But if Trump thinks his threats to cancel TV licenses or his crass warnings of jailing and prison rape will intimidate journalists, he’s wrong.

Despite their popularity as crops for millennia, cereals require preparation into more palatable form before they can form the mainstay of most diets, as one of the staple sources of carbohydrates, as they were across Europe before the popularisation of the potato after 1750. Wheat and rye were most commonly crushed into flour in mills, then that was baked into bread.

Early manual milling was replaced during classical times by mills driven by a range of natural power, including animals, wind and water. In 1786, the first steam-powered grain mill opened for business in London, although wind and water were to remain dominant in many rural districts until well into the twentieth century.

Windmills developed during the Middle Ages, and by 1500 were widespread across many parts of Europe. Although their design evolved and improved into the nineteenth century, their common principle is to expose rotating sails to wind, and transfer that rotating force to one of a pair of large millstones, within which the grain or grist is ground into flour.

Rembrandt painted few non-narrative landscapes, but among them is his dramatic view of The Mill (1645-48) seen in the rich rays of twilight. This is a post mill, whose wooden top was turned into the wind to set its sails turning. It’s sited on a small hill giving it the greatest exposure to wind.

The great masters of Dutch landscape art like Jacob van Ruisdael must have painted many hundreds of windmills, of which one of the best-known is this view of The Windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede from about 1670. This small town, now a city, is on the bank of the River Rhine, an ideal location for delivering sacks of grain by barge, and shipping the resulting sacks of flour. This should have kept this tower mill as busy as the wind allowed, and its owner prosperous.

The British topographic painter John Varley painted this close-up view of the well-known Red House Mill, Battersea, Surrey, with its good access by barge and proximity to the city of London. This is a wooden smock mill, a design pioneered by the Dutch in the seventeenth century.

Samuel Palmer’s Summer Storm near Pulborough, Sussex from about 1851 refers to Dutch landscape painting, but in a very Kentish context. A storm is seen approaching the rolling countryside near Pulborough, now in West Sussex, in the south-east of England. On the left, in the middle distance, a small bridge leads across to a hamlet set around a prominent windmill, whose blades are blurred as they’re driven by the wind. Beyond that mill are fields of ripening cereal.

Some windmills used their power to cut wood in sawmills, and others raised water, tasks also powered by water in watermills. These were of even more ancient origin, devised by combining waterwheels with toothed gears in the couple of centuries before the Christian era.

The Old Water Mill from 1790 is one of British painter George Morland’s finest landscapes, and shows a small undershot watermill deep in the English countryside.

A contemporary of Morland, James Ward wasn’t shy of showing the increasing dereliction in the troubled British countryside at this time. An Overshot Mill (1802-1807) shows a rickety overshot watermill used for the grinding of grain. Its fabric is in dire need of repairs, and the thatchers are already making a start on its roof.

John Constable’s contrasting view of Parham Mill, Gillingham from about 1826 shows an undershot watermill near the town of Gillingham in Dorset, visited by the artist during the early 1820s. Also known as Parham’s Mill and later Purns Mill, it burned to the ground in 1825.

When the German-American landscape artist Albert Bierstadt was painting in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1855 he made this idyllic view of A Rustic Mill which is clearly overshot, being fed along a wooden aqueduct. In contrast to many of the other paintings of mills from this period, this appears in an excellent state of repair and prosperous.

Nikolai Astrup’s Going to the Mill from about 1900-05 is a complete essay on watermills, pictured in perfect rainy milling weather, with the streams in spate during the autumn/fall. A mill race, running down its wooden channel, feeds a small undershot paddle in the centre, used to turn a millstone for sharpening knives and tools. Water flow to that is regulated by the simple valve upstream, currently in the off position, and shedding the water to either side. The man and his son are taking a sack of grain up to another mill, possibly the small shed seen in the centre distance, to grind flour for the family’s baking.

That completes my pictorial account of cereals in arable farming prior to mechanisation, from plowing the soil to milling the grain into flour. Pure arable farming was unusual, though, and the companions to fields of cereals were often sheep, the subject of next week’s article.

Tomorrow we celebrate the tercentenary of the birth of the great equine artist George Stubbs (1724-1806). In his honour, this article looks at some of the finest paintings of horses following Stubbs’ examples from the late eighteenth century.

Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) was probably introduced to the painting of horses when he was a student of Carle Vernet in Paris, from 1808. He developed his skills in the stables of the palace at Versailles, and became an accomplished rider himself.

In 1812, Géricault submitted his first painting to the Salon. The Charging Chasseur (1812) was not only accepted, but attained such critical acclaim that he was awarded a gold medal, and his future appeared bright. It’s rich with fine detail in the metalwork of the horse’s headstall, and the chasseur’s tunic.

In 1820, Géricault accompanied his masterwork The Raft of the Medusa for exhibition in London, and remained in England until the following year. His Epsom Derby painted in 1821 follows the convention of the day in showing galloping racehorses flying through the air without contact with the ground beneath them. The Derby Stakes is a flat race that has been run on Epsom Downs, to the south of London, since 1780. At this time it was run on a Thursday in late May or early June, despite the unseasonal weather seen here.

Tragically, horse riding was also contributor to Géricault’s undoing and untimely death in 1824, at the age of only thirty-two.

Although the British painter James Ward (1769–1859) didn’t set out to specialise in the painting of horses, during the first couple of decades of the nineteenth century he painted the portraits of several famous racehorses.

By 1820, Ward was struggling to make ends meet from his art. He struck lucky with two prominent paintings, The Deer Stealer, commissioned by Theophilus Levett, and this portrait of Dr. Syntax, a Bay Racehorse, Standing in a Coastal Landscape, an Estuary Beyond (1820). Doctor Syntax (1811-38) was owned by Ralph Riddell, and raced only in northern England, where he was one of the most successful racehorses of all time. His portrait was painted twice by John Frederick Herring, Senior, and Ward’s turn came in 1820, when the horse won all four of his recorded races.

Some of Ward’s later paintings of a white horse confronting a huge and menacing boa constrictor (or ‘Liboya Serpent’) have survived. The Moment (1831) is probably the best of these, with its unusually sketchy background.

Horace Vernet (1789–1863), son of Carle who had taught the young Géricault, is best-known for his paintings of battles, including those of the French colonisation of Algeria. He was also among the early artists to have been inspired by Lord Byron’s narrative poem Mazeppa, first published in 1819.

Vernet’s Mazeppa and the Wolves from 1826 is one of several that he painted of this story.

Théodore Géricault was the young Eugène Delacroix’s (1798–1863) great friend and mentor, and influenced the latter’s paintings of horses.

Shortly after Géricault’s untimely death, Delacroix visited tales of chivalry in Combat Between Two Horsemen in Armour, painted at some time between 1825-30.

Delacroix painted this spirited watercolour of a Horse Frightened by Lightning in the same period.

In 1835, Delacroix returned to Lord Byron’s Orientalist tale of the Giaour, and painted this version of the Combat of the Giaour and Hassan. This time he had the benefit of watching Moroccan cavalry manoeuvres, and a commission from the Comte de Mornay, who had led the diplomatic mission that had earlier taken the artist to North Africa. The resulting composition is radically different from his earlier version, and although Mornay seems to have been pleased with the result, the critics were less impressed.

In 1861, shortly before Delacroix’s death, Edgar Degas’ (1834–1917) interest in horseracing was kindled when he visited a former schoolfriend on his country estate. From about 1869 onwards, his paintings of horseracing often contained substantial landscape passages, and some were perhaps more landscape than racing.

Degas’ At the Races in the Countryside from 1869 combines three contrasting uses for horses: in the foreground a pair are drawing a family in their carriage, in the middle distance they are being ridden as a means of transport, and deeper still they are racing on the flat.

Horses in a Meadow (1871) is particularly interesting for its inclusion of industrial elements, in the form of smoking chimneys and the steam vessels in the river behind. These are often cited as being characteristic of Impressionist paintings, but are equally typical of Degas’ pursuit of images showing ‘modern life’.

Finally, Degas’ later Jockeys on Horseback before Distant Hills (1884) shows a group of racehorses idling about as their riders talk, probably prior to a race.

Tomorrow I’ll tell of the unusual career of George Stubbs, who specialised in painting portraits of racehorses.