Anni Albers' extraordinary talent for weaving elevated her craft to the very highest levels. Chloe-Jane Good takes a look at one of her most famous pieces, 'Black, White, Yellow', which…
Art and Antiques
My Favourite Painting: Hilary McGrady
Hilary McGrady, director-general of the National Trust, chooses a painting she first encountered in childhood.
In Focus: The Rembrandt portrayal of Christ which contains the fingerprints of the great master himself
A wonderful Rembrandt that went under the hammer recently contains a fascinating imprint of its creator, as Huon Mallalieu reports.
My Favourite Painting: Johnnie Boden
Catalogue clothing entrepreneur Johnnie Boden chooses a fascinating still life.
The Pietra dura maker: ‘Everyone else in Florence was looking at the paintings, but I was looking at the pietra-dura floor’
Pietra dura – the art of creating images by cutting stones and fitting them into a jigsaw of shapes – flowered under the Florentine Medicis, but there’s only one man…
Four of the most beautiful depictions ever created of the Madonna and Child
With Christmas almost upon us, Caroline Campbell of the National Gallery chooses her favourite depictions of the Madonna and Child and is moved by the evocations of tenderness in each…
Country Life’s best art stories of 2018: Monet, Andrew Graham-Dixon and Victorian Photoshopping
We've taken a look back through our archives from the year to pick out our top 10 articles of 2018 featuring the world's most breathtaking, inspiring and inspiring art from…
Country Life’s best Living National Treasures of 2018: Stained glass to neon signs, via sculpture, baskets and fishermen
Our hugely popular series tells fascinating tales about extraordinary people keeping traditional skills alive across Britain, illustrated by the wonderful portrait photographs taken by Richard Cannon for Country Life. Our…
The utterly inessential shopping list: 16 last-minute Christmas presents
What's that? You haven't done your Christmas shopping yet? Alexandra Fraser will help you put that right.
In Focus: The work by a Bloomsbury Group stalwart which fuses nature, nostalgia and Impressionism
Britist artists Duncan Grant's wonderful versatility allowed him to mix traditional and modern, natural and man-made, as this picture on show at the William Morris Gallery demonstrates. Lilias Wigan went…
The fairy-maker: ‘There are fairies in royal circles, Australia, New York – everywhere’
Dinah Nicholson's meticulously-recorded magical creations range from doppelgangers of real women to the whimsical Gin & Tonic fairy and have been created at home, on the move or even in…
In Focus: A moment in time capturing the gulf between architects’ dreams and residents’ realities
Tony Ray-Jones was one of a generation of photographers who chronicled life in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, demonstrating the gulf between the dreams of town planners and the…
My favourite painting: Bamber Gascoigne
'The house is full of images of him. However, the story ends sadly – he died at the age of 11, in 1922.'
Curious Questions: Is there any future for Encyclopedia Britannica?
Once the first set of books required in any home library, encyclopedias have long since been superseded by the internet. But rather extraordinarily there is still a market for them,…
In Focus: A silent cellist, blazing with pleasure, by Klimt’s great young protégé Schiele
When he first came on to the Vienna art scene, Egon Schiele hero-worshipped Gustav Klimt. Once they met the two became friends, forming a bond and inspiring each other's work,…
How Country Life helped track down a lost masterpiece by Gainsborough
Five years of fruitless searching had left the National Portrait Gallery almost abandoning hope of finding a lost Gainsborough painting, but the letters page of Country Life came to the…
My Favourite Painting: Rupert Soames, grandson of Winston Churchill
Rupert Soames chooses one of Winston Churchill's paintings: a joyous portrait of his grandmother by his grandfather.
The stained-glass maker: ‘It’s powerful, volatile… too overwhelming for domestic settings’
Thomas Denny is one of the few people left in Britain making stained glass for churches. He spoke to Mary Miers.
In Focus: The many lives of Landseer’s ‘The Monarch of the Glen’, the eternal symbol of Scotland
The most famous of Victorian paintings took on a life of its own as a marketing icon, romantic symbol of Scottish identity and inspiration for numerous other artists in a…
My Favourite Painting: Maria Speake
Architectural designer and salvage pioneer Maria Speake chooses an image that speaks to her Danish roots.