Cuming trained at Sidcup College of Art, at just 15. Following National Service, he studied at the Royal College of Art and was elected a Royal Academician in 1974. The self portrait shows the artist at 29, bearded and with a wary mien. The picture has a rigorously subdued palette – black (admixed with some brown) predominating, subdued greens and reds. At Sidcup, his ‘training had been based on the ideas… of painters like Sickert and Gilman… it was not until I entered the RCA that I became aware of the modern movement in painting.’ In 1955, Cuming was astounded by the beauty of Ravenna mosaics and Piero della Francesco frescoes in Arezzo. On long car journeys, Cuming has for many years visited and discovered those magical, light-fluctuating spots where land meets sky (such as, says Holmes, ‘the steep sheltered estuary of Fowey in Cornwall… the glimmering backwaters of Venice’), making extensive sketchbook notes, accompanied by written colour notes.