Walberswick, Children Paddling, Philip Wilson Steer (1891)

I love it when exhibitions include paintings that are like old friends I haven't met for ages. I've always liked Children Paddling - the sparkling water and the little girls with their skirts tucked into their knickers - but I hadn't seen it in quite a while so it was a pleasure to come across it at Compton Verney a couple of days ago.  

Wilson Steer was rather too advanced for Victorian England and his paintings didn't sell, so in the 1890s  he had to revert to a more traditional style.

Les Pommiers à Damiette, Armand Guillaumin (1893)

On the other hand, Guillaumin was a French railway worker who won 100,000 francs on the lottery. So he could paint however he liked and thumb his nose at the market. You can tell that he was a friend of van Gogh.

Yellow Landscape, Roderic O'Conor (1892)

And as Irish artist Roderic O'Conor was also blessed with a private income, he was free to paint green and pink skies. It intrigues me that his wonderful Yellow Landscape from Pont Aven has all the ingredients of a van Gogh ... the cornfields, the cypresses, the thick paint ... but there's something indefinably missing.