Anna Benson Gyles

Series of single made-for-television dramas.

Rose Hindmarsh finds herself at the centre of a controversy when she meets author Sarah Maloney as she investigates the life of Mary Swann, an obscure poet who was brutally murdered in a small town in rural Ontario.

Linus Roache stars as troubled painter Vincent van Gogh in this drama from the BBC’s Omnibus series. Struggling to make ends meet first as an art dealer, then as a missionary in a coal mine, van Gogh was tormented by elusive love and madness. After notoriously cutting off his ear and spending a year in an asylum, we see the artists struggles and passions throughout his life.

The controversial English artist Stanley Spencer scandalised the art world when he painted the Resurrection taking place in the churchyard of Cookham, his home village by the River Thames; and further scandalised the village when he decided that to nourish his imagination he needed two wives.

Moving out from under the shadow of her artist brother Augustus John, Gwen John moved to Paris in 1903, working as an artist's model until becoming the mistress of famous sculptor Auguste Rodin. After Rodin's death, she concentrated on her work as an artist, rivalling her brother's reputation with her own expressive portraits.