Angus painted for two hours before pausing. The canvas on which he was working was an undemanding one – a group portrait commissioned by a bank of its board of directors. He had chosen to portray the directors in both standing and sitting poses, casually placed around a boardroom, with one even looking out of the window and caught only in profile. The commission had preceded the disaster that struck the bank, a few months before the howling winds of financial crisis had stripped away the clothing of centuries and exposed alarmingly shaky foundations. Angus had finished the sittings when this began, and had awaited instructions from the bank as to what to do. Several of the directors had gone: was he to paint out their faces in the way of official artists of the old Soviet Union, where discredited members of the Politburo found themselves over-painted with vases of flowers? No such instruction came from the bank, which, having agreed to pay his fee, felt obliged to honour the contract.

‘Perhaps I could paint one or two of them looking regretful,’ Angus suggested to the bank official who had made all the arrangements. ‘Would that do? It would be recording a particular moment in banking history, and might therefore be of greater interest in the future. What do you think?’

This had been greeted with silence. Then the official said, ‘I’m not sure if all of them are regretful. Some of them, certainly, but not everyone at that level seems to have donned sackcloth and ashes.’

Angus thought about this. There had been general calls for punishment and retribution, with eager tricoteuses taking up their station outside corporate headquarters, but this had left him feeling vaguely uncomfortable. There had been greedy bankers, but almost everybody else had been greedy too. Did those who rejoiced in the high returns on their savings stop to think that they were part of the problem, that they were rentiers? Did those who ran up high credit card bills stop to think that they were part of the mountain of debt that the reckless economic party was building up? Many first stones had been cast, he thought.

‘Or a paysage moralisé?’ asked Angus. ‘There’s a window in the picture. There could be a paysage moralisé outside.’

The official cleared his throat. ‘You must forgive me – that’s not a banking term.’

‘The landscape does the work,’ explained Angus. ‘One paints an allegorical landscape to make a point about life. A barren valley. High mountains presenting an obstacle to the traveller. Burning haystacks.’

‘How interesting. But somehow …’

‘No, I understand. Nothing disturbing.’