Rose Wylie, Boy Meets Girl from Pompeii, 2015

Rose Wylie is eighty-four but, unbelievably, the first monograph on her work has only just been produced, published by Lund Humphries and launching tonight—with Wylie presenting and signing books—at David Zwirner on Grafton Street. Wylie’s paintings wowed crowds at the Serpentine last year, and before that at Tate, where they were part of a Spotlight presentation in 2013. The curator of that show, Clarrie Wallis, is the author of this book. “Wylie’s work is a sophisticated transmutation of sifting of perceptual experience,” she writes, framing Wylie as one of the great painters of her generation in Britain—even though she made it into the canon much later than she deserved.