The Easel

12th August 2025

Brian Clarke, stained glass artist, 1953-2025

Tanya Harrod | ft.com | 12th July 2025

Clark fell in love with stained glass while still at primary school. Later, having absorbed London’s “punk” aesthetic, he produced secular glasswork using vivid blocks of colour on a large scale. Technically innovative in his use of sheet glass, he worked with many “starchitects” on shopping centers, airports, office buildings and religious buildings. He has never been given a public gallery show and “there is no obvious heir to his ambitious genius”. Another obit is here.

Jean-François Millet and the drudgery of rural life

Michael Prodger | The New Statesman | 6th August 2025

In mid-eighteen hundreds France, people were leaving farm life to take their chances in the cities. Millet, a country boy, knew the realities of peasant life and made it the subject of his work. Wanting to be modern, a realist, he avoided romanticising rural life but did want to show the “dignity of toil”. Says one writer, his art is not naïve but rather “sophisticated, carefully staged naturalism”. One admirer was a young van Gogh who regarded Millett as “the essential modern painter”.

Our greatest football photographer’s secret? Ignore the game

Waldemar Januszczak | Waldemar.tv | 4th August 2025

Believe it or not but located in the glamorous Tottenham stadium in London is an art gallery. Proving that art and soccer are logical bedfellows Oof gallery is staging a retrospective of the sports photographer Peter Robinson. On-pitch drama didn’t interest him. The fans, in his view, displayed the humanity of the game most vividly. Rather spoiling the art-sport theme, another artist exhibiting alongside Robinson has embroidered football shirts. Says the writer, “messy, not Messi.”

5th August 2025

Marley and me: ‘I had initiative – and Bob sensed that’

Sean O’Hagan | The Observer | 27th June 2025

Hanging around a concert hall, a very young Morris meets Bob Marley, is invited on tour and produces classic images of the reggae and (subsequently) punk band era. In parallel, Morris photographed his Black community in working class London. Besides his fine compositional instincts, Morris’s images combine documentary, reportage and portraiture. They have a sense of intimacy and ease. “It’s clear Morris loved being in these places with these people, and they loved him back”.

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