During his exile in Switzerland, Christophe went through an unhappy love affair with Anna, the wife of a friend, and the consequent sense of guilt temporarily stilled his genius.

Now the Whitechapel Art Gallery is staging an exhibition-about-an-exhibition that looks at the origins of this love affair between the brooding colourist and the British.

It is a personal project borne of his love affair with the butterfly and an imagination as wild as the flowers that blanket the fields here.