Why equities are better investments than art

I have just bought an original Vernon Ward – a large and beautiful oil painting of a vase of roses completed in the 1930s or 1940s.

How can you possibly afford an original Ward on a journalist’s salary, I hear you say? Or perhaps I hear you say nothing of the sort. After all, I suspect you haven’t the faintest idea who Vernon Ward is. He was one of the most recognisable English painters of the second half of the 20th century. He painted harbours, swans, flowers, birds and the odd slightly soppy Edwardian drawing room scene.