At the end of February, Turner Prize winner Richard Wright started on a new artwork for the Queen’s House, part of the Royal Museums Greenwich. This is the first time an artist has worked on the ceiling of the Great Hall since Orazio Gentileschi created a series of nine paintings in 1639. Richard’s complex installation, inspired by the Tulip Stairs, will be on view when the Queen's House re-opens after restoration on 4 July 2016 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of its commissioning and design.

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was the greatest portrait painter of his generation. Acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic, he was closely connected to many of the other leading artists, writers, actors and musicians of the time. His portraits of these friends and contemporaries, including Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet and Robert Louis Stevenson, were rarely commissioned and allowed him to create more intimate and experimental works than was possible in his formal portraiture.