The world of opera is full of remarkable contributors, great game changers who leave the stage in a completely different place from the one they found. In the 19th century three such men revolutionised the art form; in three very different ways; Verdi, Wagner and Puccini. From the romantic heart-breakers of La Traviata and Rigoletto via the mystery and magic of the The Ring Cycle to the breath-taking melodramatic tear jerkers of Tosca and La Bohème. Enjoy their remarkable journeys and innovative, dynamic and thrilling theatricality which highlights so much of their work. This illustrated lecture will highlight the great opera productions which have graced the worlds opera houses.

After training at RADA Jamie graduated as a Stage Manager and subsequently worked for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Bristol Old Vic and the BBC. He became an Assistant Director with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Kent Opera and English National Opera and soon began directing productions of his own. He has directed many new opera productions in the UK whilst other new opera productions overseas include Reykjavik, Malta and Melbourne. Jamie was Associate Director on the original production of the hit musical Miss Saigon in the West End and on Broadway. He has directed productions in all the major UK conservatoires and was Director of Productions for British Youth Opera for over a decade, a company devoted to promoting the talents of our finest young opera singers in the UK. Jamie is a regular enrichment programme lecturer for various leading cruise ship companies. He is married to the mezzo-soprano Jean Rigby and they have three sons. 

2024 - 2028 marks one hundred years since Winnie-the-Pooh was introduced to children of all ages in the four iconic books created by A A Milne and E H Shepard. First seen in When We Were Very Young (1924), Winnie-the-Pooh and the characters of the Hundred Acre Wood had their own adventures in Winnie-The-Pooh (1926), with Now We Are Six (1927) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928), giving us more wonderful poems and stories which include the introduction of both Tigger, Kanga-and-Roo and Poohsticks. This lecture tells the story of how these much-loved books were created by the genius of Milne and Shepard’s groundbreaking collaboration and why they remain embedded in our national identity.

James has a BA in History and 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 Literary Festivals, Art Societies, military museums, and to private clubs and community groups. He has been a Trustee of the E H Shepard Estate since 2010, as was involved in the ground-breaking Victoria and Albert Museum 2017 Exhibition marking the 90th birthday of Winnie-the-Pooh.  His books Shepard’s War and The Art of Winnie-the-Pooh were published in 2015 and 2017 respectively. His new joint biography of A A Milne and E H Shepard - The Men Who Created Winne-the-Pooh: The Lives of A A Milne and E H Shepard - commissioned for the centenary of the Winnie-the-Pooh books will be published in September 2024 by Michael O'Mara Books.  

In the aftermath of World War II art, architecture, fashion, film, music and theatre changed radically. Through the Abercrombie plan to remake London and create new towns, architects remade cities in modernist, brutalist ways. Angry young men and new forms of musical theatre emerged. In Soho, rock’n’roll was born and artists flocked to the Colony Rooms. After the gentle Ealing comedies came social realism. The Festival of Britain highlighted the artistic communities and showcased a brighter future for every citizen. In fine art, Hepworth and Heron, Bacon and others were forging bold new directions.

Russell trained and worked as an actor, puppeteer and theatre maker for 15 years. He also spent time as a journalist, jewellery business owner and writer. In 2015 he qualified a London Blue Badge Tourist Guide. Around this time he rekindled his love of art and art history. He now regularly guides the major art galleries and museums in London including the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Tates Modern & Britain and the British Museum. He has delivered lectures for institutes and museums, as well as numerous U3A groups and other societies.

The history of English garden design can be told in different ways, but rarely can it be told "through the lens" of one garden.  The Oxford Botanic Garden was founded at the beginning of the 17th century and its design bears all the hallmarks of 17th century design. Through the next 400 years successive Horti Praefecti (head gardeners) changed the features reflecting the art of gardening, and very occasionally the science of botany.   This talk looks at how the art of gardening has changed, or perhaps has not, in four centuries in Oxfordshire and how the Oxford Botanic Garden now reflects garden design at the beginning of the 21st century.  The title of the talk refers to the fact that one of the motivations for garden design remains the desire to create paradise on Earth. The meaning of paradise may now be less rooted in the Biblical account of the rise and fall of man, but there is still a clear vision of what we would like the world to resemble.  

Timothy: I read Botany at University College Oxford. After graduation, I worked as a trainee at Oxford Botanic Garden, the Savill Garden Windsor, and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. In 1985 I was awarded a Master of Horticulture by the Royal Horticultural Society of London. From 1988 to 2014 I was director (Horti Praefectus) at the Oxford Botanic Garden. Between 1992 & 2000 the OBGHA won 4 gold medals at the Chelsea Flower Show London. In 2009 the Botanic Garden was awarded a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for providing imaginative educational programmes for adults, students, children, and the general public, thereby breathing new life into education for people of all ages and enriching their lives. In 2010 I was elected as a Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London. In the same year I presented a 3-part series of films on the history of botany on BBC4. Since 2014 I have been a tutor in Plant Biology at Somerville College, Oxford.    

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 ? Everyone will learn something new about this familiar old friend of a board game.

A keen and accomplished photographer, Roger has gained Distinctions from the Royal Photographic Society and has recently completed 3 years as 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.

The international art market is today dominated by four British auction houses, all founded in the 18th century, their record prices sensationally reported by the world's media. But what is it like behind the canvas? How do auction houses function? What goes on behind the scenes and what is required for a successful sale to take place? With an overview of the rise of two of the leading international salerooms, based in London and globally, this interactive lecture, given by an auctioneer and specialist with almost forty years' experience in both houses, reveals all.

Image: 'EOW on her Blue Eiderdown V' (1963). Oil painting by British artist Frank Auerbach. Sold for £2m in a contemporary art auction at Bonhams in 2016.

Simon, a leading international specialist, author, auctioneer and lecturer in British and European Glass, has now retired. Formerly Managing Director (Bonhams Europe) and Director of European Ceramics and Glass at Bonhams Auctioneers, London (2007-2023). Formerly Head of European Ceramics and Glass at Sotheby's, where he was also a Director and auctioneer (1990 to 2007). He is responsible for numerous landmark auctions of European Glass both at Sotheby's and Bonhams. After graduating he began his career as a senior curator of ceramics, glass and silver at museums in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Glasgow (1979-1990). He is Hon. President of the Glass Society, Fellow of the Guild of Glass Engravers and a Fellow of the Corning Museum of Glass, New York.

A Christmas Carol, perhaps Charles Dickens’ best-known work, has been adapted for stage, screen and radio countless times, and is capable of infinite re-invention. The timelessness of the story was helped by Dickens’ decision (unusually for him) to give very few clues as to the locations in the story. This lecture reveals where those clues lead us, especially in London, and why the hints Dickens left behind were part of a deeply personal history. A visual feast of old and modern photographs, maps, theatrical material and early illustrations bring the hidden aspects of this classic tale to life. 

Image:  Tiny Tim

Richard took a BA Hons in English Language and Literature from the University of Manchester, followed by an acting diploma at the Birmingham School of Speech and Drama. He combines acting, writing and lecturing. He has lectured in many venues including the National Army Museum and the Museum of London, as well as presenting a variety of virtual lectures online. Richard has contributed to, among others, The Journal of Popular Film and Television, The Sherlock Holmes Journal, and the P G Wodehouse journal Wooster Sauce. A specialist in voice work, he has narrated numerous television documentaries and 180 audiobooks.

In the two centuries since they were removed from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin, the meaning and significance of the ‘Elgin marbles’ has changed dramatically. From architectural decoration to disputed cultural objects this lecture looks at the response to them over their time in Britain, from the original controversy over their purchase to the current debate surrounding the restitution of the marbles to the new Acropolis Museum in Athens. 

Image: Horse of Selene, east pediment

Alan has a masters and first-class honours degree in History of Art from Birkbeck College, University of London. He is a gallery guide at Tate Britain and regularly lectures at both London Tates. For twenty years he was a gallery guide and lecturer at the National Portrait Gallery and the Dulwich Picture Gallery. He also works as a London Blue Badge Guide.

Theatrical scene design is one of the world's most beautiful, varied and lively art forms. In his talk, Bertie looks at the relationship between actor and audience and how this transformed the space and architecture of theatre throughout the ages. Beginning with the Greeks and their remarkable innovations to pageants, masques, liturgical drama, through the science of perspective, to court theatre. A quick glance at Commedia dell'arte before entering the Elizabethan stage of the Globe and the Fortune and arriving at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane.

Image: Hackney Empire. Photo by Helene Binet courtesy of Tim Ronalds Architects

Bertie has a BA (Hons) in Drama from Manchester University, and a Diploma Internationale from the École Internationale du Théatre, Jacques Lecoq. A member of the Inner Magic Circle, with Gold Star. Past experience includes lecturing and performing on cruise ships, and to U3A, historical societies, festivals, schools and colleges. In addition, has toured the world with a magic cabaret show and a one man show entitled All Aboard. Has written articles for newspapers and magazines on entertainment and theatre.

This lecture will explore two contrasting perspectives of New York city at the turn of the century - a period of vast magnate fortunes, urban poverty, new money vs old money, rapid expansion and unprecedented technological change. In fact, it offers intriguing parallels with today. What role did art, architecture, couture and fashion play in the rise of the nouveaux riches in the Gilded Age? In the opening scene, we will be spectators at the glittering Vanderbilt Ball held in their mansion on Fifth Avenue in 1883. Who was there? what did they wear? who painted their portraits? and what was the origin of the famous Astor/Vanderbilt feud fuelling city gossip?
Image: George Bellows. Blue Morning 1909.

Mary trained as an art historian and graduated with a BA Hons in History & History of Art (University College London) and later an MA (with Distinction) in History of Art (University College London). She moved to Manchester to take up the post of Assistant Curator at Platt Hall, the Gallery of English Costume, a renowned collection of historic dress. Subsequently she lectured in art history at the University of Leeds, the Open University and Manchester University Extra Mural Department. From 1995 - 2008, she was a Visiting Lecturer at Christie’s Education in London. Mary has also combined academic work with the world of design consultancy. In 1985 she joined Pentagram Design in London, a leading international design consultancy, and coordinated client presentations, publications, conferences and international special events, including the 1986 British Design event in Aspen Colorado. In 1988 she transferred to Pentagram’s New York office with the task of organising an international design conference held at Stanford University involving business, design and education leaders. As an experienced international speaker, Mary lectures regularly for The Arts Society throughout the UK, Europe and Australia and New Zealand. She also contributes articles to magazines, newspapers and professional journals. She was President of The Arts Society Glaven Valley, Norfolk from 2016- 2021.  

Follow in the footsteps of the millions who have crossed the Thames over the last three millennia. People built a Thames crossing at Westminster in the Bronze Age—1,500 years before the Romans constructed London Bridge. In the 1,700 year wait for the next bridge, other crossings relied on watermen and horse ferries, as traffic got jammed up on London Bridge. The last 200 years have seen more than 50 new crossings over and under the river. Some are great feats of engineering; some are architecturally elegant. Every crossover changes the city’s genetic code.  Even now newly designed bridges await their start on site. This lecture explores the way we have connected up across the Thames and what that tells us about the culture of the capital through time.

Charlie says: as a London walking tour guide and lecturer, I highlight the social, architectural and artistic history of my home city. It is a city I am passionate about, not least because it has a historic core larger and richer than any other world city. A member of the City of Westminster Guide Lecturers Association, my talks focus on the forces that have shaped and changed this multi-faceted metropolis and the artistic and cultural heritage that this has given us. After many hundreds of walks and a four-decade long career in housing and regeneration I have absorbed a deep understanding and appreciation of the capital. I’ve had some fascinating vantage points like the seven years build-up to the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games where I played a role in channelling potential long-term benefits into surrounding East London communities. My publications include Spitalfields: A battle for land.

In 1936 Dame Laura Knight became the first woman to be elected as a full member of the Royal Academy in London, 168 years after its establishment. In her extraordinary career she painted landscapes, portraits and seascapes, as well as scenes from the circus, the ballet and the theatre. She was the only woman to be given War Commissions in both the First and Second World Wars and the only British artist to cover the Nuremberg Trials of 1946. This lecture provides an overview of her fascinating career and some of the remarkable achievements of her long life. 

Image: On the cliffs 1917. Private collection.

Rosalind has a 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.

The founder's grandson tells story of the publisher, Faber & Faber, and of the art used on its books, from its beginnings to the present day.

Toby is an experienced lecturer and public speaker who has been accredited by The Arts Society since 2012. His career began with Natural Sciences at Cambridge and has been through investment banking, management consulting and five years as managing director of the publishing company founded by his grandfather, Faber and Faber, where he remains on the board. He is also non-executive Chairman of its sister company, Faber Music and a director of Liverpool University Press. Toby has written three narrative histories: Stradivarius – Five Violins, One Cello and a Genius; Faberge’s Eggs; and Faber & Faber – The Untold Story, as well as a novel, Close to the Edge. Of these, only the obvious one is published by the family firm.

Across a thousand years of manuscripts and over five hundred years of publishing, English recipe books have reflected the eating habits of Kings and courtiers, the merchant classes, inn-keepers and restaurant owners, as well as home cooks and even the paupers who visited the soup kitchens of Victorian London. Cookbooks are full of extraordinary food but also extraordinary illustrations from medieval illuminated manuscripts, via the engravings of the eighteenth century and the colour lithographs of Mrs. Beeton, to the high-end life-style images of the modern TV cook. This lecture tells the story of the development of the cookbook and along the way will tempt you, or indeed disgust you, with a few choice recipes.

Peter has a BA in History of Art, Design and Film, MA in London history, PhD in the cultural history of an English criminal, and is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.  Until recently Principal Librarian at Guildhall Library, he has for 20 years lectured on a broad range of topics including the history of English books, portraiture, and London history. Peter has appeared on TV and radio as a consultant on the 18th century criminal Jack Sheppard,  on the history of English food, and on Shakespeare’s First Folio. His most recent publication, The Curious Cookbook, was published by the British Library. Peter is currently writing a book on Eating out in Georgian London.

This lecture introduces some of Japan’s most famous gardens and provides a context for understanding the principles of Japanese garden design as it has evolved through the ages. The Japanese love of nature and the changing seasons has manifested itself in the subject matter of paintings and in the intimate and grand-scale gardens surrounding aristocratic palaces and Buddhist temples as well as Zen-inspired dry landscape gardens with their strikingly symbolic content. Nature and artifice are intriguingly combined in such examples to capture the very essence of the landscape.

Marie is a long-established Arts Society Lecturer with a BA in History of Art and an MA in Asian Art and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She was Director General of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation from 1999-2011 and has held senior academic posts at various UK universities. She has most recently served as Executive Director of the UK-Japan 21st Century Group, and as a member of the Board of Governors of the University for the Creative Arts. She is widely published and has lectured throughout the UK and abroad. She is also an experienced cruise speaker and a Resident Historian with Viking Ocean Cruises, lecturing on many aspects of Asian Art and East-West Encounters. She was awarded an OBE in the 2011 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to UK-Japan educational and cultural relations and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette by the Government of Japan in 2019.

French 17th century chateau design owes much to one man; the ambitious visionary Nicolas Fouquet who is still somewhat of an enigma today. He seemed invincible but made one grave error of judgement  which was to lead to his downfall. He employed the country’s best talent of the day to commission a spectacular chateau for himself. In doing so he was completely outshining the Sun King; Vaux le Vicomte presented a radical new look for the century whilst Versailles was nothing more than a humble hunting lodge at the time. The story that ensues is legendary. This lecture explores innovative garden design and architecture together with lavish interiors to tell the shocking story.

Carole is an experienced guide and lecturer on combined history and art tours in France with 20 years experience. Having lived and worked on a number of bespoke river vessels and converted barges there she has used them as a platform from which to research her lectures. She uses art in all its guises to explore the characters who shaped France and likes to delve behind the scenes to discover hidden truths. She also acts as a guide for a privately owned ancestral home in her native Chilterns.

The Christmas tree is arguably the most iconic aspect of our midwinter celebrations, yet how much do we actually know about its origins and history. Peter Medhurst delves into the past – as far back as the Book of Genesis – in order to tell the story of this remarkable ‘German toy’, as Dickens described it. Music performed includes: Adam lay ybounden, Jesus Christ the Apple Tree – Elizabeth Postern, O Tannenbaum, O Little Town of Bethlehem, O Holy Night – Adolphe Adam.

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

The Royal Collection of Art contains paintings from the Early Renaissance period to the Victorian era and beyond and it is an important reflection of both the taste of the Monarch and of the social and economic thinking of the country at the time. There are less than 2,700 pictures hanging in the National Gallery in London – there are more than 7,000 paintings in the Royal Collection.

Image: Detail of Charles I on horseback by Anthony Van Dyck, 1633, Royal Collection Trust. 

Linda Collins says: I have been lucky enough to have spent 24 years employed as a Guide/Lecturer by the Historic Royal Palaces, based mostly at Hampton Court or Kensington Palace. I have written three books : The Tudor Dynasty, the Art of Henry VIII and the Art Collection of Elizabeth I. I am currently working on a novel set in Paris in the 1920s.

Freelance Lecturer Tate Modern, The National Gallery and The National Portrait Gallery also lecturer for The National Trust, U3A and The Arts Society. 

Welcomed at first with open arms and bringing luxury skills, the Huguenots’ fortunes fluctuated wildly. Sue talks about their early 18th-century houses that still stand, how they were decorated and lived in; discuses the fashionable patterned silk dresses – who designed and made them. And how, finally the trade died out, with some weavers literally dying in poverty at their looms. One of the weavers’ houses can still be visited today.

Image: Desperate weaver in a garret of 1895.

Originally in academic art and design publishing, Sue Jackson is also a Fellow of the Huguenot Society, a Freeman of the City of London, a tutor at the City Literary Institute and a Blue Badge guide, conducting a variety of walks and visits.  She also offers virtual tours.

Society changed more rapidly in the twentieth century than at any time in the previous four thousand years. So did art. This lecture will explain many modern movements and the artistic response to political and social upheavals, including both World Wars, which inspired some of the great masterpieces of modern art. Recent decades have seen a questioning of the nature and language of art, with Post-Modernism and the Turner Prize.

Image: Lobster telephone, Salvador Dali 1936.

Valerie Woodgate is currently a Lecturer and Guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, for the Art Fund, the National Trust, U3A, City of London libraries (Barbican and Guildhall), and other organisations. Lectures on Zoom for arts organisations.  Formerly Tate Guide for 39 years; member of Teaching Team at Dulwich Picture Gallery, where as well as lectures I gave 50 Study Days; evening courses for DPG; lectures and courses at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester; on P&O cruises representing the Tate; lectures at University of Cape Town; script-writer for The Living Paintings Trust.

This lecture traces the origins, and myths, that surround Imperial Chinese Silk, an exquisite product that has mesmerised the World and on occasions exceeded the value of gold.
Initial consideration will be given to the origins of silk in Neolithic times through to the creation of Imperial Silk Workshops in the early Dynasties of China producing Regulated Court Costume. The focus will then move to the expansion of the silk industry and the role of the Silk Road in bringing this coveted product to the Middle East and on to Europe. Particular consideration will be given to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) where silk weaving and embroidery reach a peak in terms of quality and variety of fabrics and production.

Finally, the lecture reviews the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) where from the highest standards of production in the 18th Century we see quality suffering, as the quantity of silk produced accelerates with the rapid expansion of Commercial Workshops and industrialisation encroaches in the late 19th Century.
During each period in China’s history we will see examples of both fabrics and Imperial Costume and decorative textiles which represent the pinnacle of the weavers' and embroiderers' art and expertise.

A Chartered Insurer by profession and a Fellow of the Assurance Medical Society, with extensive international experience as an author and lecturer in Medical Risk Assessment. David Rosier has in excess of 25 years of working and living in Asia. Whilst living in Hong Kong (1991-2004) he assembled a collection of approximately 700, predominately Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), Imperial and related textiles/costume accessories. Past Committee Member of the Hong Kong Textile Society and frequent speaker on Imperial Insignia and Badges of Rank.

This lecture tells Ukraine's story through the shared culture which binds its proud people together. We will explore the sacred art and architecture of Kyiv and its links to Byzantium, as well as the distinctive characters and ethnicities of Odesa and Lviv. Tracing Ukraine's complicated multi-ethnic history also means looking at its rich folk culture traditions. These range from native song and the secret codes embedded in ancient embroidery, which have exerted a surprising impact on modern painting and contemporary haute couture, to Cossack dancing and borshch.

Rosamund Bartlett a writer, lecturer and translator whose work as a cultural historian ranges across the arts. She completed her doctorate at Oxford and is the author of several books, including biographies of Chekhov and Tolstoy, and a study of Wagner's influence in Russia. She is currently writing a history of the Russian avant-garde. Her new translation of Anna Karenina for Oxford World’s Classics was published to acclaim in 2014. She has written on art, music and literature for publications such as The Daily Telegraph and Apollo, and received commissions from institutions including the Royal Opera House, Tate UK, and the Salzburg Festival. Her lecturing work has taken her from the V&A and the National Theatre in London to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, and she contributes regularly to Proms events and opera broadcasts on the BBC.

Where are the children in Medieval art? So often they are missing and it’s sometimes assumed that because of the high infant mortality rates, parents deliberately didn’t bond with their children. Nothing could be further from the truth; children were cherished, cosseted and spoilt, but they worked hard, alongside adults too. We know that they loved toys as well as word games, bunking off school and teasing their teachers. This lecture goes from before the cradle with superstitions surrounding pregnancy and childbirth, to the trials and tribulations of teenage years and all too often to an early grave. 

Image: Denys twins, Waltham Abbey

After nearly 20 years in the British army, Imogen Corrigan went to the University of Kent to study Anglo-Saxon & Medieval History and Art, graduating with 1st class honours, followed by an MPhil from the University of Birmingham. 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. Has written Stone on Stone: the Men Who Built the Cathedrals, published 2019. A Freeman of the City of London, being a Member of the Company of Communicators.

A search for Paradise Lost - was Gauguin nothing but a tourist seeking for a some lost Shangri-la or was he an exile searching for his lost home? He called himself  'the savage from Peru' yet was a master of self-promotion. An artist who was imprisoned by the myths he himself invented. Any of this could destroy a lesser artist - but not Gauguin. He was a true visionary, a troubled creator of beautiful jewel-like canvases that sing to us with a dream-like intensity: each picture offering us an invitation to voyage. 

Woven into this lecture is my own story of international intrigue, mystery and skulduggery as I became involved in the quest to authenticate two Gauguin paintings - each worth millions of proven to be so, worth nothing if proven to be forgeries.

Image: Jacob wrestling with the Angel, 1888

Michael Howard is a familiar face to The Arts Society. He is President of The Arts Society Bolton and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Although retired, he continues to teach at the Manchester School of Art. He has published widely on European art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, his books include: L. S. Lowry: A Visionary Artist; The Impressionists by Themselves; The Stations of the Cross / The Captive Figure and the award-winning dramatic interpretation and publication of material originally performed by the Zurich-based Dadaists of 1916. A New Order: An Evening at the Cabaret Voltaire. His book on Gauguin, was written in association with the Gauguin Museum, Tahiti, and his book on Monet for the Musée Marmottan, Paris.  One of his most recent books concerns his wife’s life and work: The Human Touch: Ghislaine Howard. (Ghislaine is also an accredited lecturer of The Arts Society).

Michael Howard is a practising artist, and has exhibited at the Royal Academy, the New York Art Fair and elsewhere. He is represented in Manchester Art Gallery and in many private collections both here and abroad. He has appeared on television and radio many times and in 2004 he and Ghislaine worked the film, Degas and the Dance which has awarded one of the prestigious Peabody awards.
 

"I confess to not thinking it much like the original – but that the public will not be able to detect…"
Cassie Austen on her Aunt Jane’s portrait

From Burns to Byron and from Jane Austen to the Brontes; this lecture will uncover the fascinating stories behind some literary portraits of the Romantic period.    We’ll look at various ways in which Romantic writers have been depicted in art, and how these likenesses have been received; both during the writers’ lifetimes, and posthumously. 
We will also explore the afterlives of literary portraits and their use in popular culture – from banknotes and fridge magnets, to tins of shortbread and bottles of gin. 

Image: Lord Byron

How do writers’ portraits contribute to literary fame and celebrity? Do these images affect our perception of their lives and work? And to what extent may portraits of writers be said to be fictions themselves?  
Following a career in teaching, Annalie Talent spent several years working on education programmes at museums and literary houses across the UK, including the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere; Wordsworth House in Cockermouth; Jane Austen’s House in Hampshire; and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. At Jane Austen’s House, Annalie won 2 Sandford Awards for Excellence in Heritage Education; she also worked with the British Library, the Bodleian Library, and Chawton House Library in promoting Austen’s work to young people. 
Annalie’s lectures focus on aspects of Romantic and Victorian literature. She uses her knowledge and personal experience of literary houses - and their collections - to offer a unique perspective on writers and their works. She is particularly interested in the material culture of writers’ lives, including the quirky and interesting; from the collar worn by Emily Bronte’s dog, Keeper, to William Wordsworth’s ice-skates. 

A fascinating lecture of how opera began, developed and spread worldwide; from 1600 to the present day. Illustrated with musical examples and excerpts of opera productions from around the world. This illustrated lecture looks at the development of opera from its baroque beginnings right up to the modern-day Hamilton. Highlighting the major changes and game-changers through each century, the movers and the shakers, focusing upon the greatest operas by the greatest composers. This lecture is suitable for the operatic novice; or expert.

After training at RADA Jamie Hayes graduated as a Stage Manager and subsequently worked for Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Bristol Old Vic and the BBC. He became an Assistant Director with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Kent Opera and English National Opera and soon began directing productions of his own. He has directed many new opera productions in the UK whilst other new opera productions overseas include Reykjavik, Malta and Melbourne. Jamie was Associate Director on the original production of the hit musical Miss Saigon in the West End and on Broadway. He has directed productions in all the major UK conservatoires and was Director of Productions for British Youth Opera for over a decade, a company devoted to promoting the talents of our finest young opera singers in the UK. Jamie is a regular enrichment programme lecturer for various leading cruise ship companies. He is married to the mezzo-soprano Jean Rigby and they have three sons. 

A lecture about colonial architecture in India – the buildings, their history & their future.

This lecture starts with an examination of evolving attitudes in India (as well as in the UK) towards the British Empire, and towards the buildings which survive as testament to its achievements. A whistle stop tour is then made of the very best colonial buildings in Chennai (Madras), Kolkata (Calcutta), Mumbai (Bombay), Delhi and elsewhere. In the final third of the lecture I focus in on Bombay, reflecting on my experience of having masterminded a British Government backed project to restore that city’s magnificent George Gilbert Scott designed university buildings. The telling of this mid-Victorian building’s story - its design (in England), construction, history and, of course, its restoration – provide useful start-points from which to consider the broader historical, cultural and architectural context. Bombay’s economic boom of the 1860s coincided with the high point of the Gothic Revival:  Nowhere else in the world can claim to have as magnificent an assemblage of Gothic Revival buildings.  Whilst examining the city’s colonial architecture study is made of the carvings of Bombay’s Jeejeebhoy School of Art (see above), whose Architectural Sculpture Department was – for a short time - headed up by John Lockwood Kipling, father of Rudyard Kipling. The story of the award winning project to restore the University of Mumbai’s Gothic Revival buildings provides an opportunity to touch upon philosophical approaches to conservation as well as traditional repair techniques. Account is also given of the work undertaken by those who took time away from their respective Cathedral workshops in the UK to transfer knowledge and skills to their Indian counterparts.

Image: Mumbai University

A freelance historic buildings' consultant, educated as an Architectural Historian at Manchester University and trained in building conservation at the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, York. After two years with SAVE Britain's Heritage, where he wrote Deserted Bastions, worked with the English Heritage Listing Division on the review of military buildings. In the mid 1990s was employed by the DTI in Bombay, India, setting up and running an innovative project to repair George Gilbert Scott's university buildings and training local architects and craftsmen in conservation techniques and philosophy. From 1998 until 2010, worked as Rodney Melville & Partners' historian, involved with research, analysis, assessment and conservation planning at such sites as The Workhouse, Southwell; Aston Hall, Birmingham; The Royal Institution, London and Cliveden. Published a book on the History of Birmingham Town Hall in 2012, to critical acclaim. Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and Deputy Chairman of the Ancient Monuments Society.

A vast range of sacred and secular music has been inspired by and created for Christmas and there is surely no other musical circumstance where melodies from the Middle Ages sit happily side by side with modern pop numbers. The lecture takes a most enjoyable look at contributions both old and new to the festive season and examines the work of contributors such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sir David Willcocks and John Rutter. We will also discover how some of our best-loved carols have come into existence almost by accident as well as exploring the creativity that goes into making a lasting Christmas Hit. Fully illustrated with musical examples.

Nigel Bates has been a performer for more than forty years in and out of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, including seventeen years as Principal Percussionist with the Orchestra and eight years as the Music Administrator of The Royal Ballet.He has worked with many of the leading figures in the classical music industry and was also a producer for both the BBC's Maestro at the Opera and Pappano's Classical Voices documentary series. He is a regular contributor to the printed and online content of the ROH.He has given lectures for over thirty years, including many arts societies and conservatoires in the UK and across Australia.

Darling’s daring rescue of steamship passengers off the Northumberland coast in 1838 brought her international fame. Discover more about her bravery and short life (died aged 26) and the artistic contribution that has helped to keep her in the public eye. Grace became the ‘poster girl’ of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and was the first woman awarded their medal for gallantry. This talk coincides with the commemorations to mark the 200th anniversary of the founding of the RNLI in 2024.

Image: Grace Darling, 1815-1842 by Thomas Brooks (1818-1892). Oil on canvas.

James Taylor studied at the Universities of St Andrews and Manchester, and is a former curator of paintings, drawings and prints, and co-ordinator of various exhibitions and galleries, at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, also lecturer and ships' historian on board cruise ships. He has published widely. James completed his PhD at the University of Sussex in 2015 on the voyager artist William Westall (1781-1850) who sailed with Commander Matthew Flinders aboard HMS 'Investigator' (1801-1803) the first ship to circumnavigate Australia.

This lecture argues that the modern Olympics owe more to Victorian Britain than to classical Greece. With their love of rules and regulations, often allied to their passion for gambling, British pioneers of the 19th century revolutionised the way ordinary people ‘played the game’. WG Grace made cricket a national obsession. The Scots refashioned ancient games such as goff, foot-ball and bowlis. The invention of the lawnmower and of vulcanised rubber heralded the invention of lawn tennis. Artificial ice rinks, shale running tracks, indoor swimming pools and landscaped golf courses – all were made possible by Victorian innovators. Thereafter, British manufacturers packaged and marketed these new recreational pastimes and sold them to eager audiences overseas. A century that began with bull-baiting and cock-fighting ended in ‘rational recreation’ and mass-spectator professional sport. Albion, not Olympia, provided the real model for what was to follow.

Image: Girls undergoing Swedish gymnastic drills, Cadbury's sports ground, Bourneville, Birmingham, 1902.

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.

By 1960 interest in rock ‘n’ roll had started to fade, its biggest star was moving on and a new generation of teenagers was seeking something different. It came in the form of the Beatles, who broke all the rules and all the records. This is the story of the first five years of the 1960s, one of the most creative and innovative periods in the history of music, featuring all the major artists, important songs and principle musical genres.

Steve King has spent 35 years working in the radio industry as a Broadcaster, Programmer and Events Director. He has managed some of the biggest radio brands in the UK and has interviewed and worked with many well-known popular music artists. He has also directed over 50 multi-artist events at venues including the Royal Albert Hall, London Palladium and Manchester Arena.  His extensive knowledge of popular music, and his experiences in the radio business has made him a popular speaker at various media conferences, industry events and cruise line venues. 

Starting at the Monument to the Great Fire of London designed by Sir Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke, Janet uses Wren’s buildings to tell the story of the incredible rebuilding of London after the badly-handled Plague and disastrous Great Fire of 1666. We see how Wren drew on royal patronage, up-to-the-minute science, on an understanding of classical, other early and contemporary building styles and his deep insight into beauty and craftsmanship. Wren worked with a team of eminent collaborators to rebuild 51 new churches, crowned by the extraordinary domed baroque St Paul’s Cathedral to quickly, efficiently and permanently redraw the skyline of London as well as developing a new built liturgy for the Church of England.

Image: Wren's geometric staircase in the south west tower of St Paul's Cathedral (copyright Kevin Caldwell).

Janet Gough is a Cambridge graduate in History and History of Art and worked at Sotheby’s for nine years. She has also been a trustee at the Churches Conservation Trust, the Museum of Fulham Palace and the Friends of the V&A and guided and lectured at the V&A.  She received an OBE for services to heritage in January 2017, and recently was made one of the first lay Canons of Bangor cathedral. Janet was also the Church of England’s Director of Church Buildings and Secretary of the Church Buildings Council and Cathedrals Fabric Commission for eight years.   She has written two illustrated books (Director's Choice, Churches of the Church of England and Director's Choice, Cathedrals of the Church of England) and produced and presented a TV series on cathedrals for PBS.

In the 18th century portraiture in Britain became more democratic, the nobility giving way to the nouveau riche as industrialists and merchants commissioned portraits from the great painters of the day, such as Hudson, Reynolds, Ramsay, Zoffany and Gainsborough. Although Joseph Wright of Derby was highly regarded as a portraitist by his peers, he is now better known as the artist of the Industrial Revolution, but his unflattering studies of the leaders of industry and trade in the Midlands and Liverpool give a fascinating insight into the character needed to make a good living in a tough era. Justin discusses Wright’s portraits and the background to the wealth of the sitters, which often derived from unsavoury sources.

 After officer service in the Royal Navy and a long and distinguished career in commerce, Justin Reay retired in 2001. Thereafter he lectured and wrote on naval history and then studied the History of Art and Architecture followed by a doctoral thesis on medieval naval weapons systems with the University of Exeter.  He is a qualified teacher and has delivered courses in the Oxford / UCal Berkeley accredited residential schools. He has also been a tutor at leading tutorial colleges in Oxford, a senior academic manager at the Bodleian Library and a published historian.  Justin is also 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.

This talk tells the story of men's tailoring over the past 200 years through the lives of the men who commissioned, created and wore the product. Tailors, shirtmaker, hatters and other craftspeople in London’s West End, have shaped the way men dress since the Regency. How did men such as Beau Brummell, The Duke of Windsor, Tommy Nutter, Montague Burton, Alexander McQueen and John Stephen create the signature looks which influenced men’s fashion? The talk also looks at the wider cultural shifts from the early 19th century to the present day and how they affected the way that men present themselves.

Image:  Edward VII

Russell Nash trained and worked as an actor, writer, puppeteer and theatre maker for 15 years and in 2015 he qualified as a London Blue Badge Tourist Guide.   It was around this time that he also rekindled his love of art and art history. He now regularly guides the major galleries and museums in London such as the National Gallery, Tate Modern & Britain and the British Museum and he also delivers lectures for institutes and museums, as well as numerous U3A groups and other societies.

MARCH LUNCH FOLLOWS THIS LECTURE  (entry to this lecture and lunch by ticket only)

Louise was Curator of Greek Bronze Age and Geometric Antiquities in the British Museum for 13 years. In this very personal take on her adventures working in the British Museum she will take you down to haunted basements and tell you of secret exorcisms carried out there. Several fabulous artefacts in the Museum have curses attached to them. ‘The Unlucky Mummy’ (on display in one of the Egyptian galleries) has a reputation for causing death and destruction – including the sinking of the Titanic…!

Louise Schofield is an archaeologist who was Curator of Greek Bronze Age and Geometric Antiquities at the British Museum from 1987-2000. Her book, The Mycenaeans, was co-published by the Getty Museum and the British Museum in 2007. She now writes, lectures and runs international archaeological projects - previously in south-eastern Turkey, Greece and Albania and currently in Ethiopia. She has just been appointed Visiting Professor of Archaeology at the American University of Rome.

JANUARY AND FEBRUARY LECTURES WILL TAKE PLACE VIA ZOOM AND IN THE HALL

In 1882 Gertrude Jekyll wrote a short but seminal article in The Garden in which she urged the readers to “remember that in a garden we are painting a picture”.  As an accomplished watercolour artist, Miss Jekyll was familiar with the principles of using colours, but she felt that in gardens these principles “had been greatly neglected”.  This talk looks at how to apply these principles in designing a border, but it also looks at the ways in which a border is different from a painting.  However, it goes further than this and looks at how contemporary work of the likes of Turner, Monet, Rothko, Jackson Pollack evolved in parallel with ideas about what a garden or border should look like.

Timothy Walker was the Director of the University of Oxford Botanic Garden from 1988 to 2014 and thereafter became   a college lecturer and tutor in Botany and Plant Conservation at Somerville College, Oxford.  Gardens are often thought of as places where science and art meet on equal terms and Timothy’s lectures often investigate this relationship.   Botanic gardens are often described as living museums, and garden curators lecture about them in the same way as museum curators talk about their collections.

JANUARY AND FEBRUARY LECTURES WILL TAKE PLACE VIA ZOOM AND IN THE HALL

This lecture will trace the story of Banksy’s humble beginnings as a tagger on the streets of Bristol in the 1980’s to one of the most recognisable names in the art world.  We will examine the reasons behind his incredible rise, looking at some of his famous stunts and discuss what his influence has been on the art market today and look at what his legacy, if any, might be. 

Pepe started his career as a tour manager and for 15 years travelled extensively all over the world.  He qualified as a London blue badge tourist guide in 2011, graduating at the top of his class.  Since then, he has specialised in the graffiti and street art of East London.  He organises and arranges lecture facilities in central London and also combines lectures with a walk of street art and graffiti in the East End.  If you are so inclined, he can also organise practical spray sessions, giving groups the opportunity of creating their own works!

Find out, in this very light-hearted lecture, about the various ceremonial events that take place around Christmas time. Carol services, concerts and even Changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace and Windsor all play their part. How do the Chelsea Pensioners prepare and celebrate the festive season? All will be revealed so, come along and feel wrapped in a blanket of Christmas loveliness.

Graham started his professional life as a musician in the British Army and after a 40-year career he retired as the Senior Director of Music, Household Division and Director of Music, Coldstream Guards.  He has recorded over 40 albums and been responsible for the largest commissioning programme of wind band music in recent history commissioning over 30 new works for wind band. He pioneered a music education programme with the University of Salford for military musicians resulting in a new Master of Music in performance degree. Graham was made a Member of the British Empire by Her Majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace for outstanding service to military music in 1993.

Shrines, stupas, cave temples, colonial grandeur and modernist architecture – a look at the history of this beautiful island through its intriguing art and culture. For much of Sri Lanka's past Buddhist and Hindu have lived alongside each other peaceably and much of its culture is evidence of this spirit of tolerance and generosity. This talk examines the fascinating story of Sri Lankan art and the original minds, talents and spirits that created this unique visual world.

Georgina is an art historian specialising in South Asian art who has lived and worked in the UK, USA and Singapore.  Consultant Art Historian at the Oriental Club in London and an official tour guide at Tate Modern, her practice also includes lecturing to a wide variety of prestigious audiences.  She is also involved in writing, consulting and collecting which has led her to develop a network of gallery and artist connections in Europe, the USA and India, which she visits regularly.  Georgina holds a BA in Art History from Southampton University, an MA in Arts Management and Policy from City, University of London and an MA in Art History from SOAS, University of London. She is also a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Arts Scholars and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Asiatic Society.

The story of how fashionable society took to our beaches to embrace the health-giving properties of the sea. In the eighteenth century some doctors advocated the drinking of seawater as part of the seawater cure, a practice which did not last. While dipping in the sea continued to grow in popularity, leading to seawater bath houses being built in coastal resorts for the luxury of warm bathing, seawater was also pumped into hotels, houses and swimming pools or in some places could be delivered to your lodging house. Artists were drawn to the coast by dramatic weather and the effect of light on the colours of seascapes, as were early photographers setting up their studios close to the seafront. Illustrated with paintings, engravings, prints and early photography, this lecture looks at the history of our sea bathing heritage, its legacy, and a nation’s continuing love of the seaside.

Jackie is a specialist guide, researcher and teacher working at the Royal Pavilion, Preston Manor, and Brighton Museum. She has taught on adult education courses on behalf of the University of Sussex covering architecture, decorative arts, local history and research skills.  She runs her own tours and has worked on various research projects and books including, the Heritage-Lottery-Funded, Floating Memories. She is also Archivist, Palmeira Mansions.

The AGM will take place before the lecture

As early as the 1870’s, expansion of the Underground revealed the need to create some graphic cohesion between the different operating companies. The design history of the underground reveals so many influences: the architectural talents of Leslie Green and Charles Holden, the Arts & Crafts and Arts Deco movements, Frank Pick’s design talent through post war austerity design to contemporary work on the Elizabeth Line.

Sailing Boats have always occupied a pivotal place in Western Art. From medieval manuscripts, through Old Masters depicting exploration and military might to modern objects of every-day life they pervade the British imagination of young and old alike. This lecture will display paintings as well as many other forms of art which celebrate our island race’s fascination with our maritime history. In order to provide a firm case study I will show how the high quality of the woodlands in East Anglia gave rise to a flowering of boatyards along the estuaries and coastline of the North Sea resulting in bountiful commissions from both the Royal Navy and commercial patrons. Several still survive, where shipwrights train apprentices in traditional boatbuilding, and an interesting connection with modern art and film-making thrives. I will show slides of stained glass, ceramics, tapestries, antiquarian book covers, advertising posters, weather-vanes, chandeliers, pub signs and even topiary all inspired by the English sailing boat.

LIVE LECTURE IN POTTEN END VILLAGE HALL

One of our most popular athletic events commemorates Pheidippides’s epic run from the battlefield of Marathon to his native Athens. This lecture explores why this thrilling battle is remembered 2,500 years later. 19th century historians accredited it with deciding ‘the whole future of human civilisation' and John Stuart Mill declared it ‘more important than the Battle of Hastings’. Examining how ancient Athens has influenced our art and culture, Rupert concludes that this battle truly saved ‘Western Civilisation’.

Image: Pheidippides. The Soldier of Marathon, Luc-Olivier Merson.

Salvador Dalí was not just a creative painter, he was also a writer, poet, engraver, sculptor, architect, photographer, theatre and jewellery designer—a Renaissance artist in the 20th Century. He selected materials not just for colour or value, but for symbolic meanings. Jewels such as ‘El cor reial’ (1953, The Royal Heart) have become iconic works. He was a great admirer of the Renaissance artists and as interested in science as art.

 Image: Salvador Dalí, Publisher's proof for the cover of Maurice Sandoz, 'La Limite' (Paris 1951), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

LIVE LECTURE IN POTTEN END VILLAGE HALL

Fine tea was long-prized in China and, according to Lu Yu in c.780, should ‘unfold like mist rising out of a ravine’. By 1750 tea was China’s principal export to Britain, valued as a remedy for indigestion, amnesia and excess of alcohol. In return China would only accept opium from the British-owned poppy fields of India. Following the ‘Opium War’ of 1839-42, Hong Kong was ceded to Britain. Vivid paintings by Chinese and Western artists illustrate the blend of civilisations as Hong Kong developed in dramatic fashion.

Image: Chinese artist c.1780, ‘European merchant ships at anchor below Canton’ (detail)

WWI renewed an interest in chivalry and revived the Victorian image of medieval knights championing good over evil. The wartime Edwardian psyche used this imagery to form a medium for moral justification, an instrument of bellicose propaganda, or just a way of coping. St. George was used to represent the British triumphing over a Teutonic dragon or the Kaiser battling a monstrous Entente. Fantasy intermingled with reality as fighter pilots became heroes riding winged steeds battling demons.

 Image: Leeds war memorial

The relationship between gardens and artists is one of interplay as one inspires the other. By contrasting three different creations by Henri Le Sidaner, Claude Monet and James Jacques Tissot, we come to better understand each of them. This talk will highlight the desires of these artist/creators and the meanings behind their garden layouts. Whether designed for love or lust, art or architecture, plant or palette - each garden appears endlessly repeated and reflected through the artists' own canvases.

TO BE HELD IN POTTEN END VILLAGE HALL VIA ZOOM - SEE DETAILS ON HOME PAGE 

This lecture provides a colourful introduction to the secret world of our 2000-mile inland waterway network and looks at all aspects of their exceptional artistic, architectural and engineering vernacular. A well-known architectural historian once described our canals as a 'poor man's art gallery'. Features range from sweeping acqueducts to tiny bollards; from colourful historic narrowboats to 'Roses and Castles' artwork; from grand World Heritage Sites to quirky listed buildings.

Image: Stratford-upon-Avon

ZOOM LECTURE

During his second period in England, 1532-1543, Hans Holbein the Younger was commissioned by the powerful Hans League to paint murals for their dining room at the Steelyard alongside the Thames. Thin link with his fellow Germans based in London led to a commission for a street tableau for the coronation of Anne Boleyn, Holbein's patron, and to a series of portraits of the Steelyard merchants. Justin opens a window onto the everyday life of international traders at this time, and uses Holbein's insightful likenesses to illuminate their characters.

Image: Holbein self-portrait 1542

ZOOM LECTURE

Often overlooked, many talented painters rose to prominence in the post-Word War II era of 'Western Art Down Under'. Painters like Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd from the 'Heide School' working in a naive and expressive style, John Brack's figurative social critic of Australian post-war culture, John Olsen's celebratory abstract landscapes, Brett Whiteley's personal vision of his life in Sydney, Fred Williams' landscapes and Jeffrey Smart's surreal depictions of urban life are all essential to our understanding and appreciation of the place of Australian modern art in the history of Western Art.

Image: 'Men's Wear' by John Brack. National Museum of Australia.

ZOOM LECTURE

The history of New Towns in this country is fascinating, from the pioneering and inspired work of Ebenezer Howard in Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City to the post war towns like Stevenage, Crawley, Harlow, Hemel Hempstead and Milton Keynes through to more recent planned new developments such as Poundbury outside Dorchester and Cranbrook outside Exeter. Always planned with the very best of intentions, invariably opposed by local residents and inhabited by 'early adopters' during the pioneering early stage, these towns have all developed a character and reputation of their own.

This talk will consider the origins of the movement through an examination of Howard's pioneering ideals which lie at the heart of the movement. With these ideals and history in mind the focus will move to the post war towns. Starting in 1946 with Stevenage the government's New Town Act of the same year created sweeping powers that saw a wave of towns being built. Now over seventy years old these towns have found a maturity and personality of their own, with the benefit of hindsight the legacy of these idealistic designers can be fully understood.

Image: Bus Station, Town Square, Stevenage
 

TO TAKE PLACE ON ZOOM

What possessed people to trudge hundreds of miles, often in appalling conditions and sometimes perishing on the way? This lecture considers this question and also how there was a shift from spiritual wandering in the AngloSaxon period to religious tourism in the days of Chaucer’s pilgrims. It also looks closely at travel in general and the hazards of the journey: how did people organise themselves for long journeys and how safe was it? How should they provide for themselves and where might they find help? From maps and motivation to souvenirs and shrines, this lecture discusses travel in the round as well as specifically for spiritual reasons. 

Image: Rocamadour

TO TAKE PLACE ON ZOOM

The exotic lure of the Orient has inspired European artists for centuries. In this lecture we will be taking an artistic journey across the Near and Middle East to see how Western artists brought the mysteries of ‘The Other’ to the fashionable salons of Europe throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. 

Image: painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme called Veiled Circassian Beauty dated to 1876 in a Private Collection.

TO TAKE PLACE ON ZOOM

Since it was founded in 1961, Caithness Glass has become renowned across the world. For 50 years, the company fulfilled the founders’ original aims of providing employment in rural Scotland and producing high quality, modern glassware for the home. Although much is known about their paperweights, until now little has been known about the designer and influences behind the decorative and tableware designs that built and maintained the company’s reputation.

TO TAKE PLACE ON ZOOM

Early in the French revolution, adventurous English women writers visit Paris. Some stay there; Mary Wollstonecraft is there for the execution of Louis XV1. Grace Dalrymple Elliott hides the governor of the Tuileries Palace between two mattresses in her own bed; then gets into the bed herself for 4 hours while her apartment is searched, risking her own life. Gainsborough’s striking portrait of the beautiful Grace is in the Frick Museum, New York. Other observers include Fanny Burney, bluestocking Hannah More and the Welsh Jacobin writer Helen Maria Williams. With paintings by contemporary French artists including Louis-Leopold Boilly and Jean-Baptiste Lesueur            

Image: Planting of the Tree of Liberty (Jean-Baptiste?) Lesueur (1749-1826}

TO TAKE PLACE ON ZOOM

This lecture introduces the subject of food in art, featuring feasts and festivals from harvest to Thanksgiving and weddings to wakes through the art of everyone from Breughel the Elder to Normal Rockwell. The lecture also features the produce of nature seen through the pictures commissioned by the Medici and the work of more recent artists transforming fruit and vegetables and other edibles into decorative art: squash in glass, pumpkins in ceramic and carrots in felt, beetroot in embroidery and many more.
This lecture will help you look differently at food, and it is calorie free.

TO TAKE PLACE ON ZOOM

Wallpaper is often regarded as the Cinderella of the Decorative Arts – the most ephemeral and least precious of the decorations produced for the home. Yet, the history of wallpaper is a long and fascinating subject that dates back to the 16th century and encompasses a huge range of beautiful patterns created both by anonymous hands and by some of the best-known designers of the 19th and 20th centuries. This lecture explores the history and development of this product from earliest times up to the present day. It includes a discussion of the changing ways in which wallpaper was made and a survey of designs from the first black and white patterns, the creation of elegant flock hangings, the fashion for Chinese hand-painted papers, the introduction of machine-printing, the designs of Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement, and the taste for Modernist and Contemporary designs in the 20th century. It also includes a discussion of the ways that wallpapers were used within grand and more ordinary homes and hopes to justify the claim that they were indeed a truly Decorative Art.

Image: Wallpaper Showroom, 1890s

TO TAKE PLACE ON ZOOM

Why isn’t Norwegian art better known? Should it be?
The late 19th century marked a defining moment in Norway. For the first time romantic painters began to turn to their own land for inspiration. They painted the stormy seas, the towering glaciers and the raw, untamed nature of their homeland. Their aim? To draw attention to the beauty of their country and explore what it meant to be ‘Norwegian’. This talk looks at the artists from Norway’s ‘Golden Age’ who captured the far north with drama and romance and interpreted their wild country as a mythical, eerie entity. It will explore the stunning works of JC Dahl, Peder Balke, Nikolai Astrup and Harald Sohlberg. This is chance to discover some of art’s most underappreciated artists!

Image: Adelsteen Normann  A Fjord

TO TAKE PLACE ON ZOOM

Icons are religious panel paintings developed in the early history of Christianity. The term 'icon' comes from the Greek word meaning a likeness, image or picture. Their religious power made them amongst the most valuable objects in the medieval Christian world - icons are art, but not as we know it!

This lecture will evaluate the power of the icon by exploring the origins of this type of portrait, the earliest surviving icons, their spiritual otherworldliness, the process of their creation (and why they often look the same), and the religious context in which they were dsiplayed and used in daily worship.

Image: The Triumph of Orthodoxy, Constantinople. c.1400
Egg tempera on wood.  39 x 31cm.
British Museum, London
Photo: Simon Lane

TO TAKE PLACE ON ZOOM

For a woman of her time and class, Gertrude Lowthian Bell's achievements were extraordinary. She broke free of social restraint and convention to make outstanding contributions to the male-dominated worlds or exploration, archaeology, and imperial statesmanship. Partly because of this, however, commentary has tended to be gushing and uncritical.

Bell was a complex figure. The daughter of one of the richest men in Britain, it was class privilege that made her achievements possible. Her politics were reactionary: she opposed women's suffrage, campaigned for volunteers for the trenches, and opposed anti-colonial movements after the First World War.

This lecture will assess the character, career, and contribution of Gertrude Bell to exploration, archaeology and imperial politics in the context of the tumultuous age through which she lived.

TO TAKE PLACE ON ZOOM

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 a 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.

Image: Jitterbug Dancers, 1938

LECTURE CANCELLED

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.

Image: Essex tapestry

LECTURE CANCELLED

Some of the finest work of modern British art was produced during the Second World War. Many women were amongst the artists officially commissioned to record the Blitz and travel through Europe to record first-hand its devastation. One of them was the first civilian to arrive at Belsen after its liberation by the Allies. They also painted land girls back home, the women in factories, in the ATS + the Red Cross, all stepping into the breach to keep the country going. I will introduce you to some new names based on my interviews with several of the self -effacing but very talented people who found their paintings shown at the National Gallery, while all its other masterpieces were hidden away in the slate mines of Snowdonia. While Myra Hess’s morale boosting concerts took place there throughout the war, the Recording Britain and War Artists Advisory Committee schemes meant that artists were guaranteed employment, and our national collections would inherit work of great historical and propaganda interest, much of which is not often on display.

Image: painting by Evelyn Dunbar

LECTURE CANCELLED

‘The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret’ – Salvador Dalí

Like the Renaissance artists he admired, Salvador Dalí did not restrict his creative output to painting but was also a writer, poet, engraver, sculptor, architect, photographer, theatre designer,  and jewellery designer.  As well as designing the latter, Dalí selected the materials to be used, focusing not just on the colours or the value of the material, but also on their symbolic meanings. Jewels such as ‘El cor reial’ (1953, The Royal Heart) have become iconic works and are considered to be as exceptional as his paintings. He also was an omnivorous reader who was as interested in science as he was in art and in this his work also reflects the Renaissance artist he admired. This lecture explores the work of Dalí the designer and science enthusiast – a Renaissance artist in the 20th century.

Image   Salvador Dali: Publisher’s proof for the cover of Martin Sandoz “La Limite” (Paris 1951). Metropolitan Museum. New York

LECTURE CANCELLED

The first time the word cartoon was used in the sense that we know it today was in 1843 in Punch magazine.  But the employment of satire, caricature, speech bubbles and the writing of captions had been around long before then.  In this talk Ian tracks the early stages of cartoons and how, through the works of Hogarth and James Gillray, they gradually evolved.  Copious illustrations abound  from the masters of their craft such as John Tenniel, John Leech, David Low, Vicky, Ronald Searle, Heath Robinson and Giles; and, bringing it right up to date, with Gerald Scarfe, Steven Bell and Peter Brookes.

Image  James Gillray: Most famous political cartoon - William Pitt the Younger and Napoleon carving up the world in the form of a plum pudding

MARCH LECTURE AND LUNCH

Gold in South America had a spiritual importance. Its brilliance evoked the Sun — the golden disk that nourished the Earth. In Peru and Colombia, goldsmiths made some of the most spectacular treasures of the ancient world. Cast and hammered, gold was transformed into sacred offerings for tombs and temples. Europeans, by contrast, saw gold as a commodity — the ultimate symbol of wealth. For decades, Europeans searched in vain for El Dorado, the legendary Golden One. Although many golden treasures were melted down for bullion, magnificent works of art are preserved in the museums of Peru and Colombia. 

Admission to lecture and lunch by pre-booked ticket only

Image: The Inca Ruler Atahualpa in all his golden finery   

The fame of the Queen of Sheba has lasted across the many intervening centuries since she made her epic journey from her distant land to the court of King Solomon. A passage in the Bible’s Book of Kings has immortalised this Queen and the journey that she made, her camel caravan laden with gold and incense as gifts for the king of Jerusalem. In this talk Louise looks at how the Queen of Sheba has captured the imagination of great artists, inspired epic films and has led archaeologists to go in search of her land – a search that has led to discoveries of great temples, tombs and treasures in both the Yemen and Ethiopia. Louise Schofield has been working in Ethiopia since 2006, directing archaeological, conservation and development projects in that extraordinary country. Her current archaeological site – in Tigray province, northeastern Ethiopia – is a temple, probably dedicated to a moon god and dating to the 5th century BC – a time when this area of Ethiopia formed part of the kingdom of Sheba. Excavations undertaken there in 2015 and 2016  have uncovered a rich cemetery which includes an extraordinary burial of a 2000 year old Ethiopian 'Sleeping Beauty'.

Image: Edward John Poynter ‘The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon in Jerusalem’ 1890  Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Suggested Reading:
Stuart Munro-Hay, Ethiopia: an Unknown Land (2002)
St John Simpson (ed), Queen of Sheba: Treasures from Ancient Yemen (2002)

The pale flesh of Lucian Freud’s women. The red stars and barbs of William Coldstream’s nudes. The viscerally disturbing figures of Francis Bacon. This hour-long talk explores the special talent of British painters in the twentieth century for representing the human form in a particularly expressive manner. As disturbing as it is sometimes cathartic, the changing attitudes to depicting the human body reflected artists’ changing relationship to society and and to the events of the long and troubled twentieth century.

Image: Euan Uglow painting: Ali, 1995-7, oil on canvas, 83.5 x 78 cm (private collection)

Inspired by the bicentenary of the birth of John Ruskin (1819 – 1900) in 2019, this lecture bcelebrates the extraordinary life and work of this visionary Victorian. As writer, teacher, artist, collector, patron and critic, Ruskin was perhaps the most complete polymath of the 19th century. He left behind a dazzling range of writing and collections that continue to inspire and generate debate around the world. Perhaps most famous today as a champion of Turner and admirer of Venice, Ruskin’s impact ranged far and wide; his ideas inspired the Arts and Crafts Movement and the founding of the National Trust, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and the Labour Movement. George Eliot wrote ‘I venerate him as one of the great teachers of the day’, and he influenced the thinking of Tolstoy, Proust and Gandhi among others.
Alongside this international reach, Ruskin became deeply concerned by what he saw as the negative impacts of the industrialization of 19th century England, and as a teacher, thinker and philanthropist he set up projects that aspired to give the working man access to beauty, art, craft and the land. In 1871, he founded what became the Guild of St George, the charity for arts, crafts and the rural economy, and gave it a sizeable collection of art, books and minerals for public display and education in Sheffield. Today, cared for by Museums Sheffield, the collection continues to honour his legacy, sharing something of Ruskin’s encyclopaedic European sensibility for the benefit of a 21st century city. This lecture spans Ruskin’s life and work from the timeless and global to the intimate and exquisite, to paint a portrait of a great life.

Image:  San Marco, Venice, by John Wharlton Bunney, Ruskin Collection c. Guild of St George/Museums Sheffield

Why were foreigner painters preferred by the aristocracy in London to native-born English painters, why did foreigners come in the first place, what was their motivation, and what was the impact of foreigners in London on English art and art practice? The lecture will look at the various formats and uses of art, tracing foreign artists from the Tudor period through to the Renaissance and Baroque, looking at their origins and how they came to work in England. It will examine the contributions of artists such as Holbein, Gerrit van Honthorst, Marcus Gheeraerts the younger, Lucas and Susanna Horenbout, Isaac Oliver, Paulus van Somer, van Dyck, Peter Lely, and Rubens. This lecture will look at how these artists influenced the British School of painting and assess their legacy.

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. 

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. Thus many of her later structures are extruded to the most extreme organic shapes in what she called a “seamless fluidity”. 

The lecture tells the story of this pre-eminent architect. We move around the world to look at some of her completed works, including her most famous building in the UK, the Aquatics Centre for the London Olympics in 2012, as well as unexecuted designs.

Image: Nordpark Hungerburg, 2007

This lecture plots the coming together of Art and Science in the person of Leonardo da Vinci, and his scientific approach to painting in the analysis of light, perspective, anatomy and human expression; and it goes on to look at the scientific approach to painting of artists such as Vermeer, Joseph Wright of Derby, and Seurat, culminating in the rational aesthetic of the Bauhaus. It will end by outlining the reasons for the eventual divorce between art and science, and ask if this split is irrevocable.

Image: The Astronomer by Vermeer, Louvre, 1668 

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. Given almost total artistic freedom, 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. Their styles range from traditional Russian to Art Nouveau, and their materials from carved hardstone to exquisite enamelled gold. Their maker’s relentless search for novelty also means that they provide a fabulously quirky illustrated history of the decline of the Romanovs. Toby Faber wrote Fabergé’s Eggs: One Man’s Masterpieces and the End of an Empire, described by P.D. James as a ‘fascinating story which combines unique decorative art, contemporary culture, history and the murder of the Romanovs with the excitement of a crime novel’. The lecture is illustrated with pictures of the Romanovs and their palaces, and, of course, with photographs of the eggs themselves. 

Three Great Families and their Gardens is the story of three very different, but hugely successful families: the Sackville-Wests, the Astors and the Rothschilds.   The Sackville-Wests have been part of the establishment since the Conqueror and the other two families are wealthy immigrants who came to England in the l9th century.  The talk traces the history of the families, discusses their contribution to life in England and celebrates the splendid gardens that they have created.

Image: Hever Castle

MARCH LECTURE AND LUNCH

This lecture explores how a musician from a relatively obscure German state came to transform the musical life of Britain, from his arrival in 1710 to his death in 1759, and beyond. He created some of the finest music for ceremonial occasions and during his lifetime was the one composer to whom people turned when they wanted to celebrate a national event. He invented the English oratorio which is central to much of the professional and amateur music-making up and down the country. The lecture explores this most British of composers and is illustrated with a variety of musical examples, some well-known, others less familiar.  

Admission to lecture and lunch by pre-booked ticket only

The complex relationship between artist and muse has been the inspiration for some of the most significant works of art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Discover some of the ‘stunners’ of the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood; Picasso’s forever weeping woman; the 'Mother of American modernism' and many more. Women as different from each other as the artists themselves - women as muses and women as artists in their own right.

Image: The Kiss of the Muse by Paul Cezanne.

Henry Moore established a new sculpture from the 1920s based on Cubism, abstraction and other cultures. He often sculpted family groups and reclining figures. When Anthony Caro studied sculpture in the 1940s he was taught by traditional sculptors.  Seeking to be modern he became Moore’s studio assistant for two years and made Moore-like sculptors. In 1959, Caro met with American abstract artists, and in consequence changed his approach, relying on sheets of steel to produce non-figurative sculptures. Subsequently Caro publicly criticized Moore for being a showman and thwarting younger talent. Moore took it badly and relations between them never fully recovered. This lecture traces the career of both Moore and Caro, and describes their time together, their falling out, and their respective impact on modern sculpture. This lecture will be jargon-free with audience engagement, backed by high quality slides.

Image: Henry Moore ‘Recumbent Figure’, 1938, Tate.
Credit: The Henry Moore Foundation

Food and Art Through the Ages is a whistle-stop tour of the history of food as artistic medium; starting with 16th century sugar sculpture and venturing all the way up to 3D dessert printing and beyond. Hosted by Food Historian Tasha Marks, this lecture is a treat for those with a sweet tooth, as Marks feels the subject of food and art through the ages is most exciting in the realms of the dessert. Topics covered include; the origins of dessert, the crossover between sugar and art, architecture and dessert (including Renaissance banqueting houses), sugar and spectacle, food as artistic medium, and the future of food. This exploration into the realms of dessert as spectacle includes an accompanying display to illustrate and enhance the historic subject.

The lute holds a special place in the history of art: painters of the Italian Renaissance depicted golden-haired angels plucking its delicate strings, evoking celestial harmony; in the sixteenth century, during the rise of humanism, the lute was a becoming pastime of educated courtiers, as depicted by the likes of Holbein and Titian; throughout the seventeenth century, the instrument continued to play a key role in emphasising the intimate, debauched and transient pleasures of interior scenes by Jan Steen and portraits by Frans Hals. This lecture looks at the lute, and other musical instruments, as devices to express various aspects of the human character throughout the ages.

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 other 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 for young professionals: small serviced flats with a communal restaurant and popular club. 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 and controller 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.

Image: © Family Suschitzky/Donat

John Constable RA 'A Jackson Pollock of the 1830s?'

Sarah Cove ACR, is well-known as the Constable Expert from BBC1's 'Fake or Fortune?' and founder of the Constable Research Project.

To be held at Box Moor Trust Centre, London Road, Hemel Hempstead, HP1 2RE

7.00pm reception for 7.30pm

Tickets £8 + booking fee from www.eventbrite.co.uk  or from gv.eveninglecture@gmail.com  

This is an ideal opportunity for members to introduce friends and family to The Arts Society Gade Valley.  Drawing on many years of technical and scientific examination of Constable's painting materials and techniques, Sarah brings his dynamic late works and artistic temperament to life in a new and exciting manner. Revealing how some of his most famous compositions evolved from small pencil drawings and oil studies into iconic 'six-foot' oil sketches and exhibited paintings such as The Haywain  and Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, she challenges their 'chocolate box' label. Instead, she reveals John Constable to be 'a Jackson Pollock of the 1830s'.

Please bring guests to support this new venture by The Arts Society Gade Valley whilst delving beneath the surface to discover the remarkable techniques of one of the best known British artists.

In the 15-part BBC series Climbing Great Buildings, Jonathan Foyle scaled many of Britain’s tallest historical buildings to investigate details normally hidden to view, features that can help to explain their structure and evolution, or reveal the meaning invested in these great works of art. This talk explains how climbs at Durham and Lincoln, St Pauls and Coventry Cathedrals led to new insights and even substantial project work that helped to transform their care, condition and use.

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. This lecture tells the fascinating story of the Olympics, and then shows in detail the cleaning, mending and rebinding, in period style, of this charming little book.

Image: book cover Annalia Dubrensia

A few of us will be going over to Martin's Pond pub for lunch with the lecturer and anyone is welcome to join us to continue a discussion.

The Wilton Diptych is one of the most beautiful yet enigmatic paintings ever made. It appears in the last decade of Richard ll’s turbulent reign and represents the high watermark of a period rich in artistic achievement. We focus on this work of art but also include other examples of old art and architecture: the hammerbeam roofs of Westminster Hall and east Anglian Churches, the rebuilding of great cathedrals in the perpendicular style illuminated manuscripts.

Les Parisiennes is a story about women’s lives during the dark years of Nazi occupation and beyond and includes British and American women caught in Paris as well as native born resisters who were eventually sent to camps, couturiers and jewellers, some of whom flourished in wartime, as well as actors, singers, night club dancers and housewives.

The lecture opens with a magnificent circus ball held by Elsie de Wolfe at the magnificent Villa Trianon, a chateau in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles; many of the guests could not believe that war was imminent and ends with Christian Dior’s lavish new look in 1947 as well as a perfume, Miss Dior, named after his sister Catherine, a resister, who had only just survived a prison camp and never wanted to talk about her experiences.

MARCH LECTURE AND LUNCH

This lecture assesses the extent to which an art market in the modern sense of the term existed in the Renaissance, by analysing both supply (artists) and demand (patrons). ‘Demand’ is discussed in the context of civic and religious commissions together with the increasingly important role served by wealthy individual patrons. ‘Supply’ analyses how art was purchased and distributed, while examining the success of artists including Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael. The economics involved in purchasing art led to ‘value’ being construed in terms beyond mere monetary cost, thereby raising the status of High Renaissance artists to those of celebrities.

Image: Anon. Northern Italy, fresco depicting interior of an apothecary's shop (c.1500). Castello d'Isogne, Valle d'Aosta.
 

In the mid-1820s Constable added the newly fashionable seaside resort of Brighton to his familiar motifs of the Suffolk countryside and the skies of Hampstead Heath. His family began to take regular holidays there from 1824 in response to his wife’s deteriorating health (she died of consumption in 1828). In Brighton Constable was confronted with the hustle and bustle of cosmopolitan life against the backdrop of traditional fishing and coastal industry. He adapted practiced painting methods to the challenges of the new subject matter. He developed striking techniques such as ‘slapping’ paint on with a palette knife and ‘tickling’ it about with the point of a brush handle to create movement and texture in some of the most fabulous depictions of the British coast and sky ever painted. From an accumulation of virtuoso outdoor oil sketches and studio studies he created one of his most famous “sixfooters”, The Chain Pier, Brighton, 1828 (Tate). This lecture is illustrated with recent research and images of oil sketches from the V&A and Royal Academy collections, studio studies and the full-size The Chain Pier, Brighton, examined during the Constable Research Project, and it also touches on Sarah’s examination of A Sea Beach, Brighton for BBC1’s ‘Fake or Fortune? Constable’ in 2014. The exhibition ‘Constable in Brighton’ at the Brighton Museum, April - October 2017.

The question of fake decorative art has been in vogue for hundreds of years, however increasingly sophisticated methods are being used by criminals to generate vast profits.

This lecture reveals actual case studies, demonstrating the lengths forgers will go to in passing off works as legitimate. Skilled forgers capable of imitating well known artists have provided the ability to dupe many at the highest level within the art market. Experts have estimated that a high percentage of all works within the art market are fake. These scams ultimately inflict considerable damage to collectors and the trade.

The Christmas Tree presents us with over five centuries of art and meaning. Vital to the imagery of both the pagan world and Christianity, its significance emerges in Norse yuletide, ancient Rome and with the early-medieval saints, before its diverse strands were drawn together to symbolize the modern Christmas. It is wrapped in legend, from the Icelandic sagas to St Boniface, from the Mystery Plays to Martin Luther. In art, the forest fir has made the transition from Viking rock carvings to German Romanticism and Scandinavian naturalism, on its way to finding its place as an icon of our modern festival. Decorated and shimmering with light, it has brought Christmas from outside the home into the heart of the family, it has drawn soldiers together across No-Man’s Land, and it continues to symbolize its essential, timeless message of Peace on Earth. 

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.

The work of S.J. Peploe and J.D. Fergusson was seen in Edinburgh and London in the decade leading up to World War 1, but Hunter and Cadell were less well known. All were bold pioneers in the field of rich colour and exhuberant brushwork. The strong light and bright colour they discovered in France was easily harnessed to their favourite places in Scotland. People, places, interiors, still life were among their favourite subjects.

A comparison of the way in which the modern treatment of traditional genres in art is different from that of the Old Masters, the effect of these differences, and whether they add to, or change, our understanding of the subject and its message. The lecture will cover all of the traditional genres, i.e. History Painting, Portraits, Genre (pictures of everyday life), Landscape and Still-Life, and we will consider the way in which the treatment of these subjects has changed over the centuries, up to the present day.

Image: 'Narcissus' 1510 by a follower of Boltraffio

Lecture preceded by AGM

Today textiles for clothing or decoration are taken for granted, but it was not always so. This lecture unpacks the history of how cloth and yarn were coloured and how the different colours represented power, achievement and desire. Using a variety of illustrations it sheds a forgotten light on how important textiles have been in European history. More than this, the history of textiles is not just a matter of fashion but is also a story of politics, money, war, trade, laws, the church, agriculture, exploration, science and even serendipity.

THE ANGELA GEORGE MEMORIAL LECTURE

The Lunar Society of Birmingham, whose members included Matthew Boulton, James Watt, Erasmus Darwin, Joseph Priestly and their friend Josiah Wedgwood, were both artists and scientists and their legacy of experimentation in the late 18th and early 19th centuries helped give us the modern industrial world we know today. This lecture discusses the relationship between art and science in the Lunar Circle, with examples drawn from subjects including painting and drawing and Matthew Boulton’s silver. The lecture also discusses the virtually unknown women connected with the Lunar Circle, including Elizabeth Stockdale Wilkinson (1799 – 1871), who was involved in early photography in Birmingham, and the poet Anna Seward (1747 – 1809). 

Image: Soho House Museum in Birmingham, originally the home of Matthew Boulton the famous 18th century silversmith and member of The Lunar Society.

The lecture offers a light-hearted but critical review of public sculpture today. Since antiquity, sculpture has transformed public spaces, celebrating and commemorating people and events and, at best, reflecting the spirit of the age.  Contemporary public sculpture is more diverse and often aims to meet political, social or corporate agendas, yet at best, it can provide an enlivening and sometimes controversial focus for our public spaces.  The lecture discusses many successful examples of public sculpture today, like the Angel of the North, Richard Serra’s Fulcrum at Broadgate and the series of commissions for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, plus some that are less successful.  It also looks to the future and to works not yet realised, like the White Horse at Ebbsfleet - and much more besides.

Image: Angel of the North, Gateshead, by Sir Antony Gormley

In 1964 Terence Conran opened the first Habitat shop in London’s Chelsea. Habitat’s clarion call to colour and contemporary design saw off the lingering shades of post war austerity and revolutionized British Retailing. From the beginning Conran spread the word of this new lifestyle look through twice yearly Habitat catalogues: copies are now collected and traded by a new generation of interior decorators and designers. In the early 70’s, then a design journalist, Caroline worked for Terence Conran copy writing and editing the Habitat Catalogue. Crazy, demanding and inspiring times, full of tension and humour, working with some of the best designers, art directors and photographers in the UK. This is a rare insider’s view of how Terence Conran’s vision and determination changed the way we lived then, and the way we live now. 

MARCH LUNCH tickets on sale at 3rd January lecture: admission by pre-booked ticket only. Contact Jane Morgan (contact details on your membership card).

Thomas Heatherwick has won many awards and honours: in 2004 he was the youngest practitioner to be appointed a Royal Designer for Industry; he won a Gold Medal for his British Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo in 2010, and in the same year he was designer of the year in Japan. Sir Terence Conran spotted his talent early on and has described Heatherwick as “the Leonardo da Vinci of our times”. Heatherwick’s work received world-wide coverage in 2012 when with his studio team he designed the Olympic Cauldron at the London Olympics (image). The giant ring of fire rising up from the centre of the Olympic Stadium was a memorable sight and in the lecture we’ll look at how they achieved that spectacular moment. The Heatherwick Studio has also designed the new red London bus, the first re-design of such an iconic symbol of London for 50 years. A part-model of the bus was featured at the acclaimed exhibition of their work at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2012. Heatherwick’s approach is multi-disciplinary and, with his colleagues, he blends architecture, sculpture and engineering to produce elegant results, from large urban spaces to individual items such as his Zip Bag for the French firm Longchamp. His proposed Garden Bridge across the River Thames is receiving extensive media coverage. If constructed, it will add another dimension to London’s many parks and gardens. Heatherwick’s innovative approach is now in demand all over the world, and the lecture will highlight the broad range of his designs.

In the centre of the City of London stands its ancient headquarters, the medieval Guildhall. The present building dates from 1411 and is still in regular use today.  The whole building stands on the site of London’s Roman amphitheatre, only discovered in the 1980s. This lecture describes the Guildhall exterior and interior and then moves into the adjacent Guildhall Art Gallery.  The City of London has been commissioning and acquiring art for nearly 350 years and now owns a vast and diverse collection. We will look at paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries as well as the sparkling Victorian collection and 20th century works as we hear the stories that are not on the captions.

As adults we carry in our heads huge numbers of images from childhood, and some of those most deeply etched come from illustrations in books that we read as children. Images of ‘Tigger’ and ‘Toad’ or even ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’ will probably remain with us for ever! In addition to a wide range of examples John will examine how illustrations contribute to the development of understanding and how the interaction of image and narrative creates such powerful memories. 

“Antiques. I don’t understand them and they’re beyond my budget. They’re not for me.” A persuasive introduction to buying antiques and integrating and using them in today’s homes. The state of the antiques market and the different meanings of the word value are considered, and we take a look at what current and future generations of collectors are buying, why they are buying it and how they are displaying it.

Image: reference www.decorativefair.com

Vivaldi is the one Baroque composer whose music is a direct reflection of the city in which it was composed. Listen to a Vivaldi concerto and hey presto you are transported directly to the heart of 18th century Venice. The reasons for this are many – Vivaldi’s passion for colour, display and spectacle in his music; the unusual way in which Venice solved its problems with the poor and the homeless; Vivaldi’s health problems and his eccentricities as a man and a priest. Against the luxurious backdrop of 18th century Venice and, with live musical performances, this lecture explores the amazing world of Vivaldi’s music - music that is as intrinsically Venetian as the canvasses of Canaletto. 

NB  Lecture will follow the AGM.

A pictorial history of drinking glasses through the ages, studied through images of actual objects and through paintings.

The lecture will focus particularly on the development of the wine glass, but will also look at glasses designed for other beverages, such as: beer, cider, ale, cordial etc. It will consider the drinking habits of different countries and the types of glass associated with those countries, e.g. the Venetian wingstemmed glass, the German roemer, the Dutch flute and the English balusterstemmed glass; and will discuss the association of fine glass drinking vessels with feasting and conviviality.

The history of dress and fashion has become a rich area of academic research and interpretation within the past thirty years. Museum curators, art, economic, cultural and social historians have contributed to the research and debate to provide rounded studies that combine the cultural, political and social context of clothing with the detail of fabrics, cut, style and construction techniques. This lecture synthesises the best of this recent research to provide a broad sweeping survey of key changes in English dress and fashion from the medieval period to the end of the nineteenth century. A strong chronological approach is taken, covering the clothing of both men and women.

Along with developments in style and construction, the lecture traces the emergence of an organised fashion system within medieval society, the use of fashion as a symbol of wealth and status in the Renaissance and as symbol of political and religious allegiance in the seventeenth century, through to the introduction of new technologies and ranges of clothing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In the early evening of 16 October 1834, to the horror of bystanders, a huge ball of fire exploded through the roof of the Houses of Parliament, creating a blaze so enormous that it could be seen by the King and Queen at Windsor and from stagecoaches on top of the South Downs. In front of hundreds of thousands of witnesses, the great conflagration destroyed Parliament's glorious old buildings and their contents. No one who witnessed the disaster would ever forget it.  Based on the acclaimed book of the same name, this talk takes the audience through the gripping hour-by-hour story of the fire with a particular focus on the oils and watercolours produced by Turner.

This lecture takes us to the warmer and drier climate of Laos on a wet and windy September day.

Denise begins by describing the geography and history of the country, landlocked, mountainous terrain, bordered on one side by the Mekong River, making it quite an isolated country with a unique culture. Historically Laos had been a number of City states, united in the mid 1500's by King Setthathirat. The French came in the 1860's and their colonisation is reflected in the architecture of the region. In later times Laos suffered heavily during the Vietnam war. The communists took power in 1975 and Laos remains a communist state.

The art of the region can best be seen in the two subjects covered by this lecture, the temples and their decoration, and in the weaving of silk and other fabrics.

The temples are predominantly wooden constructions, but the French did introduce concrete and this has since been used for some temples. There are a number of temples within a compound or "wan". All Laos boys have to spend at least six months of their lives as a monk.

The temples are covered in gold stencilling, mosaics and wooden carvings reflecting the religious mix in Laos with Hindu and Buddhist motives being found on the same temple. The roof decorations are particularly significant, reflecting the importance of the temple.

The secular architecture of Laos shows the colonising influence of the French and is a mix of eastern and western style.

Silk weaving is an occupation of girls, weaving beautiful fabrics as well as embroidery. The girls wear their wealth on their heads, in headdresses full of silver coins.

With the growing importance of tourism to the economy, the regime is encouraging the old skills of silk weaving and wood carving, ensuring that the central features of Laos art are maintained.

(admission to lecture/lunch by pre-booked ticket only)

The Norman invasion of England in 1066 is commonly understood as the stage on which the medieval knight made his spectacular debut, fighting on horseback with spear and sword, trampling 'The Dark Ages' under the hooves of his warhorse and ushering in 'The Age of Chivalry'. Although there is some truth to this idea, the full reality is more complex. Concepts of chivalry can be traced back into the warrior cultures of the Migration Period, while mounted armoured combat was practiced by the Romans and Carolingians, among others. Even so, the Norman way of knightly warfare was in many respects quite new, as was their use of the image of the mounted knight in their art, foremost, the Bayeux Tapestry. This epic embroidery employs the knight in armour as one of its most important visual elements. However, because Norman arms and armour is not very well understood by most historians, many of the subtleties of the 'tapestry' as a form of graphic storytelling have been overlooked or misunderstood. This lecture delves deeper into the realities of war at the time of the Conquest in order that we may better appreciate the ways in which the Bayeux Tapestry was intended to be 'read' and interpreted. 

The Wallace Collection, a national museum containing an outstanding array of paintings, furniture, porcelain, arms and armour, and other works of art, was brought together by five generations of one family between about 1780 and 1880. All the Founders were remarkable – and sometimes rather strange - men in their own right, but the greatest collectors were the 4th Marquess of Hertford and his illegitimate son, Sir Richard Wallace, who lived most of their lives in Paris. It is their French upbringing which largely explains the strong, but by no means overwhelming, French emphasis to much of the Collection. This lecture tells the fascinating story of the Wallace Collection’s formation, and also presents many of its finest treasures. 

Blue and white tin-glazed earthenware has long been admired and collected for its attractive appearance, but this lecture goes further by examining English delftware with a pharmaceutical purpose. Drawing on examples from collections at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons of England, this talk will provide a beginner's guide to these beautiful yet practical vessels. By placing them in their wider historical context, Briony will also demonstrate that delftware drug jars have an undervalued role to play in understanding medical practices in the 17th and 18th centuries.