We all want to know what artists do inside their studios. By the time the work reaches a gallery or a museum, much of the evidence of labour has been smoothed way. The work looks as if it reached this level of perfection – or charming imperfection – without the intervention of the human hand. It becomes just another made thing.

Here at sequestered Compton Verney, in the combed wilds of Warwickshire, an intelligent show teeming with paintings, prints and objects from the 17th century onwards pieces together the story of the artist's studio, how painters and photographers have represented it, how it became, down the centuries, not only a focus of myth and fantasy, but also a cheerful site of social interaction.

As we see in this show, the artist in his studio is often depicted as being alone with himself, making Art emerge, in silence, from his fevered hand. He surrounds himself with objects – casts of antique sculpture, skulls, prints of other artists in their studios, showing them painting themselves in their studios – and with the aid of these objects, he constructs a kind of imaginative universe for his own and others' delectation. It is an entire world unto itself, a solipsist's delight. Partially true and partially fancifully untrue, of course. It is what the artist wants the public to believe about him. The noble calling. A priesthood of sorts. Many Victorian artists are shown here in this way, in paintings and photographs.

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And yet the miseries of reality, the curse of worldly unsuccess, will intervene to spoil the fun. Here, for example, is a wonderful early painting by Cézanne, dated 1865, which shows, at the centre of the painter's space, a cooking pot, a stove and a giant flue. The space is so dark that we feel we must grope our way towards it. It stinks of poverty, hard luck. In another painting – a Victorian piece that points a moral – a male artist, seated beneath the skylight of his studio, stares down at his empty purse. The sufferings that go hand in hand with creativity. A century before that we glimpse a scene from Hogarth's Studio in 1739, as shown in E M Ward's painting of 1865. The place is teeming with finely dressed adults and their children. I counted 15 individual sitters, many of them fashionable bustlers in bustles. Not to mention the brace of croquet mallets, the giant leather book on the side table, and the enormous painting of that great philanthropist Thomas Coram, reared up for the wonderment of the crowd. It feels as quietly set apart as Charing Cross Station during the rush hour. This is quite another insight then. In the years before most of the great museums and galleries got under way, artists met each other – and their clientele – in their studios.

And now for the less good news. Frankly, there are problems with the presentation of this show. For all the excellence of individual objects, it lacks an emotional epicentre. It feels as if it consists of one damned thing after another. The show begins in a suite of small and slightly under-lit, if not gloom-inducing, rooms and then it strays, telling its fascinating tale as it goes, through many other rooms of varying sizes. Then we hike upstairs and find other bits of the exhibition elsewhere. Finally, we pass through a good part of the permanent collection before we reach its conclusion – which partially destroys our concentration upon the matter in hand. All rather messily unsatisfactory from a presentational point of view.

But then this problem of presentation has been with Compton Verney right from the start. Who had the idea, for example, of hiding its wonderful collection of folk art, the jewel of this institution, in some hideaway attic rooms?

To 13 December (01926 645500)