Public remembrance is a difficult notion: how do you remember an event you have not experienced? The First World War Centenary has produced a range of artistic solutions, notably Paul Cummins’ and Tom Piper’s ceramic poppy installation at the Tower of London, a vivid public testament to the sheer number of lives lost. Now the painter Hughie O’Donoghue is offering a more personal reflection in “Seven Halts on the Somme” at Leighton House (until 2 October).

An obsessive ferreter in archives who describes his working process as “archaeology in reverse”, O’Donoghue has made two earlier series of paintings inspired by his father’s letters from the Front during the Second World War.