The Baroque church of Christchurch in Spitalfields was designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor and consecrated in 1729. The church had been part of the fabric of Kossoff’s life growing up in London’s East End. He first painted the church in 1986, although had attempted to draw the building on previous occasions but, by his own account, both attempts were failures. After reading Peter Ackroyd’s book Hawksmoor, the artist revisited the church, ‘I walked once again down Brick Lane toward Christchurch, Spitalfields, a building which like St Paul’s has always been part of my life and, in the dusty sunlight of that August day, when this part of London still looks and feels like the London of Blake’s Jerusalem. I find myself involved once again in making drawings and the idea for a painting begins to emerge.’