In December 2002, John Virtue accepted an invitation from the National Gallery to become its sixth Associate Artist. The decision marked a new departure for him. Born in Accrington in 1947, Virtue had been associated exclusively with landscape painting since the start of his career, in the late 1970s. Working first in Green Haworth, not far from his native town in Lancashire, then in South Tawton, in Devon, and after that on the estuary of the Exe, near Exeter, he had established a set of routines deeply rooted in the experience of the countryside. He would walk a prescribed path through the landscape in which he lived (a habit first acquired when he was forced to work as a postman to subsidise his artistic activity), producing numerous shorthand sketches as he did so. These sketches would subsequently be elaborated into large landscape paintings, created in a palette deliberately restricted to black and white. Although the methods by which he created those paintings had changed radically over the years, the process of gestation that led to them – long country walks, sketchbook in hand, followed by protracted periods of work indoors – had remained constant.

Moving to the capital, and into a studio at the National Gallery, might have involved breaking with the creative habits of a lifetime. In fact it turned out to be less of a wrench than expected. Finding himself in the middle of London, rather than in the middle of the countryside, Virtue treated the city as if it were another form of landscape, and set about subjecting the place to his customary form of scrutiny. A version of his familiar routine was quickly established. From his base, a hotel in Bloomsbury, he spent each morning walking to three particular sites.

He always took the same route,...

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