The trial turns out to be a McGuffin, the last-minute “new evidence” a bit of a come-down after defence attourney Nels Gudmundsson’s climactic anti-racist speech. This is art of immediate painterly application.Unlike some artists, Nicholson was quite relaxed about home-life going on around him while he worked. A fair number of people made up his home circle and were dependent on him, first of all his wife and their four children, one of whom, Nancy, married Robert Graves and gave him grandchildren. All we see is a farmhouse on the downs, three outbuildings, the sea behind and the sky above.

Here is an extremely economical painting, both for aesthetic reasons and because Nicholson liked to do these pictures in one sitting. He had canvases ready (see how many of them are 33 x 41 centimetres) that would fit into the lid of his paint-box. A folding stool for the better inspection of outside subjects and away he would go, happy as only a painter can be. He didn’t need to draw his subjects first, and such drawings are not really imaginable. I think Nicholson must have admired Manet more than any other modern artist The more sumptuous of the still-lives tell us this.

On the other hand the mature landscapes do seem to be without influence, and therefore oddly out of time.Judd’s Farm, for instance, we know to have been painted in 1912. Stylistically, it might be dated at any time in the subsequent 40 years. Viola on the Downs of 1909 must have darkened over the years but one can see how the thinned-down paint and cool green tones responded to Whistler’s paintings of the Thames However, Whistler wasn’t really Nicholson’s master Perhaps he didn’t have one. He liked to say that he was self-taught, meaning that he was without obligations. His work has similarities with that of his friends William Orpen and Augustus John: perhaps a matter of general period style. These are not elevated subjects but the pictures are anything but humble There is something even immodest in their casual flair. A number of the still-lives are deliciously tactile, reminding one that Nicholson was a dedicated sensualist in his private life The landscapes are on the whole drier pictures.

Landscape is not an ideal genre in which to exhibit dandyism, but Nicholson had at least a sense of how to do it.The earliest landscapes in the show seem directly descended from Whistler and his “Nocturnes”. There’s still something both off-hand and concentrated in their character. Almost all of the judges in the 1993 Mercury Music Prize approved: the album missed the award by a single vote.If the Auteurs ever harboured a plan for world domination, it careered off the rails right after that. But you can tell by the way Haines proudly reels off his pathetic chart positions that this is a man who never dreamed of swapping hair-care tips with Rod Stewart on the slopes of St Moritz.”When we started out, we were my dream band,” he enthuses “Dead ropey Very confrontational We were not entertainment. A punchy debut album, New Wave, got his foot in the record collection of all those who had been waiting for pop music that could fuse the bite of early Costello with the poignancy of Leonard Cohen and the abrasiveness of The Fall. After Haines formed the Auteurs in 1992, following the dissolution of his former band, Servants (“Polite white boys not hitting their guitars very hard,” he grimaces), it seemed as though the nation’s ears belonged to him.

But when we meet, Haines has just spent the afternoon picking out a Christmas present for his father. How many serial killers do you know who will trudge around the West End to find their dad that special something?”Yes, I’m always cast as the pissed-off granddad staring ruefully into his pint,” he says, staring ruefully into his pint “And I’m not I like a good time But I like it on my own terms.”That goes for everything. Elvis Costello might have had him in mind when he wrote, “You’re nobody till everybody in this town thinks you’re a bastard.”Yet in person, Haines exudes a buoyancy which belies his reputation. The piercing stare and severe brow might suggest a crazed serial killer who’s having a bad day. For the qualities that Haines admires in Albini are the same qualities that his own fans treasure in him: individuality, capriciousness, irreverence and an uncanny knack for rubbing people up the wrong way.