Dido and Aeneas, the tragic love story of the Trojan hero and the Queen of Carthage is told by Virgil. Aeneas, after the sacking of Troy, was given the task by the Gods of founding a new civilisation in Italy, but on the way he met and fell in love with the Carthaginian Queen Dido. He dallied with her until he was reminded by the Gods (and his disgruntled crew) of his mission. He reluctantly sailed away leaving the broken hearted Queen on the beach. She surrounded herself with Aeneas’ gifts and possessions left behind in his haste on a funeral pyre, then killed herself with his sword.
Turner painted Dido using a golden palette, she was also painted by Guercino, Rubens and others, but I was in some ways more inspired by music: Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” and Dido’s mournful lament “When I am laid in earth”.
The photograph was shot on a Mediterranean beach near Argentario on a cloudless evening. The model Lucia holds my Father’s naval sword, the ship on the horizon is HMS Eagle, my Father’s address on my birth certificate.

Based On “Woman pulling up her Stocking” Toulouse-Lautrec 1894.
Lautrec was a great frequenter of brothels - as were most of his contemporaries so nothing unusual there. But he painted the women and occasionally their clients. He seems to have had a faiblesse for redheads. No academic nudes these.
I have added an element that is pure nostalgia, the so called Protein Man. When I studied in London there was a sandwich-man we saw, and heard, practically every day parading up and down Oxford St in his lifelong mission to reduce lust. Quiet, bespectacled, unmarried, and of no doubt blameless character, his voice I can still hear intoning “less passion from less protein - buy my booklet...more lentils, less lust..........” Only the noise of his printing press clacketing through the night in his semi in suburban Northholt upset the neighbours a bit - for his public in Oxford Street, come rain or shine, he was a charming eccentric. But did he never have a day off in 40 years of campaigning? Did he never over do it with the protein and fall into temptation? A tart with a heart perhaps in nearby Soho could perhaps have led him round the corner and a world away from his lonely beat up and down Oxford Street - a little bit of earthly paradise in Poland Street, un peu du faiblesse humaine?

Opera Singer