"To take a sheet of paper and a pencil and make something where before there had been nothing; to feel the paper under my fist and the sound of the crayon's whisper across the page; to bring to life on the blank surface line, light and shadow..."

Two hundred years ago, Edward Armiger stood at his easel and wondered what to paint. His problems are contemporary, even if his setting is different. His was a world in the grip of war, change and radical new ideas, but what was his place in it?

He and his friends enter a painting competition at the Royal Academy that will establish...