John Bidlake was forty-seven, at the height of his powers and reputation as a painter; handsome, huge, exuberant, careless; a great laugher, a great worker, a great eater, drinker and taker of virginities.

‘Painting’s a branch of sensuality,’ he retorted to those who reproved him for his way of life. ‘Nobody can paint a nude who hasn’t learnt the human body by heart with his hands and his lips and his own body. I take my art seriously. I’m unremitting in my preliminary studies.’ And the skin would tighten in laughing wrinkles round his monocle, his eyes would twinkle like a genial satyr’s.