Don't say we didn't warn you. Following yesterday's announcement by the Today programme that its poll to find the nation's greatest painting had reached shortlist stage, controversy reigns up and down the land (so we are told) over which paintings have - and, crucially, have not - made the list.
Or, to put it more accurately, some silly-season ferment froths away in this morning's papers. The Independent's art critic, Tom Lubbock, commented that the selection couldn't exactly be called lively, as it had been billed by the judges: "I should think even Her Majesty the Queen could have compiled a more exciting list," he sniffs.
The Telegraph devotes a double-page spread to the story, its confessional-style report by Richard Dorment opening with the words: "When I first heard the shortlist, my heart sank." Even we can't help feeling a twinge of disappointment that Constable's The Hay Wain makes the grade, despite being offered by us as an example of a painting most people feel was ripe for the bin.
But what sticks in most throats has not so much been what was included, but what hasn't. Manet, Van Gogh, Turner and Hogarth are all there, as are - perhaps more excitingly - Piero della Francesca, Van Eyck and Ford Maddox Brown. Yet no Monet, no Bacon, no Picasso, no Rembrandt (A Girl at a Window was excluded by the judges for not being "one of his best pictures") - nothing, in fact, more recent than David Hockney's Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy. Only two paintings on the list are kept outside London.
So once more, dear readers, we turn to you. Where have the panel got it wrong? What are they missing out on? Tell us today.
