As a classically trained painter, Susan had certainly been exposed to the Pre-Raphaelites, but the Tate exhibition presented them in a new light, as an avant-garde movement. She was especially moved by the vivid natural imagery that appears in Pre-Raphaelite subjects, and by the art movement’s process of intensely looking at nature, which resulted in a new, distinctively modern style.

While in Washington DC last month, Susan was delighted to visit the once-in-lifetime exhibition Colorful Realm: Japanese Bird-and-Flower Paintings by Itō Jakuchū (1716-1800.) Celebrating the centennial of Japan’s gift of cherry trees to the nation’s capital, this exhibition featured one of Japan’s most renowned cultural treasures, the extraordinary set of 30 paintings on silk scrolls by Itō Jakuchū. Painted between 1757 and 1766 and donated by the painter to the Zen monastery Shōkokuji in Kyoto, the scrolls entered the Imperial Household in the 1889 where they were displayed in part on special Imperial occasions.