Curated playlist
20th-century English painters
- J. R. R. TolkienOn his 21st birthday, Tolkien proposed by letter to a woman who was already engaged.
- Clive BarkerUnhappy with how others filmed his screenplays, Clive Barker directed Hellraiser himself. It opened in 1987.
- Peter Blake (artist)Peter Blake was paid a one-off two hundred pounds for the Sgt. Pepper album cover. He has complained ever since.
- William Powell FrithIn 1858, crowds pressing to see William Powell Frith's new painting forced officials to add a rail.
- Herbert James DraperA fruit merchant's son from Covent Garden won gold in Paris for The Lament for Icarus.
- William Blake RichmondWilliam Blake Richmond spent 1891 to 1904 covering part of St Paul's Cathedral in mosaics.
- Brian EnoBrian Eno once calculated that hearing every possible combination of a single one of his generative pieces would take almost 10,000 years. He is an English musician, record producer and visual artist, born Brian Peter George Eno on the…
- John LydonJohn Lydon, the singer once known as Johnny Rotten, ended the last Sex Pistols concert of the Sid Vicious era with a question. It was January 1978, the stage was San Francisco's Winterland, and he asked the crowd: "Ever get the feeling…
- John Charles DollmanJohn Charles Dollman painted Lawrence Oates walking out of a tent in Antarctica to die. It was commissioned in 1913.
- Richard Hamilton (artist)Richard Hamilton defined pop art in a 1957 letter to two architects. He called it expendable, witty and Big Business.
- Syd BarrettSyd Barrett walked into Abbey Road Studios on the 5th of June 1975, and the men inside did not know him. He had shaved off his hair and even his eyebrows, and he was overweight. He was 29. The musicians were Pink Floyd, the band he had…