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In full bloom: 'Flowers: Flora in art and culture' opens at the Saatchi Gallery
From 100,000 dried flowers to a contemporary interpretation of Van Gogh’s 'Sunflowers', the Saatchi Gallery's new 'Flowers' exhibition is the perfect spring antidote to long winter days.
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The £40 car boot painting that might just be a long-lost Van Gogh worth more than £10 million
It's the things dreams are made of: you pick up an innocuous painting at a car boot sale only to discover that it might be a previously unknown piece by one of the most influential figures in art worth millions. This time round though the dream is a reality because experts believe they've just verified a long-lost Van Gogh masterpiece. So, how does the evidence stack up, asks Rosie Paterson?
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Country Life's top 10 arts stories of 2024
From the artist killed on his first day in the war to a masterpiece once sold for £30, these were our most popular arts stories of 2024.
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Mushroom gin, Lego houses, and dull men and women, with James May
That bloke off Top Gear joins the Country Life Podcast to talk about making his own gin, how to run a pub, why dull men and women are anything but and why he hates the North Pole and suitcases with wheels.
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The Christmas wreath-maker: 'They sell quicker than we can make them'
All this week we're running a series on the people who make Christmas in the country what it is. Today, Paula Lester meets wreath maker Ellie Taylor.
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How 'the best picture in the world' was saved from destruction by a British army officer refused to follow his orders
Claudia Pritchard on the extraordinary tale of how Piero della Francesca’s 1460s fresco 'The Resurrection' was saved.
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'I don't understand why we have gone backwards': Historic country houses take stock after the budget
50 years on from the landmark exhibition at the V&A, the country house is once again facing huge pressures. Lucy Denton speaks to owners and organisations about what the future might hold.
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Eyes wide shut: The art of sleeping
Sleep takes many shapes in art, whether sensual or drunken, deathly or full of nightmares, but it is rarely peaceful. Even slumbering babies can convey anxiety, discovers Claudia Pritchard.
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The grand master 'paintings' that are actually the most exquisite floral photographs you'll ever see
Harald Altmaier’s photographs of floral tableaux, as colossal in effort as in scale, recall 17th-century Dutch still lifes, but the inspiration behind them is far wider, as Carla Passino finds.
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The £3 million Van Dyck painting going under the hammer with a unique buy-one-get-one-free offer
If you've ever dreamed of owning an Anthony van Dyck, now's your chance to pick up two in one go — plus more fun from today's Dawn Chorus.
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The Legacy: Hans Sloane and the creation of the British Museum
A curious child who grew into a man of voracious intellectual curiosity, his life of collecting gave birth to one of the nation's great institutions.
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Lost and then found: A missing painting by Lord Leighton returns to London
Someone, somewhere, knows something about where it went.
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The First World War, as seen through the unique Country Life Picture Archive
Country Life looks back at the First World War through the lens of the Country Life Archive. View images, read a selection of wartime articles, and also download war artist Muirhead Bone’s first catalogue of drawings, originally published in 1917.
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'Wrecking balls swung from the ceiling, pillars were shown toppling, cornices crumbled... it was sensational': The groundbreaking museum exhibition that helped save the country house
After years of neglect and countless demolitions, 1974 witnessed a revolution in attitudes towards country houses. It proved a turning point in Britain’s treatment of its old buildings generally and the saviour of places such as Covent Garden, as Simon Jenkins explains.
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Who was the real St Crispin, and what did he have to do with the Battle of Agincourt?
You have questions about Shakespeare's most famous speech. We have answers.
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A few of my favourite things: Matthew Goode
The British actor tells Hetty Lintell about three objects he can't live without.
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Horsepower and hot air balloons: All of the action from the Chantilly Arts et Elegance Richard Mille
Europe's most beautiful concours returned to Chantilly, France, last week and it didn't disappoint. Rosie Paterson was there to record all of the action.
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An exhibition that brings together the gun that started the First World War, Hemingway's typewriter, Captain Scott's snow goggle and Sgt Pepper's Drum
The gun used to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Hemingway's typewriter and the drum featured on the cover of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band are part of Rick Guest's extraordinary collection of photography, Holy Relics at the StART Fair.
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'As a child I wanted to snuggle up with the dogs and be part of it': Alexia Robinson chooses her favourite painting
Alexia Robinson, founder of Love British Food, chooses an Edwin Landseer classic.
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One year after being cut down, Sycamore Gap tree lives on with new legacy
Saplings from the iconic tree will be planted across the country and a new exhibition in Northumberland will ask the public to make promises to nature.
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My Favourite Painting: Geraldine Collinge
Geraldine Collinge, the director of Compton Verney art gallery in Warwickshire, selects Pierre-Jacques Volaire's An Eruption of Vesuvius by Moonlight.
