I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Pinterest. The glory days of it being a does-one-thing-perfectly image bookmarking site (you know, like an interesting pinboard) are long gone; simplicity crushed by feature sprawl and muddled purpose. But beneath the mess, it occasionally works algorithmic sorcery and finds something new/old that lands smack dab in the middle of your taste. For example, I’m not sure what I pinned that made it decide I absolutely must be bombarded with Gerald Brockhurst paintings (perhaps it was somehow aware that I’d been watching A Very British Scandal, starring Claire Foy as the Duchess of Argyle?) but thank you very much, oh wise and sentient website. I wasn’t familiar with his work before and I’m now obsessed with it. Give me any of these weirdly gothic society portraits over the Mona Lisa any day. Brockhurst’s work has yet to be gathered in one place online, so decent versions of his paintings are scattered across various websites – each of these pics link somewhere different – so enjoy following me down this new rabbit hole.