It’s shameful to admit it but if it was not for the current exhibition at the Royal Academy – America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s – we would not have heard of Alice Neel (1900-84). There is a superb documentary about her (here is the trailer and here is the link to the film itself, it’s available for another month); and here is the website about her and her work; this says: ‘Alice Neel was one of the great American painters of the twentieth century. She was also a pioneer among women artists. A painter of people, landscape and still life, Neel was never fashionable or in step with avant-garde movements.’ She was called ‘one of the greatest portrait artists of the 20th century’ by Barry Walker, curator of modern art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which organised a retrospective of her work in 2010. This is John and Joey Priestly 1968.