It's mild and I am so well wrapped up for winter that I feel hot all day long. I am bouncy despite a poor night's sleep following following my better half's late return from Southampton last night. You still worry about them even when they are 60+.

All works well with the trains, I get the civilsed 9.24 but loose my lovely fold up bag on the way to the station. My rubbishy pockets. First stop is the Courtauld Gallery. They are setting up the Skating at Somerset House and it looks so cool. Like glass.

I am here to see Soutine's Portraits. I love the exhbition as it depicts the emotions of ordinary people, something understood by Chaim Soutine who had very humble origins and a melancholy personality. Read more about this amazing artist here . He would have lived much longer if he had belonged to our era. He had complications of a peptic ulcer which are not seen nowadays due to the proton pump inhibitors, discovered when I was a young doctor.

Le valet de chambre 1927

Le petit patissier 1922-3

Note the colours in the folds of his uniform

La Jeune Servante 1933

After a coffee in the rather slow and over priced cafe (note the enforced 10% 'service' charge), which is also over heated but a pleasing setting, I head to meet my own Art Historian. We have a lovely chat and sandwich in her canteen.

Another walk for me, along to the National Gallery to discover how van Eyck’s 'Arnolfini Portrait' was one of the beacons by which the Pre-Raphaelites forged a radical new style of painting.

The exhbition Reflections on Van Eyck and the Pre-Raphaelites covers one large room only and is informative and entertaining. It helps that I like the PRB

and Velazquez