Done in Oils

Connoisseurs of ethical Britishness will rejoice at the National Portrait Gallery's jumping out of bed with a fossil fuel company only to leap back in with the lawyers of several more. The Gallery put out for BP over three decades, but chose last year not to extend the relationship when the contract ran out. Instead the artistic patron formerly known as the BP Portrait Award will bask in the even catchier title of the Herbert Smith Freehills Award, as the defenders of BP, Chevron and Bank of America donate a week's executive lunch-money towards the prestige of Britain's daubers. It is certainly to be hoped that the more intemperate environmental campaigners are not provoked beyond their current performative tributes to the Suffragette movement; let alone towards the mistreatment of any genuine icons of national culture.