PREVIEW: In February we held our sixth James Hart Dyke exhibition, which proved to be nothing less than a sensation, even by the standards of the modern art world. In a striking departure from James’s previous work, A Year with MI6 brought together seventy-five paintings and drawings which had been commissioned from him to commemorate the centenary of the Secret Intelligence Service. The fact that James had spent most of the previous eighteen months working within MI6 heightened the media’s interest in the exhibition, and culminated in its being reviewed for over two minutes on the ten o’clock news. The artist gained considerable insight into the day-to-day workings of the Service, and his observations were reflected in his direct yet enigmatic pictures. That so many of them sold, so quickly and often to new collectors, is a tribute to James’s artistic accomplishment rather than to the éclat of the subject matter. We look forward to hosting his next exhibition of landscape paintings soon...