The work of women photographers has often been unfairly neglected. This lecture seeks to correct that by examining the contribution of three outstanding British practitioners; Julia Margaret Cameron, a Victorian pioneer; Jane Bown, a brilliant portraitist; and Fay Godwin, who excelled in landscape photography. We also explore the work of two highly influential Americans: Dorothea Lange, who produced brilliant documentary images and Annie Leibovitz, who continues to both surprise and delight her audience.

 About our Lecturer

Lectured in architecture at UCL for 25 years, but a lifelong enthusiasm for photography and has exhibited his photographs at UCL. He works with a range of cameras, including a pre-War Leica as used by his great hero, Henri Cartier-Bresson.

The Ming Dynasty came to power in 1368. Ming translates as bright and the first emperors of this new dynasty were regarded as semi-divine and blessed by the 'Mandate of Heaven'. China's new capital city, Beijing, had massive fortified walls which protected the Imperial Palace - the Forbidden City. Fine craftsmanship developed under the patronage of the emperors including the making of glittering gold vessels which reflected the brightness of the new dynasty, brilliantly coloured red lacquer, jade sculptures and porcelain vessels including the 

About our Lecturer

Lecturer and guide at the Victoria and Albert Museum for more than 20 years. Whilst resident in Shanghai gave lectures on the history of the China trade and European Chinoiserie to the international community. Returning to London in 2002, she worked on a project cataloguing Chinese ceramics at Kensington Palace.

Antony Gormley’s career spans nearly 40 years, during which time he has made sculpture that explores the relationship of the human body to space, often using his own body as his starting point.  His work has been shown throughout the world, in galleries including the Tate in London and the Hermitage in St Petersburg, but is also often on open display, as public art, such as Another Place at Crosby Beach, near Liverpool. As well as works that he is well known for, like the iconic Angel of the North, this lecture will look at some of his earlier and less well-known works, to give an overall view of the development of his work across his whole career, up to the present time.

About our Lecturer

BA and MA from Goldsmith’s College, and an MA (distinction) from Birkbeck College. Experienced guide at Tate Britain, Tate Modern, the Royal Academy and Greenwich. Lectures at Tate, to independent art societies and on cruises. Leads art appreciation holidays.

Houses made from wool that warm in the depths of winter, carpets that tell stories, woven bands that appease ancestors, embroideries that ward off evil, and kilims that store kitchenware, with everything ready to be packed and carried on yak, or camel at a moment’s notice; the little-known nomadic textile cultures of the Kyrgyz, Turkoman and Karakalpak are explored in this lecture, along with the rise and fall of nomadism and where nomadism fits within the modern world. Chris also shares from his own experience of working with nomadic yak herders in the High Pamirs for three years.

About our Lecturer

Childhood in Turkey and war-torn Beirut.  Travelling widely, he set up a workshop in Khiva, Uzbekistan reviving fifteenth century carpet designs and embroideries, in Pamirs mountains of Tajikistan, trained herders to comb yaks for their cashmere-like down, and Kyrgyzstan lived in the world’s largest natural walnut forest establishing a wood-carving workshop.. 

The Scottish Colourists are now acknowledged as one of the most talented, experimental and distinctive groups in twentieth century British art. Their love of Paris in the Belle Époque gave them an early understanding of developments in French modern art, from Manet and the Impressionists to Matisse and the Fauves. Their simple, vibrant and engaging works combine avant-garde influences with an art for art’s sake joie de vivre. This lecture introduces the lives of S J Peploe, J D Fergusson, G L Hunter and F C B Cadell and provides a taste of their joyful and uplifting work.

About our Lecturer:

A tour guide at Manchester Art Gallery since 2015 and she has loved spending all her time sharing her passion for art as a speaker to many different groups specialising in Scottish art from 1880 and the art of Manchester.

Printed in 1636, Annalia Dubrensia - the Annals of Dover - is an exceptionally rare and valuable little book, which celebrates the famous Cotswold Olympics and their founder, Robert Dover, who is credited with inventing the modern Olympic Games in England in 1612. The book contains a series of tributes from his friends and admirers, among them Ben Johnson. The games are still held each June on Dover’s Hill in Chipping Campden, and are organised by the Robert Dover’s Games Society. In 2013 the Society was fortunate to acquire a copy of Annalia Dubrensia, and I was asked to look at the book with a view to conserving it.

About our lecturer

A bookbinder, artist and teacher. He first learned bookbinding at 16 from Benedictine Monks at Douai Abbey, Berkshire. His work is mostly the restoration of antiquarian books and Design Bindings. One of his many prize bindings was acquired by the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

For over forty years, Winston Churchill was a keen amateur artist. He painted from 1915, right down to his retirement in the 1950s. His landscapes record almost every country which he visited as a distinguished statesman.

In Britain he painted at Blenheim, where he was born, at Port Lympne and Trent Park, where he stayed, and at Chartwell, his final home. Abroad, he painted in France and Belgium, from the trenches of World War One, and after that, on the French Riviera. He also painted in Europe, at exotic locations like Morocco and Egypt, and in Canada and the United States.

Churchill’s wit is legendary: there are even books about it. Churchill discussed painting with Noel Coward, who was another keen amateur artist for over forty years. Indeed, Churchill persuaded Coward to stop using watercolour and convert to full oil painting. In Britain, Coward painted in or near his two Kentish homes: Goldenhurst, and his magnificent house overlooking the sea at St Margaret’s Bay. He painted in Italy, at Venice and Portofino, but also three other Mediterranean locations which have yet to be identified. The majority of his paintings are of Jamaica: he retired and had two homes there. Coward of course used wit and humour in many of his plays and musicals, as well as in his personal life.

About our lecturer:

Nicholas Reed is an art historian and archaeologist. In the 1980s he became Founder- Chairman of the Friends of Shakespeare's Globe. In 2005 he was one of two Lecturer Representatives on the The Arts Society Advisory Council and also Vice-Chairman of Folkestone. He is the author of four books on the Impressionists in England, and one on Frost Fairs on the Frozen Thames. His latest book My Father, the Man who Never Was, now renamed "Spy Runner", features in his latest lecture.

In Tudor and Jacobean England, visual art was often termed “lively.” This word was used to describe the full range of visual and material culture—from portraits to funeral monuments, book illustrations to tapestry. To a modern viewer, this claim seems perplexing: what could “liveliness” have meant in a culture with seemingly little appreciation for illusionistic naturalism? And in a period supposedly characterised by fear of idolatry, how could “liveliness” have been a good thing? 

About our Lecturer

A Cambridge historian of art and ideas, specialising in Tudor and Stuart Britain and the wider 16th and 17th-century world. She is a BBC New Generation Thinker, appearing regularly on BBC Radio 3 and in other popular media.

TAS Cambridge has again sponsored MA students at the Hamilton Kerr Institute: Susannah Morgan, Dorothy Johnson, Jaeyeon Yoon. In recognition of TAS Cambridges’ support, Prof Erma Hermens, the director, and the three students will discuss the role of the Hamilton Kerr in painting restoration.The students will present on their reconstructions of Old Masters Paintings, their first treatments of paintings in the studio, and their study trip to Belgium which was supported by TASC funding.

About our Letcurer

Professor Erma Hermens is Director of the Hamilton Kerr Institute for Easel Painting Conservation and Deputy Director Conservation and Heritage Science at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, UK. She brings research teams together comprising (technical) art historians, conservators, scientists, working closely with Fitzwilliam curators and other Cambridge University Departments and Museums. From 2016-2022 she occupied the Rijksmuseum Chair for Studio Practice and Technical Art History, University of Amsterdam, and was a Rijksmuseum senior researcher. Before Amsterdam, as associate professor at the University of Glasgow, she led the Technical Art History group in the Centre for Textile Conservation and Technical Art History, and established the first European MA in Technical Art History. She is a founder and Co-Editor in Chief of ArtMatters: International Journal for Technical Art History and has over 25 years of experience, researching, publishing and lecturing in the interdisciplinary field of Technical Art History. She received many grants and was visiting professor at Renmin University, Beijing, the New University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City and at the Venice Institute for Digital and Public Humanities, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice. She recently was awarded the prestigious inaugural Brenninkmeijer Senior research Fellowship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

About the lecture:

Despite widespread fascination with claims that Vermeer used a camera obscura to create his masterpieces, most arguments rely on flawed reconstructions that ignore historical reality. This talk cuts through the speculation by examining what 17th-century sources actually reveal: camera obscuras were designed for viewing bright outdoor scenes through simple spectacle lenses, not for indoor painting. Two reconstruction experiments, grounded in these historical conditions, expose the flaw in these theories and demonstrate that indoor projections—such as those supposedly used by Vermeer—are optically dim and of limited practical use. Rather than reinforcing the hypothesis, this evidence urges caution: we must remain critical of attempts to reduce Vermeer’s extraordinary visual genius to the workings of a single lens. 

Lecturer Biography

Paul van Laar is a technical art historian based in Cambridge, where he works as Research Associate in Scientific Research at the Fitzwilliam Museum and Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge. His research combines scientific analysis and historical inquiry to explore artistic techniques, material choices, and visual changes in artworks. While his specialism is 17th-century Dutch painting, he also contributes to research on a wide range of paintings and 3D objects in support of exhibitions and interdisciplinary projects. He holds an MSc in Technical Art History from the University of Amsterdam (2021) and is currently pursuing a PhD on the production, trade, and varied use of the blue pigment smalt in Early Modern painting, in a joint project between NOVA University Lisbon (VICARTE) and the University of Cambridge. 

William Blake had visions, talked to his dead brother, and invented a mythology that few could understand. Yet for all that he was a deeply human person, with attributes and flaws, and living in lowly circumstances and fighting authority much of the time. He was political, and sided with the revolutions in both France and America. Moreover, this radical man would be bemused by his poem ‘And did those feet’ being sung as a kind of national anthem today. He believed that heaven was overrated and the word of God too often presented as law-giving dogma; while hell was a place free from rules and where emotions and personalities could be expressed.

About our lecturer:

Ray has had a life-long love of art. However, in his twenties, Ray studied social sciences at the London School of Economics and the School of Oriental and African Studies. These studies led to a career in health and social care, with art being an evening and weekend passion. But all that changed in 2011, when Ray became a guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern. Then from 2014 to 2017, he studied art history at the Open University, and then at the University of Buckingham, from where he gained an MA in the History of Art. And to cap it all, Ray became an Arts Society lecturer in 2017. Ray also knows what it’s like to be on the receiving end of lectures as he is a member of his local Arts Society in Blackheath.

From hotels, restaurants and tube stations to apartment blocks, offices, picture houses and lidos, the British public fell in love with Art Deco architecture of the 1920s and 1930s and embraced it whole-heartedly.  After decades of closure, 2022 marks the unveiling of the restored and instantly recognisable Battersea Power Station which commenced its construction in 1929. 

About our Lecturer:

MA Hons Art History, St Andrew's University. 
Over 30 years of lecturing experience to undergraduates, adult groups, and to Friends and Patrons of the Royal Academy of Arts as part of the RA’s Adult Education Department.
Also conducted numerous guided tours, residential trips and focused gallery talks on individual works of art. Specialises in British Domestic Architecture and Modern British Art - with a particular love for the 1920s and 1930s. A permanent career at Royal Academy of Arts for 12 years.
Work experience also undertaken at Bonhams, Art Loss Register and National Trust. Now a freelance art consultant and lecturer. Recently curated a collection for the Lansdowne Club

Alistair Morton, a modernist visionary, was uniquely recognised for his talent of interpreting in fabric the full quality of an artist’s handwriting. He commissioned drawings from some of the greatest modern artists for textile production and through his designer's eye took their art to new levels. In the late 1930s his Constructivist range saw work from Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth translated into jacquard woven textiles for the top end of British Interior design. In the post war era, Morton continued to fuse modern art with textile design, keeping it in step with contemporary living.

About our lecurer:

Ashley Gray is a leading specialist and curator in the key art discipline of Modern Textiles and their history. He is a regular vetter at international fine art fairs and served on the Fair Committees of BADA, The Works on Paper Fair and on the BADA Council. He is regularly invited to lecture on the subject both in the UK and the US and sits on the advisory board of The Frances Neady Collection at FIT, New York. As a curator and archivist, he works with institutions and foundations on conservation and exhibition projects; most recently as co-curator of Material Textile: Modern British Female Designers’ and Material Textile: Creativity, History & Process, both with Messums Gallery, Common Thread at New Art Centre and From Bauhaus to our House at Cromwell Place. He also curates the acclaimed exhibition Styled by Design that celebrates the innovation of Modernist textile design alongside a comprehensive lecture programme that accompanies the exhibitions. 

Shinto, literally “The Way of Gods”, is the ancient animistic tradition of Japan. Prior to the adoption of Buddhism in the 6th century by the ruling class, Japanese religiosity was centred around the worship of indigenous gods “kami”, the deities primarily associated with nature and the spirits of ancestors. The kami were perceived as possessing superhuman energy, and wherever the presence of kami was experienced, shrines were built to mark these locations as sacred. They are often in places of extraordinary natural beauty. Shinto and Buddhism coexisted in Japan for centuries, and both shrines and temples are visited by Japanese to this day.

About our lecturer:

Our speaker is Dr Meri Arichi. She studied Art History in London and Florence and completed an MA in History of East Asian Art, and PhD in Japanese Art at SOAS. She has taught at London University and the British Museum and has run courses there and at the V&A, Birkbeck College, and the Courtauld Institute. Currently, Dr Arichi is Chair of the Japanese Women’s Association in Great Britain and the Circle of Japanese Art London.

This lecture is for anyone who feels baffled or simply fascinated by the fact that a work of art that doesn't exist in any tangible way can make mega-bucks on the art market. How did we get here? How can something be a work of art when it only exists in cyber-space? The history of high-risk speculation on the art market is a relatively recent phenomenon, driven by the potential profits to be made from investment in contemporary art.

About our lecturer:

I am an art historian, curator, author and journalist with over 25 years’ experience in the art market. I teach at several Higher Education institutions, including the University of the Arts London, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, the City & Guilds of London Art School, SOAS (University of London) and Imperial College. In January 2021 I received the Geoffrey Bond Bursary for Art, an annual prize awarded by the Worshipful Company of Educators to an “outstanding educator” nominated by their institution. My articles, essays and reports have been published in numerous specialist journals, newspapers, catalogues, handbooks and websites, aimed at both the academic and general readership in print and online. The title of my current book project is The Bronze Horse: Themes in Equine Sculpture from Antiquity to the Present Day; in Spring 2021 I will embark on a critique and biography of contemporary Filipino artist Andres Barrioquinto. Since 2011 I have been Senior UK Consultant to Singapore gallery One East Asia and have co-curated many exhibitions of Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art in London and Singapore. I am also Head of Education for the London Asian and African Contemporary Art Fair (founded 2020). When time allows I lecture as an on-board art historian for cruise lines.

The work of art is not just a symbol of creative genius but a historical object and the result of a laborious process of creation. This lecture looks at the development of stained glass, its purpose, the process by which it was created and some of the extraordinary survivals. Concentrating on great medieval achievements from vast cathedrals to tiny chapels, we consider, too, the reasons for the decline in popularity of this once-preeminent art form and some of the projects in which it has been reconsidered and revived.  Where possible, all lectures are tailored to include relevant local examples. 

About our lecturer:

Nicole studied Art History at the Universities of Sussex, York and Paris and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the Higher Education Academy. She was Senior Lecturer at Queen’s University, Belfast until 2009, working primarily with adults, managing and teaching on both the Part-Time degree and Extra-Mural programmes and conducting annual, international study-tours. She also established and was first Director of the Department of Art History, the first in the north of Ireland. Nicole now lives in central London and is a freelance lecturer, working for organisations such as national museums, universities, the National Trust and private companies. She has been lecturing for the Arts Society since 2011, including two tours of societies in Australia and New Zealand.

Almost everyone has played Monopoly at some time in their life.  It is one of the world’s most popular and enduring board games.  But, how well do you really know it? This talk starts with the original Landlord’s Game of 1903 and its evolution into the game as we know it today.  Based on the classic 1936 London version we then take a photographic journey around the locations on that Monopoly board.   Expect some surprises as we explore the relationships between the various properties, look at the ones that don’t actually exist and uncover the story behind the game we all know so well - or do we?

About our lecturer:

A keen and accomplished photographer Roger has gained Distinctions from the Royal Photographic Society and is currently the President of the Surrey Photographic Association. His artistic taste is predominantly 20th century and he is particularly interested in the visual aspects of art. He has studied the evolution of photography from its earliest days in the early 1800s to becoming a major art form in the late 20th and now 21st centuries. An experienced public speaker, his talks are all richly illustrated with both his own and images from some of the leading photographers in history.

Each artwork tells its own story. This lecture will look at several famous works of art that were looted by the Nazis and discuss their incredible journeys from their pre-wartime owners to their current locations. Examples of artworks that we will examine include Lucas Cranach’s Cupid Complaining to Venus and Pablo Picasso’s Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto, which was once owned by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. We will discuss what makes these works so intriguing and why the thefts still resonate today.

About our lecturer:

Shauna Isaac has been active in World War II art restitution for several years and has worked with families and government organisations to recover Nazi looted art. She set up the Central Registry on Looted Cultural Property and served as a member of the Working Group for the Holocaust Era Assets Conference in Prague. Shauna studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art in the UK and Smith College in the USA. She is a regular lecturer at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Her publications include articles for The Art Newspaper, The Times Literary Supplement and Art Quarterly. She is a contributor to the book Insiders/Outsiders: Refugees from Nazi Europe and their contribution to British Visual Culture.

Lecture Details:

Investigating the process of creating, through the collaboration between A A Milne and E H Shepard, the iconic images for one of the leading worldwide children's all-time favourite books. This was the first time that author and illustrator worked together feeding off each other’s creative input and reaction to words and pictures – with never previously published drafts and drawings of Winnie-the-Pooh and friends in the Hundred Acre Wood.

About our Lecturer:

James Campbell has an MA in the History of Art, and a particular interest in the work of the artist, illustrator and cartoonist E H Shepard (1879-1976). He has been lecturing for over twenty years and has lectured across the UK and overseas to community groups, Literary Festivals, Art societies, military museums, and to private clubs and societies. His books Shepard’s War and The Art of Winnie-the-Pooh were published in 2015 and 2017 respectively. He is currently working on a joint biography of A A Milne and E H Shepard commissioned for the centenary of the Winnie-the-Pooh books

Lecture details:

Swimming is Britain’s second favourite form of physical recreation (after walking). Almost everyone has memories of visiting their local baths. But whilst not all these memories might be positive – drooping knitted cozzies anyone? – for many swimmers the baths themselves are cherished. Some, particular those built in the late Victorian and Edwardian years, are rich with decorative tilework, stained glass, polished wood and terracotta detailing. This sense of municipal pride continued into the 1920s and ’30s, when Art Deco and Modernist lidos became the urban beaches of their day. In this lecture, Simon highlights the treasures of aquatic art that survive, and considers how the pools of today compare.

About our Lecturer:

Writer and historian Simon Inglis specialises in the architecture and heritage of sport and recreation. Since 2004 he has edited the Played in Britain series for English Heritage. Although sport and recreation might seem an unlikely subject for The Arts Society, non-sporty types need have no fear. Simon’s themes are architecture, design, heritage and popular culture. After a history degree at University College London, he freelanced for various publications, including the Guardian, Observer and Radio Times. He has curated exhibitions for the Building Centre and the British Council, been a regular contributor to radio and television, has travelled and lectured extensively, and written a number of books. Two were shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, while another, on British football grounds, was chosen by journalist Frank Keating as the best sports book of the 20th century. A recent highpoint in his work for English Heritage was the listing of a 1970s skatepark in Essex, a world first that made the 10 o'clock news.

The long British tradition of political satire is coming to the fore again as a General Election approaches - January 2025 at the latest. At the root of that tradition is William Hogarth’s Election Entertainment series of prints from the 1750s. His ruthless exposure of electoral corruption and hypocrisy sets the stage for later generations of satirists including James Gillray, Private Eye and today’s digital artist Cold War Steve. We will look closely at the Election series, explain Hogarth’s many jokes and references and reveal some themes with surprising topical relevance, from voter identification to the politics of immigration.

About our Lecturer:

Rupert Dickens is an art historian based in south London with a special interest in Dutch and Flemish 16th and 17th century painting. He works at the Wallace Collection as a guide conducting public and private tours and lecturing on aspects of the collection. Rupert is also a tour director for a Cambridgebased company accompanying groups on art-themed tours to the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Austria and Italy. He has lectured to large audiences on subjects as diverse as the game of chess in art and Madame de Pompadour’s artistic patronage in 18th century France. He studied art history at Birkbeck College before undertaking a Masters in Dutch Golden Age Studies at University College London. Before that Rupert had a 26-year career as a BBC journalist ending as an editor in radio news

The Bayeux Tapestry is instantly recognisable and one of the most outstanding cultural objects to survive from the early Middle Ages. Long admired for its vivid narrative, today it is the unanswered questions that most intrigue modern audiences: was it made in England or France? Was it stitched by men or women? This sparkling lecture looks not only at its creation, but also at its more amazing afterlife. Displayed by Napoleon to bolster French ambitions for a new cross-channel invasion; cherished by Victorian embroiderers as an icon of women’s heroic joint efforts; hunted down by Hitler, who was outwitted by bureaucratic obfuscation.

About our Lecturer:

A fluent French speaker, Timothy Wilcox brings a lifetime’s interest in Anglo-French relations to bear on a famous object set to become even more celebrated as it enters its next, surprising chapter. Timothy Wilcox is a writer, lecturer and curator with special interests in British art, in landscape and in watercolour painting. He was a museum curator in the British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings following positions at the V&A, in Liverpool and Hove. As a freelance curator and lecturer since 1997, he has organised exhibitions on Laura Knight, Hilda Carline, John Sell Cotman and John Constable, at venues including Tate, The Lowry, the Wordsworth Trust and Dulwich Picture Gallery. He contributes regularly to the educational programmes at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and lectures at museums and galleries in Britain, Europe and the USA.

450 years ago, an artist was born who would bring about one of the most radical changes in pictorial styles, particularly through his pronounced use of contrasting light and shadow, or chiaroscuro. He was the most famous painter of his time in Italy, as well as a source of inspiration for hundreds of other artists. Known as Caravaggio, his given name was Michelangelo Merisi, but though he had the name of an angel, he was anything but, being a notorious brawler and spending his last years on the run from a murder charge. This lecture will introduce you to the drama of the life and the art of Caravaggio.

About our Lecturer:

With a BA and MA from Goldsmith’s College, and an MA (distinction) from Birkbeck College, Rosalind Whyte is an experienced guide at Tate Britain, Tate Modern, the Royal Academy and Greenwich. Rosalind lectures at the Tate, to independent art societies and on cruises and regularly leads art appreciation holidays

Lecture Details;

Perhaps the best sculptor in wood ever to lift a chisel, Grinling Gibbons rose from an obscure apprenticeship in Rotterdam to reach the height of his profession in England, collaborating with Wren and Vanbrugh, building a consistently substantial business for his atelier, and becoming King’s Carver. Much of his work survives in country houses, large churches and state apartments, and in this talk Justin describes Gibbons’s life and career, and discusses the techniques he used to create a convincing illusion of reality. Illustrated with overmantels, picture frames and architectural mouldings from many private and public collections, this talk makes a case for identifying Gibbons as a major artist.

About our Lecturer:

Formerly a senior academic manager at the Bodleian Library, Justin Reay is a tutor in Oxford, is a published historian, and among his impending works are an edition of Samuel Pepys’s naval papers in the Bodleian’s collections, and a study of the Admiralty buildings in London. He is frequently engaged as an enrichment speaker on art history for a European cruise line. Justin is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Historical Society, a Governor of the RNLI, a Founder Member of the Grinling Gibbons Society, and a member of The Arts Society Cheltenham

Lecture Details:

St Catherine’s Monastery Egypt, at the foot of Mount Sinai, was founded in the sixth century by Byzantine emperor Justinian I - the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments, the location of the legend of the Burning Bush and the resting place of the martyred body of St Catherine. The Greek Orthodox monastery is packed full of precious religious art – a splendid basilica with exquisite little chapels, intricately carved wooden doors and breathtaking mosaics, an amazing collection of the rarest early icons to survive, and a library of rare and beautiful manuscripts.

About our Lecturer:

Dr Helen Rufus-Ward is an art historian with a BA (1st), an MA, and DPhil from the University of Sussex. She has published on late antique and Byzantine ivory carvings, plaster casting of art works and 19th century collecting. As well as holding a Higher Education Academy teaching qualification, Helen is a member of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies, the Society of Jewellery Historians, and is the Chairman of Eastbourne Arts Circle that has raised significant sums of money for the Towner Art Gallery Eastbourne.

Lecture Details:

Poised between Europe and Africa, Sicily has been both a gateway and a crossroads attracting a long line of colonisers from the Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans and Arabs to the Normans and Spanish. The legacy of so many dominant civilisations produced a cultural mix of great richness and diversity, and included periods of exceptional wealth, intellectual activity and artistic achievement. This lecture / study day looks at Sicily during the ancient and medieval periods: the Greek temples, the beautifully preserved Roman Villa Casale, and the monuments from the Arab - Norman period when Palermo was the most intellectually active and artistically eclectic centre in Europe. The 12th century cathedrals of Cefalu, Monreale, and the Palatine Chapel of the Norman Palace, witness to a brilliant fusion of Norman, Arab and Byzantine art and architecture.

About our lecturer:

Jane Angelini is a freelance lecturer for The Arts Society and other arts organisations. She speaks several foreign languages and has translated a number of works of 19th century Russian literature for Penguin Books and Oxford University Press. She has a BA in Russian Studies and an MA in Byzantine Studies. She created St James’s Art Tours in 1998 and ran it successfully for almost twenty five years before closing the travel company in 2022. She and has travelled extensively and now offers online armchair travel talks over the winter months. She and her husband run an art gallery in St James’s, Piccadilly, which specialises in 20th century art. Most of her bookings are for special interest days

Lecture Details:

St Paul’s Cathedral has become one of the icons of Britain; from the paintings of Canaletto to photographs of the Blitz, it rises above London. In this lecture we look at the remarkable genius of its creator, Sir Christopher Wren: scientist, anatomist, mathematician, architect and urban planner. Set amidst the lively and vibrant period of the Restoration and the Great Fire, find out how he transformed the skyline of London and created a new language for architects in England.

About our lecturer:

Jo Walton has combined teaching and lecturing with a career in art bookselling and has been a volunteer guide at both Tate Britain, Tate Modern and The National Gallery' for 'Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery. Now a freelance lecturer for The Arts Society, the Art Fund, and Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery and local art societies

The past decade has seen the meteoric rise of this extraordinarily versatile British designer with his acclaimed Olympic cauldron, the iconic new London bus and designs for a spectacular new HQ building for Google. Over the last twenty years the Heatherwick Studio has used an intriguing combination of curiosity and experimentation to produce a vast range of solutions to design challenges around the world. This talk looks at the problems presented, and the wonderfully creative ways in which Heatherwick and his team have responded.

About Our Lecturer

A Londoner with a passion for art and architecture, Ian is an official guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Guildhall Art Gallery and St Paul’s Cathedral. He is also a qualified and active freelance London guide and leads regular tours for various corporations and organisations. Since 2012 he has led a popular weekly independent art lecture group in his hometown of Richmond in West London.

The extraordinarily rich hoard found at Sutton Hoo dates to the early C7th and tells us a great deal about the wealth of the country at the time, inter-action with other cultures and status within Anglo-Saxon society. What we cannot yet prove is who was buried within the ship in the mound, although the popular theory is that it was King Readwald of East Anglia. This lecture uses images of the treasures found as well as Old English poetry to discuss kingship and power in Anglo-Saxon England.

About Our Lecturer:

After nearly 20 years in the British army, Imogen studied Anglo-Saxon & Medieval History and Art at the University of Kent, graduating with 1st class honours, followed by an MPhil from the University of Birmingham. She works as a freelance lecturer across Britain and Europe as well as lecturing on small cruise ships and running study tours and courses on land. She is the author of Stone on Stone: The Men Who Built the Cathedrals, published in 2019.

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-54) painted life from the perspective of her own reality. Frida was seriously injured as a teenager and was dogged by chronic pain for the rest of her life. She married, divorced, and remarried the painter Diego Rivera her artistic and frequently unfaithful soulmate. This illustrated lecture explores Frida’s life through her most iconic paintings. Some are unflinching and include subjects of murder, suicide, marital infidelity, miscarriage, revolution, living with disability and death. Frida is acknowledged as one of the 20th Century’s greatest female artists, and the first to express such personal experiences in Western art. She is known for her originality, bold use of colour, passion, courage and as someone who created life and beauty in the face of great personal suffering and adversity. Fiona Rose has been lecturing about topics she feels passionately about since 2010 including William Morris and his circle, the Arts & Crafts Movement, Frida Kahlo and Frank Lloyd Wright. She has a BA in Social Psychology and aims to include the human story behind the artistic endeavours of her subjects. After an early career in public health Fiona founded and runs a home interiors business featuring the work of the great C19th designers such as Morris, Dearle, Voysey and Mackintosh. Fiona is a member of the museum Collections committee for The William Morris Society where she served as a Trustee. She is also a contributor to the Society’s Magazine and Journal of William Morris Studies. Fiona is a volunteer Tour Guide with the Arts & Crafts gem The David Parr House. 11th May 202

Lecture Topic TBD

About Our Lecturer:

Professor Erma Hermens was previously the Rijksmuseum Chair in Studio Practice and Technical Art History, at the department of History of Art, University of Amsterdam and Senior researcher in the Department of Conservation and Science at the Rijksmuseum.  As of February 1st 2022, she has been appointed as the new Director of the Hamilton Kerr Institute and Deputy Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge
 

‘My shoes are not fashion. They are gestures - objects that happen to be fashion’: Manolo Blahnik. ‘A shoe without sex appeal is as barren as a tree without leaves’: Rita de Acosta Lydig, patron of Yantorny. A seemingly frivolous subject, but one which is layered in symbolism, fantasy, desire and status. We will look at representations of the historic shoe in art of various periods and also the late nineteenth/twentieth century developments which led towards the shoe as an art form and the enhanced status of the designer working for an international celebrity clientele.

About Our Lecturer:

With a BA in History and History of Art and a MA with distinction in History of Art from University College London, Mary Alexander has thirty years' experience as a lecturer.  This includes public lectures in museums, tutoring for the Open University, visiting lecturer at Christie's Education in London, museum curator at Platt Hall, the Gallery of Costume, in Manchester.  She is now a freelance lecturer to various arts, heritage and antiquarian societies. The author of various articles on design and visual awareness issues, her background combines an unusual blend of academic and visual communications skills. She lectured for ADFAS Australia and New Zealand in 2011, 2013 and 2016.

At the birth of Indian Independence in 1947, a group of talented and determined artists set out to create a new art for a new country. They drew on ancient artistic traditions but also had a radical view of how Indian art could speak to its audience. This movement, known as the Bombay Progressives Artists' Group, created an art very much for and of its time – acting as witness to a country in turmoil and relating the fascinating story of transition and growth of the new India. This talk offers an exploration of how art in the subcontinent threw off the yoke of colonial influence to create modern masterpieces and a thriving global business.

Georgina is an art historian specialising in South Asian art who has lived and worked in the UK, the USA and Singapore. Her practice includes lecturing, writing, consulting and collecting and she has developed a network of gallery and artist connections in Europe, the USA and India, which she visits regularly. Consultant Art Historian at the Oriental Club in London and an official tour guide at Tate Modern, Georgina is also a guest speaker on luxury cruise ships for whom she has developed a series of art talks relating to Asian and Pacific destinations. She has been a visiting lecturer at UK universities, presents talks at leading art institutions including Christie’s Education New York and the Museum of Modern Art, Moscow and speaks at international art conferences, most recently in New York, Paris, London and Lisbon.

In the Renaissance, Christmas was a popular time to hold jousts, tournaments and courtly spectacles. In the dark, dead of winter, a colourful, glamorous celebration of chivalry very much took on the role of a kind of sixteenth-century 'festival of light'. In England, Christmas jousts became especially popular under that famous lover of armour and fighting, King Henry VIII. Such events were a kind of performance art, which fused real armoured combat with fantastical, mythological and allegorical themes. In this lecture, we explore this rich history through the personal experiences of the lecturer, an academic specialist but also one of the world’s foremost jousters and medieval martial artists.

Harry Venning has been a professional cartoonist for thirty years, during which time he has provided cartoons for several high-profile UK publications (The Guardian, Radio Times.)  He was awarded UK Strip Cartoonist Of The Year for his Guardian strip Clare In The Community, which he adapted into a Radio 4 sitcom. In 'The Art of The Cartoonist', Harry will be tracing the history of his profession with examples from early practitioners like Cruickshank and Hogarth, to more contemporary artists such as Giles and Schulz, bringing events right up to date with cartoons produced fresh on the page that day!

Hans Holbein was the first great mainland painter to spend much time in England and he brought with him a sophistication and skill, with far reaching consequences for this island's artistic development. His ‘Ambassadors’ is recognised by the National Gallery of London as one of its greatest treasures. It dates from a tradition in the arts when no object was without meaning and symbolism. However, practically all of this meaning has been lost to the modern observer. This lecture considers the tempestuous circumstances of its creation and the hidden messages concealed within it. The painting tells us much about the state of Europe at the time and the hopes and fears of its major players.

As a cultural historian, writer and artist, Anthony Russell has travelled much of the world. Lecturing originally to American university students on bespoke tours of Europe, he has lectured for the Arts Society since 2010. He spent six years as a consultant for Luke Hughes advising on the furniture needs of prestigious buildings throughout Britain, including museums, palaces, and cathedrals. At the British Museum, where for many years he ran outreach events and hosted visiting lecturers, he has been described as "Hugh Grant meets the Dalai Lama".

In an age where women had little public power, Isabella d’ Este (1474 – 1539) stands out as a formidable figure. She was one of the first and greatest female patrons and art collectors of the Renaissance. And her court in Mantua was filled with writers and poets of distinction. Her clever, educated and entitled voice sings out from thousands of letters which she composed in her meticulously designed study, and images – from Da Vinci to Titian – bring alive a woman whose eye for fashion was every bit as keen as her eye for art.

Fine art has provided advertisers and their agencies with a great deal of material to use in their creative campaigns. Tony describes some of the processes by which these advertisements have been created and why the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo have been a particularly rich source. From the Renaissance through to the present day fine art continues to provide opportunities to enhance Brand imagery with admiration, humour, satire and irony.  In an entertaining and informative lecture Tony uses a wide range of visuals and video to show examples of the original works, the creative process and the (not always entirely successful) advertisements that are the end result.

One of the most extraordinary Spanish artists from Valencia; Joaquin Sorolla has become better known more recently. He lived from 1863 to 1923 and created a world full of light and colour which delights the senses. Sometimes a social painter he was more concerned with capturing light falling on bodies and sea-scapes and his wonderful technique will be considered in this colourful lecture. His final Visions of Spain now in New York will also be shown.

The young artist Aubrey Beardsley created original and shocking images that came to define the 1890s. His astonishingly assured, linear drawings, influenced by Japanese prints and ancient Greek vase paintings, were considered by many to be grotesque, decadent and erotic. This lecture tells the story of Beardsley’s short life and brilliant work. 

Why do people look the way they do in portraits of the past? The alarmingly lead-whitened cheeks of the Renaissance, the disappearing hairlines and mouse-hair eyebrows of the 17th and 18th centuries and rouged-cheeks of the Victorians, portraits have been governed by cosmetics, fashions and ever-changing concepts of beauty. Not only women, but men too were at the mercy of changing trends in hair styles, wigs, jewellery, smallpox patches and artificial teeth. From the application of rhubarb or boiled pigeon, mercury or lead, powders and poisons have dominated the ‘look of an age’. While the portraitist strove to capture the individual, this had to be translated through the mask of stylish convention, balancing reality with the ‘ideal of beauty.

The London Coliseum is now the home of English National Opera. It was the theatre that hosted Les Ballet Russes, Annie Get Your Gun, Music Hall and Cinerama. Everything about the London Coliseum is enormous - the stage, the auditorium, the number of its ghosts, the size of its problems. This is my theatre I’ve been working here since 1979 and seen practically everything. I know how many tons of sand we can tip on that stage, why there is a knife hanging from the flys, and how we got away with Don Giovanni inadvertently bursting into flames. I even knew some of the ghosts (while they were still alive...).

The story of the Annunciation, the Angel Gabriel’s appearance to the Virgin Mary as told in St Luke’s gospel, has inspired some of the most beautiful images in Western Art. These include Simone Martini’s altarpiece for Siena Cathedral, now in the Uffizi Gallery and Fra Angelico’s frescoes in the monastery of San Marco in Florence. The earliest depiction of the Annunciation is thought to date back to the 2nd century AD. Since then, the narrative has been reimagined by numerous artists including Van Eyck, Botticelli, Dürer and Rossetti. This lecture will take you on a journey through a range of different depictions of the Annunciation and explore the ways in which artists have captured this pivotal moment of the Christian story. A perfect subject for the Christmas season.

The widespread misconception that Modernist interiors eschewed pattern and ushered in a fashion for plain walls is belied by the fact that the taste for wallpaper flourished as never before in the inter-war and post-war periods.  Patterns included brightly-coloured geometric Jazz-Age designs, traditional florals, and pictorial panels as well as ‘Contemporary’-style and Op, Pop, and Psychedelic designs. Decorators like Laura Ashley, Colefax & Fowler and Sandersons created popular new styles and the more recent introduction of digital design and statement walls has seen a revival of wallpaper today. This talk surveys the development of wallpaper production and design across the twentieth century.

The flamboyant Duc de Berry (1340-1416), brother of the king of France, was the most famous art patron of the late Middle Ages. His great Book of Hours, the Très Riches Heures, is one of the finest of all medieval works of art. The lecture, new to the speaker’s repertoire, asks who the Duc was and why and how he was forming his vast collections. It includes visits to his palaces and castles in France, now mostly ruins, and it uses the Duc’s medieval inventories to conjure their displays of jewels, goldwork, relics, exotic animals and (above all) breath taking illuminated manuscripts

Subtitled (in Edith's own words) 'Such costumes as I have never seen before and never shall again perhaps’, the lecture is illustrated with rich fabrics and great stories.
Edith Durham's travels in the first decades of the twentieth century took her across the unexplored Accursed Mountains between Kosovo, Montenegro and Albania, to what are now UNESCO World Heritage Site monasteries, and through bazaars she describes as ‘glowing with goods’. In watercolours and in seven published books she recorded the objects she collected, the landscapes she visited and the people she met. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and was the first woman to become its Vice President. The lively lecture draws on my book, Edith and I; on the trail of an Edwardian traveller in Kosovo (2013). The book was the first biographical work on Edith Durham in English and was described by The Times as 'the most delicious and delightful read of the summer’

We Do Like to be Beside the Seaside

Ian Gledhill

Tuesday 08 June 2021

This is an Arts Society Granta lecture to which we have been invited. It will be via Zoom. The link will be sent out a few days in advance.

A light-hearted look at seaside entertainment over the years, from Bathing Machines to End of the Pier Shows and “What the Butler Saw” machines. The British seaside began with the fashion for sea bathing in the 18th century, but expanded enormously in the 19th century with the arrival of the railways and the era of mass travel. We look at the specialist buildings which proliferated at the seaside in the 19th century, such as piers, towers and aquaria, that provided entertainment for the masses – not to mention that famous breed, the seaside landlady!

Ian Gledhill has had a very varied career, from designing underground railways as an engineer for London Transport, to appearing in pantomime with Julian Clary. In between he has worked in travel and tourism, music publishing, television, and especially the theatre, where he has been an actor, director, set designer, stage manager and opera translator. His main interests include architecture, history, transport and classical music, especially opera and operetta, and these are reflected in the wide ranging list of subjects for his lectures. He began giving lectures in 1997, and now gives on average around 140 a year. 

Experience the story of gold and its significance and symbolism within the history of art - as the colour of the sun; the colour of divinity; the colour of status and the colour of love. From creations ancient and contemporary, sacred and profane - all that glitters is certainly gold…

A Brief Story of Wine

David Wright

Tuesday 11 May 2021

This is an Arts Society Granta lecture to which we have been invited. It will be via Zoom. The link will be sent out a few days in advance.

Wine has been part of our global society for over 7,000 years, and the story tells of its origin and appearance in all societies across the Mediterranean and through Europe. There is rich evidence of the role wine has played in these societies and how it became an important component of faith, well-being and festivity. From the kwevris of Georgia in 5,000 B.C., the symposia in ancient Greece, the thermopolia of Pompeii, the hospices of Europe, to the dining tables of fine society wine has been ever present. Drawings, paintings, engravings, buildings, pottery and wine labels themselves all contribute to the story.

I have been a wine retailer, importer and distributor for 30 years. In that time, I have publicly presented tastings and talks on wine to trade and private audiences. These have taken the form of wine ‘tastings’ or charity events where a particular subject is presented and wines tasted. I have developed a talk, A Brief Story of Wine, a great subject, and full of rich evidence, going back 7,000 years, in the form of paintings, decorated drinking vessels, buildings and literature that contribute to the story.

“Undressing Antiques” - A persuasive introduction to buying antiques and integrating and using them in today’s homes

Mark Hill

Thursday 29 April 2021

British Studio Pottery – A concise History

Helen Ritchie

Tuesday 20 April 2021

This is an Arts Society Granta lecture to which we have been invited. It will be via Zoom. The link will be sent out a few days in advance.

An overview of the British Studio Pottery movement, exploring handmade pottery in Britain from the last decades of the nineteenth century to the present day, including the work of the Martin Brothers, Bernard Leach, Lucie Rie, Alison Britton and Grayson Perry.

Helen Ritchie is Curator of Modern Applied Arts at The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge. Recent exhibitions include Things of Beauty Growing: British Studio Pottery, Flux: Parian Unpacked and Designers and Jewellery 1850-1940: Jewellery and Metalwork from The Fitzwilliam Museum, for which she wrote the accompanying catalogue. Helen is also the author of A Passionate Collector: Mrs Hull Grundy and Jewellery from the Harrogate Collection (2014). She studied at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and the University of the Arts London, and has worked at numerous institutions including the Royal Collection Trust, Christie's, Harrogate Museums and the British Museum. She is a Trustee of the Society of Jewellery Historians.

Covers surprising attempts to create some graphic unity, even in the 1860s and 70s, expansion of the Underground and the need to create some cohesion between the different operating companies, Leslie Green's architecture and the Arts & Crafts movement, Frank Pick, Edward Johnston's typeface, Charles Holden's architecture and the Streamline Moderne/Art Deco movement, the New Works Programme, post war austerity/design, Victoria Line, loss of Johnston & rescue by Kono, Jubilee Line Extension/architecture, creation of TfL, recent schemes and future works including the Elizabeth Line/Northern Line extension to Battersea etc..

The Age of Jazz from its beginnings through to the outbreak of World War II

Sandy Burnett

Tuesday 09 March 2021

This is an Arts Society Granta lecture to which we have been invited. It will be via Zoom. The link will be sent out a few days in advance.

One hundred years ago a group of American musicians docked in London, bringing with them for the very first time one of the twentieth century’s most important musical genres: jazz, a fascinating blend of rigorous structure, free-wheeling creativity, close-knit ensemble work and improvisation. Drawing on his practical experience both as musicologist and gigging musician, Sandy is able to shed light on jazz from the inside. His talk touches on the disparate influences which lay behind the emergence of jazz, and his musical illustrations range from the blues, ragtime and the very earliest jazz recordings through to classics by Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and the dawn of the Swing Era.

Sandy is one of the UK’s most versatile music commentators, enjoying a career that combines broadcasting, performing and lecturing. After studying at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and working as music director for the RSC, National Theatre and in London’s West End, Sandy Burnett spent a decade as one of the core team of presenters on BBC Radio 3. Combining engaging scholarship with hands-on expertise, he devises and leads cultural holidays all over the world, is the author of the Idler Guide to Classical Music, is a highly sought after double bassist on the London jazz scene, and was appointed the Academy of Ancient Music’s Hogwood Fellow for the 2018-19

An in-depth look at the unique jewellery created by flamboyant artist Charles Ricketts at the turn of the twentieth century. His intricate and richly-enamelled neo-Renaissance pieces were designed as gifts for his many friends including May Morris and the fascinating couple known as Michael Field.

This is the story of the epic rivalry between the two giants of British art, J.M.W. Turner and John Constable. As unlike in background and temperament as their paintings were in style, these two creative geniuses transformed the art of landscape. This lecture/study day sets them head-to-head and examines their differences, their similarities, their battles and their shared triumphs. But who will ultimately be crowned star painter? As well as giving an overview of Turner and Constable, the subject provides an enjoyable overview of the British art world during the nineteenth century

This is an Arts Society Granta lecture to which we have been invited. It will be via Zoom. The link will be sent out a few days in advance.

2020 marks the 500th anniversary of the death of Raphael. The monumental figures and clarity of form of his art epitomises the grandeur of the High Renaissance while his masterful drawings, in a variety of media, reflect his creative processes. His early death at the age of 37 belies the scope of his work and future influence. In this lecture, we will study his art and architecture, from his early work in Urbino and Florence to its full maturity in Rome.

Graduated from the University of East Anglia with a first class honours degree in the History of Art, specialising in the Italian and Northern Renaissance. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a part-time lecturer for the University of East Anglia and for the Department of Continuing Education of the University of Cambridge. Has run study days and certificate courses as well as residential weekend courses. Also lectures to the Art Fund and individual clubs and societies. She is particularly keen to set the art and architecture of the period in the context of the society for which it was produced.

Best known for his outlandish appearances dressed as his feminine alter ego, Claire, Grayson Perry is now a core part of the art establishment, a Turner Prize winner, Royal Academician, popular broadcaster and colourful character. He’s possibly one of the world’s best-known contemporary artists. His works of ceramics, textiles, tapestries and prints are highly sought after. Often controversial, he tackles difficult subjects in a poignant yet witty way and holds a mirror up to society. This talk will examine Grayson Perry’s work, his exciting and thought-provoking exhibitions, and the unique character inside the flamboyant frocks.

The Art and Culture of Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

Gavin Plumley

Tuesday 12 January 2021

This is an Arts Society Granta lecture to which we have been invited. It will be via Zoom. The link will be sent out a few days in advance.

At the turn of the last century, Vienna was the capital of a vast empire and one of the most exciting artistic laboratories in the world. It produced painters such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, architects like Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffmann, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, the composer Gustav Mahler and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Looking at these and others figures in the context of the society in which they worked, this talk asks how and why the City of Dreams became a cultural hotbed around 1900. 

Gavin is a writer and broadcaster, appearing on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and contributing to newspapers, magazines and opera and concert programmes worldwide. He lectures widely about the culture of Central Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries. Recent talks include the Royal Opera House, the National Gallery, the National Trust, the National Theatre, the British Museum, the V&A, the Southbank Centre, the Tate and the Neue Galerie, New York, as well as for history of art societies and The Art Fund. 

Angels, familiar and fantastic, playing major and minor roles, can be seen in centuries of paintings, engravings, illustrations and sculptures. Archangel Gabriel and the Annunciation or Archangel Michael fighting the good fight. Angelic references also abound in Islamic and Jewish traditions, the latter beautifully evoked in Chagall’s Bible Message. Time to contrast the beauty and light of cherubim and seraphim with the dark, fiery abyss of Satan and contemplate the Angel of the North.

James Gillray, Caterpillar on the Green Leaf of Reputation

Linda Smith

Tuesday 08 December 2020

This is an Arts Siciety Granta lecture to which we have been invited. It will be via Zoom. The link will be sent out a few days in advance.

James Gillray may well be the greatest political cartoonist who ever lived. He did not invent the art of caricature, but in his hands it became a highly sophisticated and inventive aspect of the visual culture of his day. The breathtaking audacity and sheer rudeness of his work still has the power to make people laugh out loud, and has ensured that his images retain a freshness and vivacity which present day satirists still revere. Through his work, we can get a glimpse of the riotous society in which he lived, and see how the larger-than-life public figures and political personalities of the times were viewed by this master of disrespect. 

Linda Smith has two first-class degrees in Art History. She has a broad knowledge of art historical subjects, but specialises in British Art and twentieth century art. She is an experienced lecturer and guide, especially at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, and has lectured to a wide variety of audiences in different venues, including school and university students, and independent arts societies in the UK and overseas.

In the second half of the nineteenth century an extraordinary group of purpose-built studio-houses were built on the edge of London’s Holland Park. At their centre was the house built by Frederic Leighton from the mid-1860s. With its vast studio and exotic Arab Hall it provided an inspiration to other artists who commissioned houses of their own. Combining domestic accommodation with studio space and space in which to entertain, these houses provide fascinating insights into the wealth, status and taste of successful artists of the period. The lecture explores the houses of the Holland Park Circle to determine why these artists invested so much in the creation of their homes and the uses they then put them to.

Cleopatra, the woman for whose love’s sake Antony is imagined to have given up the chance to rule the Roman world, has been inspiring painters, poets and (more recently) film-makers for over two millennia. Their gorgeously voluptuous depictions of her offer insights into changing concepts of beauty, and into the racial and sexual assumptions underlying them. Showing images ranging from Roman portrait busts, through medieval illuminations, the glorious works of Renaissance masters like Michelangelo, the splendour of Tiepolo and the exoticism of Gustave Moreau to 20th century film stars (Theda Bara, Claudette Colbert, Vivien Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor and the Carry On team’s Amanda Barry), I will show how Cleopatra became a screen onto which artists have projected their wildly differing fantasies about exotic danger and erotic bliss.

This lecture will be delivered via Zoom and will start at 1100 ("Doors open" 1050)  A Zoom link will be sent to members no later than 24 hours before the lecture.

Max's talk will be based on his extensive knowledge honed as a Blue Guide to Cambridge.  His talk is moulded round a quiz; when he did a run-through for the Committee and some members, most of us scored zero - there is a lot to learn!

The talk will be online via Zoom and members will be sent the link nearer the date.

Robert will give a half-hour talk on The Royal Yachts.  He served in Britannia for two years and has researched fascinating material covering some of the vessels from the 16th century to the 20th.

The talk will be online via Zoom and members will be sent a link nearer the time.

This lecture has been cancelled but will take place in the 2021-22 season.

Fine art has provided advertisers and their agencies with a great deal of material to use in their creative campaigns. Tony describes some of the processes by which these advertisements have been created and why the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo have been a particularly rich source. From the Renaissance through to the present day, fine art continues to provide opportunities to enhance brand imagery with admiration, humour, satire and irony. In an entertaining and informative lecture, Tony uses a wide range of visuals and video to show examples of the original works,
the creative process and the (not always entirely successful) advertisements that are the end result.

This lecture has been cancelled but will take place in the 2021-22 season.

Why do people look the way they do in portraits of the past? From the alarmingly lead-whitened cheeks of the Renaissance, to the disappearing hairlines and mouse-hair eyebrows of the 17 th and 18 th centuries and rouged cheeks of the Victorians, portraits have been governed by cosmetics, fashions and ever-changing concepts of beauty. Not only women, but men too were at the mercy of changing trends in hair styles, wigs, jewellery, smallpox patches and artificial teeth. From the application of rhubarb or boiled pigeon, mercury or lead, powders and poisons have dominated the ‘look of an age’. While the portraitist strove to capture the individual, this had to be translated through the mask of stylish convention, balancing reality with the ideal of beauty.

This lecture has been cancelled but will take place in the 2021-22 season.

The widespread misconception that Modernist interiors eschewed pattern and ushered in a fashion for plain walls is belied by the fact that the taste for wallpaper flourished as never before in the inter-war and post-war periods. Patterns included brightly coloured geometric Jazz Age designs, traditional florals, and pictorial panels as well as ‘Contemporary’ style and Op, Pop, and Psychedelic designs. Decorators like Laura Ashley, Colefax & Fowler and Sanderson created popular new styles, and the more recent introduction of digital design and statement walls has seen a revival of wallpaper today. This talk surveys the development of wallpaper production and design across the twentieth century.

The opening of trade routes across Eurasia by land and sea enabled the movement of peoples, along with their cultures, arts, beliefs, technical skills and aesthetics. This was to have a profound influence on the arts of China, introducing new forms, designs and materials along with the craftsmen to pass on their skills. This lecture will look at several examples of masterpieces of art from China in the first millennium AD to illustrate this influence and show how the arts of China were greatly enriched by its Silk Road links.

In 1932, the artist Edward Bawden and his wife Charlotte moved into Brick House in the Essex village of Great Bardfield, initially sharing the house with another artistic couple, Eric Ravilious and Tirzah Garwood. It was to be the beginning of a fascinating artistic community. In the years before and during the Second World War, painters, printmakers and designers settled in the village, relishing the peace while remaining within easy reach of London. While Bawden and Ravilious saw active service as War Artists (Ravilious dying in 1942), other artists captured the soon-to-change world of rural England through the Recording Britain project. By the mid-1950s, a diverse, innovative but highly creative group had made Bardfield their home – much to the bemusement of the local villagers, who found the complex relationships and artistic focus of the newcomers rather baffling. In 1954, the artists invited the public into their homes and studios to see their work, starting the increasingly popular ‘Open Studios’ movement that now covers the country, and persuading some of their neighbours that artists could be quite normal people after all.

This lecture explores the way in which artists over the centuries have included transparent glass objects in their paintings, taking huge delight in capturing the shadows and reflections seen within the glass as well as displaying their skill in portraying what lies behind and beyond. It will include the remarkable depiction of glass objects in Roman wall paintings, works by artists such as Titian, Veronese and Caravaggio where both the Gods of Olympus and the disciples are seen drinking out of fragile Venetian cristallo, and the proliferation of glass drinking vessels in Dutch still-life paintings.

This is the gripping and sometimes hilarious story of how a band of heroic curators and eccentric custodians saved Britain’s national heritage during our Darkest Hour. As Hitler’s forces gathered on the other side of the Channel to threaten these islands, men and women from London’s national museums, galleries and archives forged extraordinary plans to evacuate their collections to safety. Utilising country houses from Buckinghamshire to Cumbria, tube tunnels, Welsh mines and Wiltshire quarries, a dedicated team of unlikely heroes packed up their greatest treasures in a race against time during the sweltering summer of 1939, dispatching them throughout the country on a series of secret wartime adventures retold in this talk.

For the series Downton Abbey, Andrew was commissioned to produce many jewels for the main characters, and this inspired him to create a talk based on Downton and the changing styles of the time portrayed. Jewellery and fashion are often seen as two entirely separate and distinct fields of design, but this is very far from the case. In his talk, Andrew will guide us through the extraordinary periods and events between 1890 and 1929, where the great fashion houses collaborated with the finest of jewellers to produce works of art of outstanding quality and glittering opulence. Along with this he discusses the clients and patrons who commissioned the jewels and how they were worn with the
sumptuous gowns.

The bleak midwinter held little appeal to the artist for many centuries until Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow in the 16th century. From pristine backdrop to the tempestuous snow storms of Turner to the capturing of ‘snow effect’ by the Impressionists, the ability of artists to convey snow as a symbol of peace but also of grandeur and terror is compelling.

The Hamilton Kerr Institute is one of the world’s leading centres for teaching and research in the conservation of easel paintings, and the prestigious and intensive postgraduate course is an essential path to follow for those pursuing a career in paintings conservation. The valuable support of TASC in providing bursaries has helped enable two very promising students to pursue their dream of a career in conservation. Both will join HKI Director Rupert Featherstone to present the work they have done during the first year of the three-year postgraduate Diploma. Rupert will introduce the
educational work of the HKI and explain how the training is structured. The two students, Rowan Frame and Joanna Neville, will then talk about their technical reconstructions of ‘old master’ paintings using authentic materials and a variety of techniques. This vital component of the first year of their course gives them a deep understanding of the materials and methods used by artists of the past. Finally, Rupert will highlight some of the other conservation work and research that students undertake during their training.

A Passion for Fashion tells the story of 20th century fashion design, tracing how clothes, textiles and accessories were influenced by contemporary history. It includes the elegant fashions of the Edwardian era, the glamour of the 1920s and 1930s, the austerity of the 1940s, the futuristic fashions of the 1950s, the liberating styles of the 1960s and the avant-garde fashions of the 1970s to the present day.

Before her untimely death in 2016, Dame Zaha Hadid was one of the most distinguished architects in the world. She was also a talented designer. As well as receiving numerous awards and honours, she received the Pritzker Prize for Architecture in 2004; the UK's most prestigious architectural award, the RIBA Stirling Prize, in 2010 and 2011; and the Royal Gold Medal in 2015. In 2012 she was made a Dame for services to architecture. Zaha Hadid’s work is exciting because she developed a new form of architecture: she set architecture free by rejecting 90-degree angles. Her early abstract paintings are of particular interest because in them she began to create her visionary world where there is no definition, lines converge, and gravity disappears – all conceived before the advent of advanced computer software. From her early sharp-angled buildings she developed a fluid architecture, where floors, ceilings, walls - and even furniture - all form part of the overall design. The lecture tells the story of this pre-eminent architect.

What other family in the 20th century managed to amass such extraordinary art collections and design, or purchase such astounding buildings to display their collections? Compared to the Frick and Gulbenkian, individual collections displayed in single museums, the Guggenheim name was transformed in the late twentieth century into a brand, some would say a chain. With celebrated museums in New York, with the flagship Solomon R. Guggenheim landmark on Fifth Avenue, together with the Peggy Guggenheim Collection on the Grand Canal in Venice, the family foundation did not stop there. They commissioned the celebrated building by Frank Gehry in Bilbao, which opened in 1997, and which is now considered a masterpiece of modern architecture and design. Other expansion plans have not fared so well, with outposts in Las Vegas and Berlin closing after some years. New building projects in Vilnius and Helsinki have been abandoned after opposition by residents. This lecture looks at the beginning of both Solomon’s and Peggy’s collections in New York City and traces the development and expansion of their collections over more than half a century.

Late 19th century Southern Ireland. Imagine a young girl of “good family”, living in an 18th century mansion, a tranquil rural existence. This was the life of the subject of this lecture, as the 19th century drew to its close. In 1900 Eileen’s mother took her to the Exposition Universelle in Paris, and as the saying goes “she never looked back”. An imaginative girl, Eileen was determined not to see Enniscorthy again. She enrolled in the Slade School of Art, progressed to learn the true art of lacquer in Paris and after the First World War became one of Paris’s most sought-after designers. Not for her the stuffed Victorian furniture of her home but for her “cutting- edge” design. In her studio in the rue Bonaparte she created works which rivalled all the great 20th century furniture makers of Paris. The Art Deco Exhibition of 1925 was the turning point of her life, and the world became aware of her. This is a fascinating story of the girl from Enniscorthy, who became one of the most innovative designers of the 20 th century.

You might think it's easy to spot the difference between contemporary and historical art, but how about what they have in common? Can old masters help us understand works such as 'the pile of bricks' and 'the unmade bed'? This lecture explores whether the old masters can help us understand modern works, and whether artists' intentions and strategies have really changed across the centuries.

Andy Goldsworthy is one of the most interesting and innovative landscape artists working in Britain today. He mostly works in the open air, using natural materials such as leaves, ice, stones or trees to make exquisitely beautiful but usually ephemeral images in the great Romantic landscape tradition. Fortunately, although most of his works eventually disintegrate, melt away or fall over, they are all carefully photographed and included in extremely desirable and lavish ‘coffee-table’ books.

Relatively little is known in this country about Germany’s complex post-war process of remembrance and the counter memorial movement that started there in the 1980s and continues to this day. Germany’s very specific situation rendered all traditional concepts of monuments and memorials irrelevant and inappropriate. Instead of commemorating their own losses, artists looked to creating art forms that would respond to questions of apology and atonement. How does a nation of former persecutors mourn its victims? The idea behind counter memorials is to keep the memories and lessons of the past alive in the individual psyches of the people. The results are extraordinary, brave, and inspiring. With her Anglo-German roots, artistic background and years of research, Angela is in an ideal position to give insights into Germany’s fascinating and on-going efforts to find artistic forms for the remembrance of the victims of one of history’s darkest periods.

Lights, Camera, Action! – Inside stories of the art and artifice of the early decades of Hollywood. This lecture covers the work of stills photographers, costumiers, publicists, actors and actresses and the movie moguls who made it all happen.

A comprehensive and lavishly-illustrated tour around the history, architecture, contents, and use of libraries in British and Irish Country Houses from Roman times to the present, by the UK’s leading expert on the topic.

The Maya created one of the most sophisticated civilizations in the ancient world. Their achievements in the arts and sciences, along with their complex social, political and economic systems, make them one of the most remarkable culture groups in the Precolumbian Americas. These people brought us an intricate calendar system, complex hieroglyphic writing, some of the largest pyramids in the world, a form of ballgame that was like no other and most importantly chocolate! This lecture will discuss the major achievements of the Maya as well as pointing out the common misunderstandings we have of this remarkable civilization.

Running around the great sweep of the Baie des Anges in Nice is the Promenade des Anglais. It has been the inspiration for numerous artists since the 19th century and because of its sunlit beauty it continues to entrance visitors today. In spite of the occasional skate-boarders, it remains a place for strolling, for seeing and being seen. It needs to be taken at a leisurely pace because only then can its joys be savoured. This lecture will explore the origin of the Promenade and the life and works of some of the artists who worked there and perhaps will bring with it some of the blue skies and incomparable Mediterranean sunshine of the south of France.

At the turn of the last century, Vienna was the capital of a vast empire and one of the most exciting artistic laboratories in the world. It produced painters such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, architects like Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffmann, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, the composer Gustav Mahler and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Looking at these and other figures in the context of the society in which they worked, this talk asks how and why the City of Dreams became a cultural hotbed around 1900.

One of the most derided towns in England, renowned for its dullness, Basingstoke is distinguished only by its numerous roundabouts and absurd Modernist architecture. The post-war planners, who inflicted such features as ‘the Great Wall of Basingstoke’ on the town, were politically-motivated and bent on destroying all traces of its past. But the nobler Basingstoke is buried beneath the concrete, and few historic gems have survived the holocaust. Hilariously told, it is a story that neatly illustrates the ugliest episode in England’s architectural history. As Betjeman wrote prophetically, “What goes for Basingstoke goes for most English towns”. 

Between 1885 and 1916, Carl Fabergé made fifty jewelled eggs – Easter presents from Russia’s last two emperors to their wives. They have become the most famous surviving symbols of the Romanov Empire: both supreme examples of the jeweller’s art and the vulgar playthings of a decadent court. Fabergé and his designers had to conform to only three rules: that each year’s Easter present should be egg-shaped, that it should contain some surprise to amuse or delight its recipient, and that it should be different from any predecessor. The result was a series of creations demonstrating ingenuity and creativity for which there are few parallels in any other field.

Science and art have moved forward together in the quest to understand light as can be seen in representations of rainbows or contemporary Black Holes. For artists light can express emotions, from El Greco’s light of spiritual ecstasy to the dangerous darkness of Caravaggio, from Turner’s sublime sunlight to Samuel Palmer’s melancholy moonlight. Australian Impressionism uses a different colour palette to European Impressionism. Stonehenge was built to worship the sun, and today James Turrell makes light temples in art galleries and Dan Flavin makes altarpieces from fluorescent tubes.

Rachel Whiteread is a Turner Prize winner, and one of the most important and respected British artists working today. Her preoccupation with the hidden spaces in between things has resulted in an extraordinary range of objects, which form a series of eloquent tributes to the silent and overlooked. This lecture gives an account of her career to date, showing examples of how she has used ordinary domestic objects to create enigmatic and evocative works of art. The range in scale of her works is huge: from tiny objects derived from light switches or hot-water bottles, to multi-component installations, to an entire house. This talk will also have a look at her relationship with the YBAs, the press, and the public, but is mainly concerned with introducing the audience to the unexpected beauty of her works, from the unassuming and mundane, to the truly monumental.

Scandinavia became one of the leading countries for ‘progressive’ design in the 20th century.   This lecture starts by looking at design reform and the arts and crafts movement at the end of the 19th century.  Included will be the interiors of Karl Larsson; the metalwork of the Dane Georg Jensen, which drew heavily on the English Arts and Crafts; Swedish and Danish glass and ceramics (Orrefors, Rorstrand and Copenhagen). The impact on Scandinavian designers of the Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Modernism will be appraised bringing us up to the 1950s when it can be said Scandinavian design came of age.  Scandinavian Modern offered an ideal life-style for the post war era, based on clean lines, natural materials and the notion that ‘less is more’.

Clement Greenberg, the noted American art critic, observed that when Hitler occupied Paris in 1940, the art world’s centre of gravity shifted to the USA, and to New York in particular. This lecture looks at the way in which America came increasingly to dominate the making, marketing and selling of art between 1940 and the early 1980s. These developments are set against the social and political changes of the period, including the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement and the growth of the consumer society. The work under consideration ranges from the realism of artists such as George Tooker, through the abstract work of Jackson Pollock, de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Frank, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Chuck Close and Jeff Koons.

Murder, poison, corruption and incest: all perfect ingredients for sensational popular culture. But in an age known for its brutality and church corruption were the Borgias really so bad? This lecture reveals the real family that dominated the Papacy and Italian politics during the last decade of the 15th century: the charismatic figure of Pope Alexander VI, living inside his sumptuously decorated apartments, the career of his son, Cesare, cardinal, general, employer of Da Vinci and the model for Machiavelli’s The Prince, and the journey of Lucrezia Borgia from “the greatest whore in Rome” to a devout and treasured duchess of the city Ferrara. Sometimes truth is more intoxicating than myth.

This story has a plot worthy of Agatha Christie. The cast includes Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Laszlo Moholy Nagy, refugees from the Bauhaus in Germany, Henry Moore the sculptor, the writers Nicholas Monsarrat and Agatha Christie herself as well as numerous writers, intellectuals and civil servants. The setting is The Lawn Road Flats, a startling Modernist block in a leafy road in North London. It offered a radical new housing concept. But was there a darker side to this lively bohemian environment? It was in fact also home to a nest of Soviet spies, including the recruiter of the Cambridge 5. This is the story of a ground-breaking building, now Grade 1 listed, and of the rich and complex lives of its residents.

British photography enjoyed a golden age in the 1960s. Young, talented newcomers broke out of the conventional studio to revolutionise perceptions of fashion, portraiture and popular culture. This lecture looks at a range of superb images from photographers such as David Bailey, Terence Donovan, Lewis Morley, Tony Ray-Jones and Jane Bown.  Image provided by the speaker Brian Stater.

Born Marie Godebska, daughter of a Polish sculptor living in France, Misia was brought up in Brussels and Paris, where she became a pupil of Gabriel Fauré and a noted concert pianist. She married Thadée Natanson, owner of ‘La Revue Blanche’, an important art magazine that featured the work of Bonnard, Vuillard, and Toulouse-Lautrec, all of whom painted and drew the beautiful and talented Misia Natanson. Renoir painted her portrait while declaring his love for her, as did Edouard Vuillard. Misia later married the rich industrialist Alfred Edwards and enjoyed her role as a wealthy patron of artists and musicians. Maurice Ravel dedicated ‘La Cygne’ and ‘La Valse’ to Misia, who also accompanied Caruso on the piano. Misia also married José-Maria Sert, a highly successful Spanish painter of extravagant murals. She had a close relationship with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, and met Coco Chanel and the two extraordinary women became inseparable in their later years.

This lecture gives a light-hearted overview of contemporary public sculpture in Britain and looks at what makes a successful public sculpture commission. Today’s public sculpture often attracts controversy and the lecture discusses some of the most memorable current examples - Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North in Gateshead, the Fourth Plinth project in Trafalgar Square, Anish Kapoor’s Orbit Tower at the Olympic Park, and much more besides…  The title refers to Mary’s experience of taking part in Gormley’s ‘One and Other’ project on the plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2009, and herself becoming a public sculpture for a very long hour!

Images of Romanesque or Gothic cathedral architecture may linger in our memories, but many of us would be pressed to describe a typical mosque. We shall look at three of the most important forms, typified by the Friday Mosque in Cordova (now the Cathedral), the Mosque of Suleyman the Magnificent in Istanbul, and the Royal Mosque in Isfahan. The lecture explores their different styles, and the minarets and domes that enhance their skylines, and illustrates the rich designs, whether in mosaic, tile, or other media, that adorn these buildings.

Matthew Parker (1504-1575) assembled one of the most astonishing collections of illuminated manuscripts in England. Chaplain to Anne Boleyn and Master of Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, in 1558 he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Queen Elizabeth with instructions to make the English Reformation absolute and irrevocable. He did this by gathering the oldest books in England, as justification for the history and destiny of England. In 1574 he sent this collection to Cambridge, into the custody of Corpus Christi College, subject to various conditions, including a forfeit clause if any books are ever lost. The lecture, which is profusely illustrated, will look at some of the extraordinary treasures of the library, including the sixth-century Gospels of Saint Augustine, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the vast twelfth-century Bury Bible, and many others. It will reveal the oldest known pictures of elephants, Stonehenge, pretzels, and beavers.

An introduction to the earliest art known in the world, primarily the artworks from Western Europe and dating to c. 40,000 to 12,000 years ago. It takes the form of portable art objects, and also engravings, drawings and paintings on cave walls and in the open air. The story of the art’s discovery and authentication will be followed by a presentation of the main techniques employed (including experimental reconstructions), the pigments, the lighting methods, and some of the many reasons why this art corpus comprises some of the greatest imagery ever produced. A brief survey of the main theories about its meaning and purpose will also be given.

The image is: Bison engraved and painted on the ceiling of Altamira cave, Spain.  The copyright is Pedro Saura

19 January 2017

Forty Shades of Green: Gardening in Ireland, Past and Present – Tom Duncan

The history of gardening in Ireland broadly reflects the changes in Irish society over the last few hundred years. There are no Irish gardens of note extant before the late seventeenth century. Formal gardening in the French manner was carried on but only Kilruddery survives in magnificent isolation. English classical gardening styles were carried on, but again, little survives. The broad and simplified landscape sweep of “Capability” Brown did indeed find enthusiasts, such as the Duke of Leinster at Carton, but it was the more wild and romantic landscape style of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which found a ready welcome. From Ireland came one of the most influential figures of the late Victorian gardening world, William Robinson; so too, one of the greats of plant collecting, Augustine Henry.

To many people, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a turkey and trimmings, pudding and brandy. But where do our notions of ‘traditional fare’ come from? When modern writers ‘reinvent’ the Christmas meal, are they really doing anything so very different? This lecture charts the traditions of dinner, along with the specific foods consumed, from the high medieval to the Edwardian period. From the celebration of the twelve days under Edward I, to the masques and merriment of Elizabeth’s court, Christmas has been a celebration, centred on spectacular feasting. But it dwindled and nearly died under the Georgians, before being reborn under Victoria. Concentrating on dinner, this talk covers the way the English have celebrated Christmas through the arts of the table. It draws on visual sources ranging from Dutch still lives to Victorian literary illustrations.

CORNELIA PARKER

Contemporary sculptor and installation artist Cornelia Parker is best known for her large-scale installations such as Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991), the suspended fragments of a garden shed and its contents, which she had blown up by the British Army and installed around a single light bulb, to create the dramatic effect of an explosion frozen in time. With such pieces as that and Thirty Pieces of Silver (1988-9), she creates works of beauty from acts of destruction, transforming everyday objects and investigating their nature and value. This lecture explores her intriguing and thought-provoking work.

Recently made popular by the television series Downton Abbey, the Edwardian period was a complex, dynamic age, led by a fabulously wealthy, stylish and aesthetically astute elite. Working alongside such famous portraitists as Whistler, Lavery and Sickert, the greatest one was the flamboyant American, John Singer Sargent. His sumptuous society portraits undoubtedly created the ‘look’ of the age. In the era of photography, the portraitist had to do more than create a likeness. Sitters wanted identity, personality, taste and social standing to be not only singularly conveyed, but to be transcended by the incisive eye of the artist, turning a portrait into a great work of art.

The image is Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, 1892-3, by John Singer Sargent, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.

This lecture will look at the history and contents of this house in Ayrshire, built 1754-59.  The architects were the young Adam brothers, John and Robert, and much of its furniture made by Thomas Chippendale survives in tact and in situ.  Apart from a few late 19th centiry additions, the house remains virtually unaltered since 1759.  After 1993 the house was not lived in, and in the summer of 2007 the contents were to be sold at Christie's.  A rescue package was put together and at the last moment the house and its contents were saved, largely by the intervention of the Prince of Wales.  It opened to the public in 2008.

Behind the Scenes, Curating the Art Gallery

How does one set out to open a contemporary art gallery and why? How do you judge if an artist is worth exhibiting and how do you find them? Once the gallery is open how do you survive a recession and get a chance to thrive? In this lecture, members are offered an inside view of the the lightest and darkest of the contemporary art world. Drawing on his experience of curating contemporary art since his teenage years, advising and directing multiple London galleries, and developing artists careers from graduation to museum recognition, William will share the trials, tribulations and joys of getting from dream to reality.

William Lunn is curator and director of the contemporary art gallery Copperfield, London and previously co-directed Sumarria Lunn. At 27 years old he has curated more than 60 exhibitions and projects. Lunn has presented work by internationally recognised artists such as Richard Wilson, Mona Hatoum, Lawrence Wiener, Mike Kelly and Angela de la Cruz. He has curated public and private exhibitions in the UK and abroad including for Nest Ruimte Voor Kunst in the Netherlands and Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai and worked with charities such as Freedom From Torture and House of St Barnabas. He recently launched a new not for profit initiative called NORTH with a festival of contemporary art for the North of England. Including more than 12 exhibitions at different locations alongside talks programs and workshops, the project was realised in partnership with important institutions including Arts Council England and Ikon Gallery and presented internationally important artists from the region such as Ryan Gander alongside emerging talent. He also advises the not for profit contemporary art project space, The Ryder in east London.

Lunn regularly gives, talks, walks, curators tours, panel discussions and lectures on all manor of topics. These have been hosted in house at the gallery and at off site locations, including perhaps most notably The School of the Royal Academy of Art.

Through extraordinary slides of prisoners' art, interspersed with personal stories from prison art projects, our lecturer will demonstrate how within the process of creating art there are vital opportunities for offenders to develop key life skills.  In the context of prisons, it is clear, that the arts are not simply decorative or commercial pastimes, but vital, hugely relevant and potentially life-changing activities. 

Burges was short, fat and bad-tempered.  He was also a genius who created some of the most extraordinary buildings of the 19th century.  Completely immersed in the world of the middle ages he designed, churches, castles, bridges, interiors, furniture, textiles, metal work and jewellery for his few, equally individual clients.  In this lecture Burges' eccentric world and many of his creations are discussed and illustrated.

Botticelli is one of the best loved painters of the Florentine renaissance.  This lecture looks at such masterpieces as the Primavera, the Birth of Venus and the Mystic Nativity, setting them in their Florentine context from the cultivated secular world of the Medici to the fervent religious ideas of Savonarola.

When Sir Jacob Epstein died in 1959 he was one of the most famous and respected sculptors working in Britain and had produced some of the best loved and admired monumental works in the country.  However, most of his career had been dogged by ferocious criticism, public ridicule and anti-semitism - often aimed as much at his highly unusual domestic arrangements as at his art.  This lecture examines his life and work closely in order to explain what he was trying to achieve, and why his pioneering career caused such bitter controversy in his time.  

As Venice declined, it produced fewer opportunities for high grade lucrative employment and as a result, many of its native artists and musicians looked for work elsewhere.  Some went south to Rome and Florence, some gravitated to Paris, Vienna and even Madrid - but many, inspired by the contsant procession of English men on the Grand Tour, set their sights on the ever-expanding English capital.  Through digital images, film and live examples sung and played at piano, the lecture explores the knock-on effect of the Venetians' stay in 18th century London and how this was manifested in its art and music for many years to come.

Paintings up to and including the 17th Century were appreciated for the materials they incorporated as well as for the colours they projected.  Pigments were valued as sources of colour but also as medicines, many were imported along with spices and were sold in apothecaries along with drugs.  This lecture will draw upon the modern scientific analysis of medieval paintings interpreted in the light of contemporary artists' manuals.  It will also consider such materials as lapis lazuli and vermilion and will show how paintings were understood to have a positive influence on the health of the viewer's body and soul.

The Decline and Fall of Roman Britain
 

The Roman Empire was a system of robbery with violence which began to decline when it was no longer able to expand and feed off plundered wealth. This lecture will look at the process of stagnation and decline in Roman Britain, one of the first territories to be lost as the western empire collapsed. Using the evidence of ancient texts, inscriptions, towns, villas, coins, and art, we will explore the transition from ‘The Grandeur That Was Rome’ to ‘The Dark Ages’.

This lecture will explore the sacred architecture of Luang Prabang with its 33 temples dating from the 16th century.  Luang Prabang is a UNESCO World Heriatge Site, a status extending to the French colonial architecture of the town as well.  It looks at the French legacy of elegant houses with Lao motifs, a unique fusion of East and West.  There is also reference to the contemporary living arts, especially the silver head-dresses and jewellery worn by some hill tribes and the silk weaving of Laos once the preserve of the monarchy and now recently revived.  The copyright of the image is held by the lecturer, Denise Heywood

David Phillips was a curator of art in Nottingham Castle Museum from 1968 to 1982. He then became a lecturer in museum studies at Manchester University from 1982 to 1998 since when he has been a freelance lecturer following up his interests in art, its forgery and psychology. He has worked on many exhibitions, one selected for the Arts Council in 1986 was entitled: "Don't trust the label: an exhibition of fakes, imitations and the real thing."

We welcome back Val who is a lecturer and Guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, also at many other London Galleries, for the National Trust and other organisations. She is also a Lecturer for Tate on P&O Cruises. She is a member of the teaching team at the Dulwich Picture Gallery and a script-writer for the Living Paintings Trust, which brings art to the blind and partially-sighted.

Roger Rosewell is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a leading expert on medieval stained glass and wall paintings. He is the author of ‘Stained Glass’ for SHIRE Books and the Features Editor of Vidimus, the online magazine about medieval stained glass.

Alan Read BA MITG: Alan holds a masters and a first class honours degree in History of Art from Birkbeck College. He is a gallery guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery and has lectured at the NPG, Penlee House (Penzance), Plymouth City Art Gallery, Croydon Clocktower and the Bridewell Institute. He is also a London Blue Badge Guide and City of London Guide and has conducted walking tours for the Twentieth Century Society, the National Trust and team London Bridge.

Caroline has lectured both in the UK and the USA on a range of subjects from Samplers, 18th Century Porcelain and Antique Paste Jewellery, Egyptology, Royalty and Gardens. In the USA she gave the keynote lecture at Baylor University for their ‘Women in History Programme’. She was an official guide at the British Museum for over ten years, has guided Art Groups in Florence, Venice and Rome and conducted literary and art tours in many parts of Europe.

The audience is taken on a journey beginning in Outer Mongolia in the 5th century BC and follows the 11th century migrations from Central Asia the cradle of weaving; into the Caucasus, Anatolia, Persia and Afghanistan. They will be introduced to the Nomadic tribes of these countries and their woven rugs, carpets and dowry bags, with particular emphasis on those of the 19th century and earlier. These tribal weavings illustrate the skill of the women who produced exquisite works of woven art using vegetable colours and age old designs including cosmic and talismanic symbols. The lecture explains how these rugs were made, the materials used and comparisons between natural and chemical dyes. The lecture will also illustrate how nomadic tribal weaving began a swift decline under the demands of commercialism around 1900, with the use of mechanical design and chemical colours. By the 1930’s, it had virtually ceased to exist in its spontaneous form. The tribal weavings of the 19th century and earlier represent the pinnacle of achievement and wonderful free expression of the art of the weaver. Today, these weavings are highly desirable and collectable works of woven art.

During the 1970’s whilst working in Iran, Brian travelled extensively through that country as well as Afghanistan and Turkey. In 1972 he lived and worked amongst two tribal groups in Iran. In 1990, Brian was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society for his work amongst the Persian Tribes.

Shirley Smith is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a part-time lecturer at the University of East Anglia as well as a tutor for the Continuing Education of Cambridge University and a lecturer for NADFAS. We are delighted to welcome her back to Cambridge DFAS.

STEPHEN DUFFY is Curator of the 19th Century Paintings and Exhibitions of the Wallace Collection. Read History and the History of Art at New College, Oxford. After working in marketing, joined the Wallace Collection, where he has given countless tours of the Wallace Collection to visiting groups, and many lectures on its art. His latest publication is a book on the Wallace Collection’s miniatures

Jo read art history at Leicester University, then went on to do a post-graduate diploma in Oxford, specialising in the art and architecture of fifteenth century Italy. Jo worked in bookshop for twenty years, eventually running a specialist art bookshop in London, and working with the auctioneers, Christies.

Theodora Clarke is an art historian, lecturer and critic specialising in Russian art and European modernism. She lectures widely on twentieth-century avant-garde painting and sculpture to audiences across the UK at museums, galleries, universities and associations. Recent topics have included Cubism, Fauvism, Abstraction, the Bauhaus, the Ballets Russes, photography, patronage and individual artists such as Kandinsky, Chagall, Matisse, Gabo, Malevich and Picasso. She has previously lectured at institutions which include the Victoria & Albert Museum, Tate Britain, Harvard University, the Courtauld Institute of Art, the University of Bristol and Cambridge University. Theodora has also taught adult art history courses and day schools at the Royal West of England Academy on Russian art and twentieth century avant-garde art. Theodora is an accredited lecturer for the National Association of Decorative & Fine Arts Societies (NADFAS). She is founder and editor of the online arts magazine Russian Art & Culture. She also set up Russian Art Week in London and publishes a bi-annual guide to this major event. Theodora leads cultural trips to Russia (St Petersburg and Moscow) for Ultimate Travel Company.

Art History tutor for Continuing Education Departments of Essex and Cambridge Universities, colleges, and adult education organisations. Long standing lecturer with the Open University on art history courses ranging from the early Renaissance to the 20th century. Wide experience as a freelance lecturer since 1988. Lectured for ADFAS in Australia and NADFAS in New Zealand. Also a practising artist.

The original Brotherhood of 1848-53 initiated three generations of British Pre-Raphaelites. Moreover the movement was not confined to England, as across Europe Pre-Raphaelitism evolved into Symbolism. Without Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones there would have been no Mackintosh in Glasgow, Klimt in Vienna or Knopff in Brussels. Oscar Wilde rightly perceived ‘Art is at once surface and symbol’; he also warned that those who go beneath the surface do so at their own peril. This lecture will go below the surface of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, to reveal not only the symbols but also the stories, the tales of Chivalric love drawn from the Morte D’Arthur, Shakespeare and Dante that spilled over into real life. With their Stunners and femme fatales the Pre-Raphaelites hold us enthralled. We are hooked by their personal melodramas as well as their ravishing paintings.

Peter Medhurst appears in the UK and abroad as musician and scholar, giving recitals and delivering illustrated lectures on music in the arts. He studied singing and early keyboard instruments at the Royal College of Music and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Peter is well known to us all in Cambridge.

Frank is a lecturer and guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern. He is also a lecturer at Dulwich Picture Gallery and a scriptwriter for the Living Paintings Trust and is much loved by members of CDFAS!

Anthea Streeter studied the Fine and Decorative Arts in London and continued her studies at Harvard University. At Harvard, she became interested in 20th century architecture. She lectures in Oxford and London and for several NADFAS groups including our own. She will be leading our walking tour of the Olympic site later in the year.

Jane Angelini lectures for NADFAS and other arts organisations. She has a BA in Russian studies and an AM in Byzantine studies. She speaks several foreign languages and has translated a number of works of 19th century Russian literature for Penguin Books and Oxford University Press. She also runs her own art tours company, specialising in cultural visits.

Shirley Smith graduated from the University of East Anglia with a first class honours in history of Art specialising in Italian and Northern renaissance art and architecture. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a part time lecturer for Uni. Of East Anglia and is a tutor for the Board of continuing Education of Cambridge University.

Sian Walters is an art historian and lectures for the National Gallery, Surrey University and NADFAS. Her specialist areas are 15th And 16th century Italian painting, Spanish Art and Architecture and the relationship between dance and art. Sian has been invited to give the prestigious annual T. Rowland Hughes Lecture at the University of Wales. She studied at Cambridge University and gained a1st for her dissertation of the paintings of Arnold Shoenberg.

Lizzie Darbyshire is a graduate of the Courtauld Institute of Art and has wide experience as a freelance lecturer in the History of Art working with fine arts societies art galleries throughout Britain, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. She also supports the Living paintings trust in an editorial capacity.

Dr. Nick Slope is an historian and archaeologist. He has published both academic and popular works and has worked with the BBC as a consultant and presenter. Petra Casen is a solo recitalist and a sought after chamber musician and has performed throughout Europe and the USA. She has worked with dancers and in the theatre and composed music for film.

Gail Turner read History at Oxford and History of Art at the Courtauld Institute. She lectures to NADFAS, The Art Fund, Gainsborough’s House, Inscape, Art Pursuits, the V&A, the Cambridge University International Summer School and the Courtauld Institute Summer School. She has taken many tours to different parts of Spain. She is also a practising painter and etcher.

Jane Tapley is currently Special Events Organiser, Theatre Royal Bath – interviewing actors, writers and directors. She is a regular lecturer to NADFAS and the national Trust, a Blue Badge Guide and author and researcher of theatre programme notes. She hosts and cooks period meals in her Regency house in Bath for the Jane Austen festival and other literary groups.