Art critic and broadcaster Brian Sewell has died following a year-long cancer battle.
Sewell had many artists friends, including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Salvador Dali. He was brought up in London and later studied for a degree in art history from the Courtauld Institute.
Sewell told the BBC in 2012 that he had become an art critic by accident. “It was after the Blunt affair – Anthony Blunt – and I had achieved a certain unwanted notoriety and Tina Brown, who was just reviving Tatler, wanted an art critic and thought I might be it,” he said.
He also viewed himself as a failure. “I wanted to write the great book on Michelangelo and I never got anywhere near it and now it is too late,” he told the BBC.