Michael Howard FRSA is an independent scholar, writer, painter, curator and former lecturer to academic and studio-based students at the University of Manchester’s History of Art Department. His own paintings hang in the Manchester Art Gallery. He has given talks for Christie’s, Sotheby’s, ACE, art galleries and universities in UK, USA and Europe. Author of many books including ‘The Impressionists by Themselves, Techniques of the Masters (Goya and Whistler), L S Lowry, A Visionary Artist and Gaugin in association with Gaugin Museum Tahiti, his versatility led him to write an opera libretto and play scripts based on ghost stories by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and William Hope Hodgson.