Guernica is navy blue, black and white, 3.5 metre (11 ft) tall and 7.8 metre (25.6 ft) wide, a mural-size canvas painted in oil.

"When it was breezy, they needed several men to hold this canvas straight while he painted," Mr. Tancock said.

Here he painted the Grand Canyon on a huge 7' x 12' canvas which required him to erect a shelter around him as he painted outside or "plein aire".

A partially destroyed tunnel was made to look as if it was fully restored, using a gigantic "painted cloth", a canvas painted with a perspective of a working tunnel.

The novel exhibits a huge panorama of trans-Atlantic life, a far larger canvas than any James had previously painted.

This white circle was made by leaving the canvas unpainted while painting the background black.

What a canvas on which to paint a good time!

The canvases this time being the same sizes as Goya painted between 1789 and 1815.

A hauntingly prescient canvas painted only months before the artist fled Germany for the Netherlands, it depict Beckmann frowning and holding a crystal ball in his left hand.

Five years ago, Michelle Marcuse put aside her oil paints and canvases to paint on silk.