How Painting Happens (and Why it Matters)

A Times Book of the Year

‘This is as clear a piece of writing about the experience of looking at a great painting as I have ever read … Gayford seems to have seen everything and thought deeply about all of it' Andrew Marr, New Statesman

'If you are someone who revels in the deliciousness of oil paintings, who looks at them and wants to eat them ‘as if they were ice cream or something', in Damien Hirst's phrase, then Martin Gayford's latest book will be a banquet' The Spectator

'Martin Gayford, long-serving critic and art historian, is a trusted insider and a favoured guest of the most celebrated talents in the UK and beyond. If anyone knows what makes them tick, it ought to be this latter-day Vasari ...