Julian Bell is a painter who has written two books about historic artists, Bonnard (1994) and Vincent van Gogh (2015), and two more general art texts, What is Painting? Representation and Modern Art (1999) and Mirror of the World: A New History of Art (2007). Bell regularly contributes essays on art and allied subjects to the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books and the Guardian. He teaches at the Prince of Wales Drawing School.