I probably wouldn’t have gone to this exhibition without promoting, but there was something about the colours and the very deliberate process of creation that intrigued me.

So many large paintings of female nudes that, for all the geometrical precision and sumptuous shades, it was difficult not to come over a bit Mrs Grundy after the first half dozen. Uglow seems to have been an uncompromising artist, uninterested in being a success and simply driven to work through “an idea” on canvas. His marks are still visible, like tailor’s tacks, and some of his works took years to complete. Still lifes of fruit or bread took so long that you can discern the decomposition.

The subtitle refers to the great lengths he went to to view his subject from an exact viewpoint: Root Five Nude, for example, lies on a table lightly curved on the horizontal plane so that his eye was always the same distance from every part of his subject (the “arc of the eye”), and the Greek key design gives him 100 units to measure by. There was a 1976 Aquarius programme presented by Peter Hall where Uglow began painting Root Five Nude. His concentration – obsession – with looking, with light and his work was pronounced; he talked of “a few magic moments” in a week as he painted. Such an attitude was ripe for parody, but somehow you couldn’t doubt Uglow’s sincerity. There was something slightly unsettling about his obsession – just as there was with some of the positions he had his models adopt – but it did give his paintings a very distinctive feel.