All posts by Rosie Lesso

STRAW linen’s delicate pale gold has the iridescence of sand bleached by the white summer sun. Impressionist painter Joaquin Sorolla saw in this colour the power to recreate searing hot Spanish sunlight as it flooded windswept beaches, flapping ship sails, straw hats and freshly starched clothing in his seemingly endless cycle of summer. When balanced…

The intensity of EARTH linen’s heady, port red mirrors Mark Rothko’s late maroon paintings, in which he captured the brooding half-light of dusk as it slowly shifts and closes into night. Rothko wrote, “Often, towards nightfall, there’s a feeling of mystery, threat, frustration – all of these at once. I would like my paintings to…

“Nothing should be made by man’s labour that is not worth making.” William Morris In this new series we will explore some of the key ideas behind the iconic and hugely influential British Arts and Crafts Movement, a widespread phenomenon of the late 19th and early 20th century that continues to shape the world we…

RED OCHRE linen has the enveloping warmth of terracotta, a rustic colour that seems drawn from the ground like Italian tiles or dry earth parched by the sun. Yet for painter Frank Auerbach this shade of red, along with sandy yellow and burnt orange, reflects the mood and surroundings of his home in London, with…

FROTH linen has the breezy freshness of peach skin in the white spring sunlight, recalling the luminous flesh tones in French master Edouard Manet’s paintings. As a Realist painter Manet made the human figure his central focus, whose pale blush tones become visions of purity and light when set against deep, earthy browns and velvety…

SAND linen’s full bodied saffron yellow was a favourite with French painter Maurice de Vlaminck, setting his paintings alight with warm, iridescent flames of colour. Central to Vlaminck’s practice was the relationship between colours, which could express riotous outbursts of emotion, with his distinctive shade of mustard yellow playing a top note above the rest. Reflecting…

The earthy ginger of Apricot linen echoes Pierre Bonnard’s spicy Mediterranean oranges, colours that became a central focus in his flickering, light speckled canvases. Recognised today as a vivid colourist, Bonnard captured the warm light of his native France with intimiste, naturally lit interiors, blooming landscapes and sunlit gardens. An early abstractionist, his paintings reveal…

The warm yellow hue of Zenith linen recalls the radiant, sun-baked wheat fields of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, where golden sunlight shimmers across the canvas and burns a hole in the sky. Yellow was a color of great personal significance to van Gogh, particularly towards the end of his life, when he flooded his…