Letter: Dame Paula Rego obituary

Anthony Rudolf’s poem European Hours evokes many of the artworks he visited with Paula Rego Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

Anthony Rudolf’s Collected Poems (2017) is dedicated to his companion, Paula Rego, with the prose poem European Hours headed by the words “To Ancestral Europe: your Iberia, my Austria-Hungary. (To London …)”. The poem invokes and evokes many of the artworks the two pilgrims visited together over the years, plus stops at the assorted haunts of writers, poets, and musicians. It closes with a visit to the Alsatian city of Colmar, “To Martin Schongauer’s ‘Madonna of the Rose Garden’ in the Church of the Dominicans. We wander to a dark and empty chapel where your eye is caught by an obscure ostensory with two angels. You take out your pencil and sketchbook.”