Unbridled delight

An artist ought to draw on broad human sympathies and an intense commitment to his craft. In both respects, Charles Church qualifies. As a youngster, he set off for art school, in search of instruction, and found it: a worthless curriculum. There was no copying of Old Master drawings (no drawing of any kind), no still lifes, no painting from the nude: no attempt to hold the youngsters’ noses to the grindstone of technique. He could have majored in acrylic, self-expression and pretentiousness. He could have qualified himself to be a court painter for Charles Saatchi and a future rival to Gilbert & George. Instead, he spurned meretriciousness and fled to Newmarket.

There he slept on straw, took whatever work was going in stables and restaurants, and spent every hour he could drawing and painting. Commissions followed: Charles found favour — with everyone but himself. He could produce an equine portrait which impressed the horse’s owners. An adequate living beckoned. That was not enough. ‘Als ich kann’ was Van Eyck’s motto. If that was good enough for a sublime master, it was an example which an apprentice should follow.

So Charles set off to study at the finest art school of this era. In Florence, an American called Charles Cecil teaches art properly. He is a perfectionist. I have not met this other Charles, but from what I have heard, he is a fascinating and complex character. In an age when the artistic canon, after more than six centuries of hard-won excellence, is under continuous threat, Charles Cecil plays a similar role to those embattled monasteries off the west coast of Ireland that preserved European civilisation during the Dark Ages. He has been lauded by a third Charles, the Prince of Wales, the most important benign aesthetic influence in modern Britain.