How Painting Happens (and why it matters) – A Times Book of the Year

'From El Greco to Picasso, Martin Gayford’s How Painting Happens offers us an encyclopedic journey through art history' - Daily Telegraph
'This book’s strength is that it darts from the greats of art history’s past – Gayford seems to have seen everything and thought deeply about all of it – to contemporary painters such as Oscar Murillo, Jadé Fadojutimi, Cecily Brown, Eric Fischl and Frank Bowling, to whom he speaks, and about whom he bubbles with enthusiasm … In covering, chapter by chapter, the themes of colour relationships, brushwork, composition, subject, space, relationship with photography, and so on, Gayford sets up a lively conversation between painting today and the work of precursors such as Giotto, Titian and Cézanne. That requires, obviously, a lavishly illustrated book and I’d say that the £35 being asked for such a gorgeous volume is well worth the price … This is as clear a piece of writing about the experience of looking at a great painting as I have ever read' - Andrew Marr, New Statesman
'Martin Gayford, long-serving critic and art historian, is a trusted insider and a favoured guest of the most celebrated talents in the UK and beyond. If anyone knows what makes them tick, it ought to be this latter-day Vasari ... Stimulating and sumptuously illustrated' - Financial Times
'If you are someone who revels in the deliciousness of oil paintings, who looks at them and wants to eat them ‘as if they were ice cream or something’, in Damien Hirst’s phrase, then Martin Gayford’s latest book will be a banquet' - The Spectator
'Succeeds in providing keys to unlocking the puzzles of painting … Erudite and insightful, art writer and critic Martin Gayford wears his knowledge lightly and manages to carry his considerable and weighty connections with ease … Reading this richly illustrated book takes you on a ride from inspiration to execution, from pigments to feelings and meanings' - The Irish Times
'One of the most original books about art history there has ever been ... Martin is a writer who has interviewed almost anyone alive who matters in the field of art and who can explain the creative process not by giving you his own informed account, but by distilling the artists’ own thoughts' - Artbookreview
'Discover Vincent van Gogh’s responses to the work of Rembrandt, and John Constable’s to Titian, whose painting, he claimed, was orchestrated like a symphony. Artists from the past come alive in this book' - Art Society Magazine
'As though watching a working artist in slow motion, we are led from the preparation of a surface to mixing the paint, through colour, gesture, content and choosing a title. Along the way, ideas of finish and resolution, beauty and ugliness, judgement and intuition emerge as products of material decisions rather than externally imposed concepts. Each of these steps is accompanied by examples across time and place, from Helen Frankenthaler to Diego Velázquez, Paula Rego to Nicolas Poussin' - TLS
'A fascinating exploration of how and why paintings come into being' - Country & Town House
'A stunningly illustrated story of painters - what they do, and why. Art historian and critic Martin Gayford, dubbed a modern-day Vasari, has interviewed many of the most famous painters of our times. Drawing on these conversations he offers an incisive examination of painting and its importance, linking today’s practitioners to the great masters of previous ages' - The Herald