t arrive at the style she is now most recognised for – calm, colourful, studiously naïve still lifes, recalling Braque and Matisse, but very English – until she was in her 50s.

It’s often been written that Elisabeth Frink’s bronze statuettes Assassins I and Assassins II, both made in 1963, were a response to the shooting of John F Kennedy. Frink herself always said that they were ‘associated with the killing, rather than inspired by it’. A quick bit of research shows that the sculptures were shown in a solo exhibition of her work opening at the Wadsworth Gallery, London, on November 28th of that year.

Olivia Stanton has worked at the Chelsea art materials shop Green & Stone for 50 years; as an artist she is represented by Candida Stevens, the Chichester-based gallerist. This two-week show is a collaboration between Green & Stone Gallery and Stevens, and displays work produced by the Hastings-based abstractionist over the last four years.

How did you get involved in the art world? I grew up in a very cultural home that was also a private art gallery, by appointment. This fostered a love of art, albeit one that I was not consciously aware of for some time.

Walter Sickert has been described as the first British Modernist, and this oil on canvas, The Painter and His Model, courtesy of Christopher Kingzett, is a good example of the experimental nature of his work in the early Edwardian period.

We interviewed Ed Clark of Rowntree Clark ahead of the 2022 edition of British Art Fair.

Many of Howard Hodgkin’s works had enigmatic titles, as his work was deeply personal, based on emotionally charged moments from his life. And there has been much debate about why his first professionally-produced print (1964) is called ‘Enter Laughing’. Some suggest it’s a stage direction, seeing a figure entering from the wings. Others point to the 1963 John Stein Broadway farce with the same title. Perhaps it’s simply a memory from Hodgkin’s life.

In 1964 a bold young Yorkshire-born artist went to New York, and mingled with the foremost abstract artists of the time – Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko – as well as the all-powerful critic, Clement Greenberg. After three months, having got through his grant money, he came back home.

These duelling knights, designed and printed by Edward Bawden, are Sir Palomides and Sir Tristram, who have just been involved in one hell of a fight, for the hand of Queen Isoud, the fairest maiden in Ireland (and a handy surgeon, to boot).

Cynthia Corbett’s Summer Exhibition is a vibrant affair, reflecting a love for style, glamour… and cool Modernist buildings. We’re particularly taken by the work of two of the artists she is showing, Deborah Azzopardi and Andy Burgess.

This 2018 work by Frank Auerbach, painted in acrylic on board, is entitled ‘Reclining Head of Julia, 2018’. ‘Julia’ is his wife, not to be confused with Julia Yardley Mills (aka J.Y.M.), another of his regular sitters over the years.

We sat down with Gay to discuss the 2022 edition of British Art Fair.

He was a painter, a poet, a textile designer, a jeweller, a teacher, a jazz musician, and so much more. Alan Davie refused to be pigeon-holed, which is why, despite enjoying something greater than cult status, his work, surely, remains underrated.

A familiar face has been chosen to publicise the Summer Exhibition at Long & Ryle in Pimlico. It’s a watercolour by Mark Entwisle of the actress Anya Taylor-Joy, in the role of Emma in the 2020 film adaptation of Jane Austen’s much-loved novel.

Wylie is being shown at British Art Fair by Jonathan Cooper, at Stand 42 on the first floor, along with work by several other artists, including David Donaldson, Sarah Raphael, Norman Blamey and Leonard McComb.

Castlegate House Gallery, in the charming market town of Cockermouth in the Lake District, is holding its ‘Summer Selection’ show until August 31, featuring works by the likes of Joan Eardley, Miles Richmond, John Bellany and Norman Cornish.

It’s the last week of the Derrick Greaves exhibition, From Shangri-La to the Walled Garden, at James Hyman Gallery in Mayfair, which closes on August 26. The exhibition was organised to celebrate Greaves’ 95th birthday, and includes work produced as recently as 2021.