‘- and you can never be more happy than your least happy child.’
Christopher Neve, Immortal Thoughts, Late Style in a Time of Plague
Christopher Neve died in 2024, aged 81. He was a painter and the author of two books. The first, about art and landscape in 20th century Britain, I have not read. The second he wrote during the Covid-19 pandemic, and consists of short meditations on great artists in their old age – Goya, Pissarro, Rembrandt, Gwen John, Cezanne, Bonnard etc. – intercut with brief reports of the disease and the natural world.
It is a very short book, just 130 pages, but I have been reading it for more than a week. Each essay is more poetry than biography or art criticism. He writes as a painter, about painting. He writes as an old artist about old artists.
I do not remember when I read a book that brought me more understanding of the nature and meaning of art, or more empathy with its creators and their commitment to what they do. It is extraordinary writing and deeply moving.
Reading Christopher Neve is to reconnect with the integrity art demands and the humanity it defends. It is a reminder of what really matters in art, the value that runs like a golden thread through time and place and people.