Heir of all the Ages - Oil on Board

Seeing Alexander practice the guitar one day, I was struck by the bright colours and swerving contours of the instrument and his harmony with it. The polished wood against the joyful person made a compellingly attractive picture. So it seemed fitting to continue with the musical theme begun with his sisters. The immediate challenge was how to capture the glorious apogee of childhood just before adolescence takes it away, and yet also indicate the beginnings of the man. There is a rare beauty at this moment, something that very soon most young persons want to distance themselves from. It is almost a crowning display of innocence before nature finally clothes a person with adult powers of self-protection.

The resulting picture is a study of boyhood and the unselfconscious candour of the life of a child. Devonshire is a good place for a child to grow up, and hiking and Scouting, and outings in tents, and adventures in gliders or dinghies filled the weekends. For those fortunate enough to be surrounded by countryside, this is the age of explorations of woods and fields, and the building of dens in summer hay-stacks, and the damming of streams. And what particularly interested me was not only the boy who energetically did these things but the boy whose inner life also was reaching out into rapidly expanding horizons. Just five years have passed since I began this painting, and now Alexander is studying engineering at St John's College Cambridge.

The link between English literature and English history runs very deep, and in this painting I wanted to touch upon the paradox that it is sometimes the child who is nearer to both because an adult may easily get separated by the pressure of present concerns. I wanted to evoke something of the time-free intensity of childhood imagination which roams far in thought and wonder, piecing together the story of the world.

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