What is art appreciation?

My two art courses are under way – one on Tuesday on The Road To Modernism and the other on Thursday a more leisurely tour over the last five centuries of art.

On Tuesday we studied Kandinsky.

Our art tutor said that he, Malevich and Mondrian were the pathfinders to abstraction and asserted: “It’s not important whether you get Cubism, or even like it: these three artists were much influenced by it and you need to understand its historical importance.”

I thought about this observation and could not agree with it.

Maybe if you buy art as an investor – and certainly if you are an art historian – you might adhere to this theory but an appreciator like me?

My test is quite simple: would I hang it on my wall?

I recognise Cubism’s importance but those angular geometric faces with their flashing eyes would disturb rather than uplift me.

Similarly, I recognise Paul Cezanne’s status as the bridge between the Impressionists and the Modernists but I would choose a Matisse first.

Matisse was for me a better colourist but you rarely see red in Cezanne’s palette.

On Thursday we studied Chardin.

Many of his pictures were of dead woodland creatures often eyed by a vicious looking cat.

As I love cats and a dead hare looks to me like roadkill I would have no wish to have these on my wall.

Our teacher picked up on the similarity between Chardin and Vermeer who painted 100 years earlier.

Both had limited output (Vermeer less than 40, Chardin 200); both like scenes of servants in a sort of reverie as they did their domestic duties: both had quietude.

The only real difference was that Chardin, who became a court painter, spent almost all his life in Paris and never did a landcape or townscape as Vermeer famously did of his native Delft.

Now his View of Delft is one I would rather see hanging in the Mansfield House than the Mauritzhuis.