My friend Benedict Rubbra, who has died aged 86, was a portrait painter who later switched to abstract work.Over the years he was commissioned to paint more than 200 portraits, including one of Prince Charles, who gave him three sittings at Kensington Palace (1983), the poet Ursula Vaughan Williams (1984), the composer Howard Ferguson (1985) and the pioneering cardiac surgeon Sir Terence English (1997). Continue reading...