In the gloomy splendour of Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire, the 10^th Duke of Buccleuch gazes up at Rembrandt’s Old Woman Reading, 1655. The painting has belonged to the Scott family for more than 250 years, and like generations before him, the duke has known it all his life. “She is the most powerful presence in this house.” He pauses: “Do you see what I mean?”

Prince of Wales, Prince Regent, and finally King: George IV, (1762-1830) was an unpopular and greedy ruler, but his compulsive collecting and passion for redecorating have made a huge contribution to the arts of the nation, and form a significant part of the Royal Collection.

Khadija Saye was 24 when she died in the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017, the same year that her series of photographic self-portraits showed in the Diaspora Pavilion at the Venice Biennale: she was the youngest artist in a roster of well-established figures such as Joy Gregory and Isaac Julien.

When Picasso left Barcelona for Paris in 1900, he took what by then was a well-trodden path for artists eager to be at the very centre of the art world.

With the first round of galleries opening their doors in June and a new round getting ready to open in July, we’ve a half-way home of a roundup this week. This month’s re-openings include the National Gallery, the Royal Academy, the Barbican, the Whitechapel, the Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft, the Mosaic Rooms, the Estorick Collection, the Garden Museum and the Tates – Modern, Britain, Liverpool and St Ives.

From her fourth floor flat, which is also her studio, the painter Celia Paul looks out over the British Museum, the figures of the Muses carved into its pediment huge and present compared to the antlike, and usually teeming, human life below (main picture: British Museum and Plane Tree Branches).

The note of longing scored into this exhibition’s title is well-judged: as things are now, it is the sight of the elderly in the company of friends, watching the world go by from a doorstep or park bench, that provokes a pang of nostalgia, far more than the surface details of the mid-20^th century, when these pictures were taken.

The former home of 19^th century architect Sir John Soane has long been celebrated as one of London’s hidden marvels, an astonishing treasure trove of architectural models, paintings, sculptures and historical artefacts concealed behind an elegant but unassuming facade.

Salvador Dalí’s house at Portlligat on the Costa Brava is straight out of the pages of a lifestyle magazine, its sunbaked white walls dazzling in the sunshine, and light pouring in from every angle. It was a fisherman’s hut when Dalí moved there in 1930, extending it over 40 years like “a true biological structure” to make a home and a place to work for himself and his wife Gala, with every window letting in a view of the sea.

The limitations of life on screen are all too apparent at the moment, and yet still there are instances where online can offer something beyond the reach of an old-fashioned trip to an art gallery. Ultra-high resolution reproductions of works of art are a case in point, and many museum websites now allow us to examine their collections in the microscopic detail once reserved for conservation departments.