In 2000, possibly significantly shortly after his fiftieth birthday, Vyacheslav Mikhailov turned to etching to produce a large series of images of beautifully rotund naked women and a bearded older man, sometimes intimate and more often just doting.

His mastery of line is reminiscent of late Picasso, and his use of colour in a cleverly limited flesh-tinted palette adds to the affection and devotion evident in the images.