In an extract from her new memoir, the Observer art critic tells the story of two paintings: one a source of comfort during a doomed affair, the other an unforgettable vision created by her father
I love a painting that hangs in the National Gallery in London. It has to me the atmosphere of a memory or a waking dream. It shows a man seated in deep shadow at the corner of two streets, thumb to chin and fingers crooked as if nursing the remains of a cigarette, eyes down and pensive; waiting.
Two musical instruments lie next to him on a table: a lute, shining like a new chestnut freed from the husk, and a viola that reaches invitingly towards you as if just asking for its strings to be plucked. For you are here too, somehow, hovering on exact eye level with the man and his table. The painting, so small and mysterious, is peculiarly alive to the nearness of your presence. It puts you on the spot on this quiet day when the leaves of the young elms are just beginning to turn and the man in black sits low at the crossroads. Before him, the cobbles rise up and over the gently swelling bridge into a brighter world of red-roofed houses and church spires and dappled light elsewhere. But he remains forever on the outskirts.
