1/6 Anyone else intrigued by Rishi’s choice of paintings? What is he trying to tell us? Can we guess what will be in the spending review from his taste in art? A thread:

2/6 this is a particularly interesting one. It’s a portrait of Alton Peters by Craigie Aitchison. https://artcollection.culture.gov.uk/artwork/16372-c/ picking a portrait of a black man is a smart signal about diversity but there’s more to it...

3/6 Peters was American so the choice of him as a subject indicates support for the transatlantic alliance & perhaps hopes of a trade deal. Peters was also a man of high culture who loved the opera and married Irving Berlin’s daughter https://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/01/nyregion/alton-e-peters-64-lawyer-who-led-opera-guild.html

4/6 The artist Craigie Aitchison is a Scottish painter so the message about the union could not be clearer

5/6 This is Girl Knitting (portrait of the artist’s daughter) by Henry Lamb. A slightly more traditional choice, reassuring for the base. Lamb was Australian (but raised in England), so again Rishi is displaying an international outlook https://artcollection.culture.gov.uk/artwork/3697/ 

6/6 Lamb is mainly known as an official war artist during WW2 and some of his works are in the Imperial War Museum, so the Chancellor is a true patriot when it comes to painting