I don’t remember seeing this portrait of Hugh Casson in the exhibition we did about him last year.   I really regret never having met him as his memory lives so strongly still at the RA as the President who revived its fortunes in the late 1970s, not least by founding the Friends in 1977.   He is said to have brought the Queen Mother to hanging lunches.   The portrait shows him little and neat, eyes glinting behind his glasses.   It’s painted by Bernard Dunstan, who became an RA in 1968 and is still one aged 94.

Ⓒ Royal Academy of Arts