Through the looking glass (above)

Among special displays at this year’s Royal Society of Portrait Painters exhibition— which runs at the Mall Galleries, London SW1, from May 5–14—is a group of recent self-portraits, including this engaging and characteristically detailed image by Melissa Scott-miller. Captured as she works in a convex 19th-century butler’s looking glass, the artist regards her reflection and, by extension, the viewer, critically. Beyond plateglass windows are tall London houses. Throughout a distinguished career, Miss Scott-miller, who grew up amid Kensington’s red-brick blocks of mansion flats, has remained fascinated by the capital’s streetscapes.