Leon Kossoff

Leon Kossoff, A Woman Bathing (Study After Rembrandt), 1982
The National Gallery has long been considered a book in which artists learn to read (as Cézanne said about the Louvre). For Kossoff, his attraction to the gallery began with Rembrandt. But this painting is not an attempt to emulate the original: the woman is interpreted as a living, vulnerable person, unselfconsciously standing in water, her inner life more important than the source. Photograph: Private Collection, London / Leon Kossoff

Saturday Morning Class, St Martin's, 1943-4.

Building Site, Oxford Street, 1952.