Martin Gayford is an art critic and the author of biographical studies of Michelangelo, John Constable and Vincent van Gogh. He has sat for portraits by both David Hockney and Lucian Freud, the latter experience being the subject of his book Man with a Blue Scarf (2010). His other publications include a survey of painting in London after the Second World War, Modernists and Mavericks, and The Pursuit of Art, a collection of travels and interviews.