The acerbic, influential late art critic Brian Sewell loved the National Gallery in London, and often visited the hallowed institution as a child. “I’m leaving my body to science, and if there’s anything left, they can burn it, mix the ashes with bird food and scatter them on the steps of the National Gallery,” he told the Mail on Sunday in 2014. The Evening Standard writer has bequeathed a small painting by the French artist Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée, Maternal Affection (1773), to the gallery which is now on show in room 33. Gabriele Finaldi, the director of the National Gallery, says: “Brian Sewell had a profound love for the National Gallery as well as a connoisseur's passion for lesser known masters, so it is especially pleasing that Lagrenée's beautiful and refined Maternal Affection, which he owned, has come to the gallery as a gift from his estate.” Mr Sewell would (secretly) have been delighted.