From the early sixties, when he left the Royal College of Art more famous than his teachers, Hockney's paintings have shown a charm and humour that sets them apart from others of his generation. A naturally gifted draftsman, his love of ingenious visual devices has led him to experiment with a whole range of techniques, from stage design to coloured paper making. From the early abstract expressionist images, through his famous Californian scenes of swimming pools to the photo-montages of the mid eighties, this lecture follows the career of an artist whose wit and imaginaton has never faltered.

Medieval Gardens

A chance to explore the distinctive forms and functions of medieval gardens through contemporary illuminated manuscripts, goldsmiths’ work and tapestries. No gardens survive from the Middle Ages, but medieval illuminated manuscripts, goldsmiths’ work and tapestries, together with written sources, provide ample evidence of their varied forms and functions. Monastic gardens, planted as early as the 9th century with a surprisingly wide variety of plants, produced food and medicinal remedies for their religious communities. Gardens enjoyed by secular patrons, whether formal enclosed spaces, or landscaped parks, were designed for pleasure, supplied with flowery meads, turf benches, raised flower beds and gravel-strewn paths. Such gardens were used as the settings for medieval tales of romance and intrigue, or interpreted as intriguing metaphors. The lecture will explore these themes focusing upon various medieval gardens, some historical, others imaginary. 

The City is the historic heart of London, but also the one of the largest financial centres in Europe. Two great disasters, the Great Fire of London 1666 and the Blitz of 1940-41 have given the City a distinct character a mix of old and new, reflected in the building stones used to construct the city. We will look at the archaeology, architecture and building stones of the City of London. See the Roman and Saxon archaeology of the early city of London before discovering how a city with no local building stones has imported a diverse variety of rocks from across Britain and the world. As we journey along the streets, we will travel back into geological time to discover how these rocks were formed from ancient volcanoes, to desert rivers and shallow Jurassic tropical seas. 

Carpaccio’s paintings of Venice vividly transport us to the city in the years around 1500. He painted in what has been described as an eyewitness style. As well as considering why he painted in this way and the serious purpose of these paintings, we will also enjoy revelling in a world of visiting ambassadors, bustling streets, tranquil interiors and rooftop terraces.

Although glass has been made for centuries, the 1960s saw a revolution in the way it was made, opening it up to artists across the world and allowing glass to be used as a medium for art. After looking at the historical context and the genesis of the movement, the lecturer examines the work of six key glass artists from the US and the UK, including Dale Chihuly, Sam Herman, and Peter Layton. Containing previously unseen photographs taken at the time, this talk also includes top tips and an overview of the market today and the creative journey made by studio glassmakers so far.

From Claridge’s Hotel to the London underground .

Dorothy Todd, the influential journalist and Editor of the magazine British Vogue, first brought Dorn to the public attention in 1925 and christened Dorn the ‘architect of floors’. Renowned for her ’sculpted rugs’, this lecture will reveal Dorn’s various commissions from the 1920s to the 1960s, which included amongst others, designs for the Savoy Hotel Group in London, Eltham Palace (the former Tudor royal residence that was transformed by the millionaires Stephen and Virginia Courtauld), the London Underground and the White House in Washington DC. 

In addition to her designs of wall hangings, carpets and rugs, Dorn also produced wallpaper and graphics, having studied graphic design at Stanford University prior to coming to live and work in London. We will explore her extraordinary career and position her place as a designer whose name should be for ever enshrined in the history books of British 20th century Art Deco.

Years before Kandinsky and Mondrian, this Swedish artist was painting circles, sunbursts and looping lines - instructed, she believed, by spirits.

Was she Europe's first abstract artist?

Mozart, Haydn, Gluck, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Strauss, Mahler, Bruckner, Schoenberg – it reads like a list of the great and good in classical music – but the amazing thing is that every one of these musical geniuses lived and worked in Vienna.

With slides showing Viennese art and architecture as well as audio excerpts by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Johann Strauss and Mahler, this talk brings Vienna in its heyday to life.

Vienna’s proximity to nature, its politics and burgeoning middle classes were all factors in its cultural blossoming, but most important was Vienna’s geographical location at the heart of the Habsburg Empire and the "wine, women and song" philosophy of the Viennese.  We find out about the special qualities that enabled one city to foster such a golden age for music. We'll also look at the developments in visual art, architecture, science and politics that formed the backdrop to this unparalleled explosion of musical genius and discuss why it ended so abruptly with the First World War.

Two artists developed radically opposing approaches to the emotive power of landscape painting in Britain in the early 19th Century. One was dramatic, bombastic and fiery, intending to provoke powerful emotions and elevated thoughts. The other was spiritual, heartfelt and closely observed, asking the viewer to react to an intense, inward and personal approach to nature. These two artists were JMW Turner and John Constable, the leading British artists of their day. Not only did they approach painting in different ways but their lives were opposites as well. This lecture will explore their different approaches and their famous, bitter rivalry.

Exhibition at Tate Britain  27 Nov -12 April 2026     Turner versus Constable

A highly topical lecture, given the current arguments about the multi-billion pound restoration planned for Westminster! The Houses of Parliament in London is one of the most famous and staggering buildings in the world. Its rises serenely from the Thames at Westminster, on a site which has been the centre of power and government in England from the earliest times. It is a masterpiece of Victorian architecture and a spectacular feat of civil engineering: but from the beginning, its design and construction were a battleground for its architect, Charles Barry. The practical challenges, even by the standards of Victorian invention, were immense Battling the interference of MPs and royalty, coaxing and soothing the genius of his partner Pugin, fending off the mad schemes of a host of crackpot inventors and busybodies, and coming in three times over budget and twenty-four years behind schedule, this lecture will tell the story of how Charles Barry created the most famous building in Britain. 

"Within distinctive red boxes a world of luxury, elegance and sophistication."

There can be few names in this world which do not make the heart of any recipient beat a little faster than the distinctive red Cartier box. Cartier has come to represent one of the great names in jewellery. With its shops in the Rue de la Paix in Paris as well as London and New York, it represents in this mundane world all that is luxurious, elegant and sophisticated.

Exhibitition  at  V&A   12 April -16 November

Many art historians and critics have compared the work of Stubbs to that of Leonardo da Vinci, one even christening him the ‘Leonardo of Liverpool’ to reflect his humble origins as the son of a Liverpool leatherworker. The comparison can seem hubristic until one considers the intense scientific method and investigation that lay behind the production by Stubbs of his world famous Anatomy of the Horse published in 1766 – a work which revolutionised the understanding and depiction of equine subjects. This lecture looks at the life and work of this country’s greatest animal painter, putting Stubbs in the context of British sporting artists of the eighteenth century more generally.

The role of sculpture has changed substantially in recent times

A relatively strange and isolated island in the middle of the Pacific, Easter Island is most famous for its odd and often inexplicable moai stone statues. Nicknamed the navel of the world, the land’s carefully crafted statues reveal a people conscious of art and death.

The hilltop Tuscan town of Siena, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, was arguably the most important centre of artistic patronage and craftsmanship during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, where the foundations were laid for the 15th century Renaissance. With the intention of creating the most beautiful of city republics, the Sienese government spent lavishly, fostering the talent of native artists such as Duccio di Buoninsegna, Simone Martini and Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti, as well as enticing other Tuscan craftsmen such as Giovanni Pisano to work in Siena. The altarpieces, frescoes and pulpits, painted and sculpted, that were made for the city, will form the focus of this lecture. 

This lecture tells the story of men's tailoring over the past 200 years, told through the lives of the men who commissioned and created and wore it. Tailors, shirtmakers, hatters and other craftspeople in London’s west end, especially around Savile Row & Jermyn Street 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 their signature looks which influenced the mens' fashion? This lecture also looks at the wider cultural shifts since the early 19th century to the present day and how they affected the way that men present themselves.

This is a narrative approach to the revival of 15th century carpets in Khiva, a desert oasis in Uzbekistan. Illuminations on vellum – containing the only surviving representations of textiles from this era – flourished, despite the Islamic prohibition on representative art – and are all we had left of Timurid Carpets until Chris Alexander’s workshop began to weave them to life again.

The lecture will examine the traditional role of carpet weaving and embroidery in the social lives of Central Asian women and how social and political influences led to the decline of textile production. In the aftermath of World War II art, architecture, fashion, film, music and theatre changed radically.

Younger son of the famous Pieter Bruegel, Jan did not inherit the right to copy his father’s pictures as his elder brother Peter the Younger did. Instead he had to invent a different realm of subject matter for himself, and he turned what was doubtless his short-sightedness to good use, painting pictures of exquisite detail and entrancing miniature scale. His landscapes are microcosms of the known flora and fauna of his day, and we can feel his delight in discovering new species of tulip, say, or of parrot. The beautiful scenes he painted are analysed in this lecture, but above all they are presented for the sheer enjoyment of the audience.

The 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.

People were bridging the Thames in the Bronze Age - 1,500 years before the Romans built London Bridge. In the 1,700 year wait for the next bridge, other crossings relied on watermen and horse ferries, as traffic jammed on London Bridge. The last 200 years have seen over 550 new crossings over and under the river. Some are great feats of engineering, some architecturally elegant. Every crossover changes the city's genetic code. Even now a newly designed bridge awaits a 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.

Our Socety's AGM will precede this lecture.

In preparation for the Royal Academy's winter exhibiion, this lecture sets the scene by exploring the period in 1504 when Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were both working in Florence. Also making his way to the city was the younger artist, Raphael, keen to learn all he could about the cutting  edge skills of Florentine painters. The rivalry between the three of them would reverberate for the next two decades - and would influence painters for the next five hundred years.

Exhibition at the Royal Academy November 2024  to February 2025: Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael.

The flower paintings of Cedric Morris (1889-1982) capturing plants around the Mediterranean, the Canaries and beyond reveal him as a consummate botanist.

After a fire in 1940, Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines were forced to relocate their East Anglia School of Painting and Drawing to Benton End near Hadleigh, in Suffolk. Not just a School but a vibrant eclectic artistic hub in a setting of Morris’s horticultural genius. He lived at Benton End until his death, enjoying national stature as artist and plantsman whose legacy included over 90 new irises.

Below you will find a link and book list relevant to this lecture

https://www.accartbooks.com/uk/book/where-the-wildness-pleas

https://www.accartbooks.com/uk/book/where-the-wildness-pleases

www.horti-history.com

Books in print

Water lilies and Bory Latour-Marliac, the genius behind Monet’s water lilies

RHS Herbs for the Gourmet Gardener

Impressionists in their Gardens

Monet at Giverny

Follies of Europe – architectural extravaganzas

Why do Violets shrink? Answers to 280 questions in the thorny world of plants

The not so little Book of Dung

Marking his tercentenary, this lecture looks at the life and work of Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723), the leading portraitist of Stuart and early Georgian England. His ambition was only exceeded by his productivity: there are stories of as many as fourteen sitters in a single day and that at his death, three hundred years ago, there were 500 unfinished portraits in his studio.

Such reliance on assistants produced many rather indifferent works and in 1815 James Northcote dismissed the majority of Kneller’s portraits as ‘hasty slobbers…scarcely fit to be seen’. But the sheer volume of work should not taint our opinion of a painter who produced portraits of seven successive British monarchs, arguably the definitive portrait of Isaac Newton and Christopher Wren, the Kit Kat portraits and the Hampton Court Beauties. Kneller’s achievement as a painter was actually quite remarkable.

Sir Stamford Raffles

Art Collector and Founder of Singapore

Lecture by Denise Heywood

Raffles, whose name is synonymous with a luxury hotel rather than the greatest Buddhist monument in the world, was the enlightened colonal administrator of Java, Indonesia. He discovered the 8th century temple of Borobudur, lost under volcanic ash, in 1814, acquired wondrous artefacts in Java such as shadow puppets and textiles, which are now in the British Museum, and founded Singapore, the most important port in the East.

This lecture describes the scholar and polymath, reveals the temple and its radiant carvings, examines the art objects Raffles collected, and shows the architectural heritage of Singapore and its revival today as magnificent art galleries, museums and a celebrated hotel.

Henri Matisse is widely regarded as the greatest colourist of the 20th century. The French artist used color as the foundation for his expressive, decorative and large-scale paintings. He once wrote that he sought to create art that would be “a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair".

What are the follies in Ireland?

Sometimes they represented rustic villages, mills, and cottages to symbolise rural virtues. Many follies, particularly during times of famine, such as the Great Famine in Ireland, were built as a form of poor relief, to provide employment for peasants and unemployed artisans

Born in Borgo San Sepolcro, after an early training, much of Piero’s early work in San Sepolcro and Florence is lost, but in 1442 he returned to his hometown for which he painted the serene Madonna della Misericordia and the Baptism of Christ. After a commission in Rimini Piero painted his important and influential fresco cycle for San Francesco, Arezzo. His later career saw him much sought after painting in Urbino for Duke Federigo da Montefeltro and his wife the pair of ground-breaking portraits in the Uffizi. Admired as a mathematician, the lecture will conclude briefly with Piero’s work on perspective and mathematics.

2023 marks the 600th anniversary of the death of the fabled Dick Whittington (c1354-1423).

For many of us, Dick is simply a fictional character from a Ladybird book or the Christmas pantomime. In fact, Dick was very real, indeed one of the major movers and shakers of medieval London. 

In this lecture we separate the man from the myth as we follow in his footsteps through the streets that were not exactly ‘paved with gold…’. Apprenticed to a master mercer, Whittington went on to become one of the wealthiest and most successful textile merchants in the City, bankrolled no fewer than three medieval kings and as a result held the office of Lord Mayor of London no fewer than four times. And what of that famous feline companion; his cat? Well, the church that he built might just provide the answer but the lecture reveals all….

Photography's long road to recognition as Art

Exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery  “Rubens & Women” 27 Sept.- 28 January 2024

Rubens & Women, a major exhibition of the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), will unite a diverse range of paintings and drawings from throughout the artist's career. The exhibition will be the first to challenge the popular assumption that the artist painted only one type of woman, providing instead a more nuanced view of the varied and important place occupied by women, both real and imagined, in his world.

Over 40 paintings and drawings along with archive material will reveal the essential ways in which Rubens’s relationships with women nourished his creativity and career – from the role played by his female patrons and family members to his profound faith, artistic beliefs, and great loves. Featuring masterpieces from international and private collections, many of which will be appearing in the UK for the first time, this landmark exhibition will reconsider one of art history’s most influential figures.

The art of beating gold leaf and gilding dates back to ancient Egypt. Gold leaf is nearly 500 times thinner than aluminium foil and traditionally craftsmen pounded gold for hours to create sheets thin enough to cover the most finely detailed surfaces. For over 22 centuries from Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus to Rachel Whiteread’s gilded frieze for the Whitechapel Gallery, skilled artisans have exploited paper-thin metal leaf to enrich materials such as wood, metal, marble, leather, paper, glass, porcelain and textiles – even food and drink.

Artists and craftsmen have illuminated manuscripts and icons, decorated noble houses from top to bottom, adorned domes inside and out, embellished erotic canvases and gilded chocolate and schnapps. Gold leaf continues to be used as the ultimate faux decoration and dazzling ornamentation

Visitors to the National Gallery are often surprised to find at their feet mosaics featuring a host of famous characters, including Winston Churchill, Virginia Woolf, and Greta Garbo, even Lewis Carroll’s Alice and a Christmas pudding. This exuberant mosaic cycle was created by the Russian artist Boris Anrep between 1926 and 1952. A larger-than-life character, Boris Anrep was an intimate of the Bloomsbury Group and a close friend of Augustus John and Anna Akhmatova. His exploits included deeds of derring-do in occupied France, competing in the men’s doubles at Wimbledon, and a colourful love-life. This is an account of an extraordinary man and his work, by the author of Boris Anrep: The National Gallery Mosaics.

 Since its foundation in 1925, Faber and Faber has built a reputation as one of London’s most important literary publishing houses. Part of that relates to the editorial team that Geoffrey Faber and his successors built around them - TS Eliot was famously an early recruit - but a large part is also due to the firm’s insistence on good design and illustration. This lecture traces the history of Faber and Faber through its illustrations, covers and designs. Early years brought innovations like the Ariel Poems – single poems, beautifully illustrated, sold in their own envelopes. In the 1950s and 1960s, there was an emphasis on typography, led by the firm’s art director Berthold Wolpe; his Albertus font is still used on City of London road signs. In the 1980s, the firm started its association with Pentagram, responsible for the ff logo. Along the way, it has employed some of our most celebrated artists as cover illustrators – from Rex Whistler and Barnett Freedman to Peter Blake and Damien Hirst. Slides will range from book covers, advertisements and photos of key individuals, to illustrations of the concepts behind the designs. The talk will also be peppered with personal insight and anecdote. Faber and Faber is the last of the great publishing houses to remain independent. "As the grandson of its founder, I grew up steeped in its books. I was managing director for four years and I remain on the board. I am passionate about the firm’s success, and intensely proud of my association with it. "

The civilisation of the ancient Maya reached its peak between AD 300-900. Across much of present-day Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras, dozens of great cities have been located, many still buried in remote parts of the jungle. Maya achievements in art and architecture were matched by a knowledge of maths, astrology, calendrics and hieroglyphic writing. Intricately carved stone panels, ceramic figurines and splendid mural paintings provide an insight into the religious rituals, music, warfare, textiles and courtly life of the Maya. Although they were conquered by Spanish forces in the sixteenth century, the Maya are not a lost or dead people. Millions of Maya still live in the region today. Their arts and crafts now combine ancient techniques and materials with those from Europe. Contemporary Maya textiles are among the finest in the Americas.

Recommended Reading:

Living Maya by Walter F. Morris and Jeffrey J. Foxx (Harry N. Abrams, 2000)

Lost Cities of the Maya by Claude Baudez and Sydney Picasso (Thames and Hudson, 1992)

The Art of Mesoamerica: from Olmec to Aztec by Mary Ellen Miller (World of Art)       Thames and Hudson, 2012)

The Lost Chronicles of the Maya Kings by David Drew (Orion Publishing, 2006)

The Lost Cities of the Maya: The Life, Art and Discoveries of Frederick Catherwood by          Fabio Bourbon (White Star Publishers, 2014)

The Maya (Ancient People’s and Places) by Michael D. Coe and Stephen Houston       (Thames and Hudson, 2015)

Reading the Maya Glyphs by Michael D. Coe and Mark van Stone (Thames and         Hudson, 2016)

Piero di Cosimo pioneered new aspects of mythological and allegorical subject matter towards the end of the 15th century, producing long panels which decorated cassone wedding chests, often with innovative landscapes and naturalistic figures. Later under the powerful influence of Savonarola, the preacher in Florence in the 1490s, he turned towards religious subjects.

Vasari tells many stories of his eccentricity, and the mythological subjects fascinate with their individual and quirky features. He trained under  Cosimo Rosselli, whose daughter he married, and whom he assisted in the Sistine Chapel.

 MacDonald Max; Gill, younger brother of the sculptor Eric Gill, was an architect, letterer,
and graphic artist of the first half of the twentieth century. He was famed for his pictorial
map posters for the London Underground and painted map panels for landmark buildings
such as Lindisfarne Castle and the Palace of Westminster. His architectural legacy lives on in
the arts and crafts cottages he designed in rural Sussex and Dorset while the alphabet and
badges he created for the standard military headstone are familiar to all. This wonderfully
illustrated talk by Max Gill's great-niece gives fascinating insights into the life and work of
this remarkable but little-known artist.

About The Speaker
Caroline began research into her great-uncle;Max in 2006. Since then she has co-curateds several exhibitions of his work around the country, contributed articles to publications including Country Life and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and set up a dedicated website. An accredited lecturer for The Arts Society since 2016, she's also given talks for organisations such as the National Archives, the Art Workers Guild, Christie's and the National Trust. Her illustrated biography MacDonald Gill: Charting a Life was published in June 2020.

Completed in 1432, the Ghent Altarpiece by Jan and Hubert van Eyck is the first datable painting of the Northern Renaissance, and a milestone in the history of art. This lecture looks at the Van Eyck’s dazzlingly – and unprecedentedly – naturalistic depiction of people, plants and objects, enabled by their novel use of the oil medium, and unravels the meaning of the altarpiece’s complex imagery. We also explore its later history, including its finding by the Monuments Men in 1945, and will highlight some of the discoveries to have emerged during its current restoration.

Take a trip into a horse drawn city just as a revolution was motoring in. Without its horses, London in 1900 would have ground to a halt – no buses, no deliveries, no goods trains. Alongside London’s growing dependence on technology was a vast increase in the demand for horses. This eye opener to a lost city mixes what's still there - the mews, horse hospitals, cab shelters and drinking troughs - with what is less apparent - like the horsepower each bus route needed, and why flogging a dead horse wasn't just a turn of phrase. In fact, in 1900 the end was nigh – as the internal combustion engine fired up and the Great War loomed. Buildings survive that evidence this extremely abrupt transition – from the factory that built the buses to the Edwardian multi-storey carpark that housed the taxi fleet. All this is brought alive through painters like Robert Bevan and early photographs of East London communities.  

Jewellery has undergone a dramatic evolution since the 1960s. Whilst major jewellery houses have continued to work principally in traditional materials and forms, innovation has come from individual artist-craftsmen trained at art schools and working independently. Approaching their work largely as a means of self-expression, they have challenged the notion of what jewellery is, through the use of new materials and radically different forms.  In this lecture curator Clare Phillips explores this changing approach to adornment through the lens of the V&A’s jewellery collection, with which she has worked for thirty years. International in scope but with a particular focus on British work, the V&A’s collection is one that aims to intrigue and delight, to champion innovation and craftsmanship, and to inspire the next generation of jewellers.

Gimson and the Barnsleys- inventing the Cotswold style

The course of Gimson’s life was irrevocably changed in January 1884; after meeting William Morris, who gave his talk on ‘Art and Socialism’ at the Secular Hall, Leicester, Gimson was determined to pursue his dream of becoming an architect. Articled to John Dando Sedding he acquired an interest in crafts and materials. Ernest Barnsley was also studying with Sedding; his brother Sydney was articled to Richard Norman Shaw. The three men became devotees of Philip Webb, the architect of Morris’ Red House, who advocated traditional building methods and the use of local materials and techniques. Through the Art Workers’ Guild, Gimson and the Barnsleys adopted a ‘hands on approach’ learning various skills. Desiring to ‘live close to nature’, they discovered Pinbury Park, near Cirencester. In return for a peppercorn rent they restored this lovely old Cotswold house. Later, given land at Sapperton, they each built exemplary Arts and Crafts homes. Ernest Barnsley went on to create Rodmarton Manor, perhaps the finest Arts and Crafts House. Gimson established workshops at Sapperton, forging a distinctive Cotswold furniture style. The library of Bedales School, Petersfield, is Gimson’s masterwork. The Edward Barnsley workshops at Froxfield have taken Cotswold traditions into the 21st century.

Cézanne, said Paul Sérusier, was “a pure painter” […] Of an ordinary painter’s apple you say ‘I could take a bite out of it.’ Of Cézanne’s apple, you say ‘It’s beautiful’.” Sérusier’s words refer to Cézanne’s almost exclusive dedication to painterly questions. Rather than telling us about the represented object, its history or psychology, his works explore the picturing itself, the very act of creating a painted image. This lecture focuses on Cézanne’s painting techniques and creative process. We will also reflect upon his choice of subjects (bathers, still-lifes with apples, card players, and the Mont Sainte-Victoire) as well as his personality. Finally, we will address his status in art history. Many younger artists considered Cézanne as "the father of modern art", implying that his example was essential for the early developments of 20th century art.

Exhibition  at Tate Modern … “Cezanne”   6 October – 22 February 2023

In the early 1860s Japanese prints started to pour into Europe; in Paris young radical painters, seeking fresh pictorial ideas appropriate to modern subjects, collected them (they were very cheap).  These prints by Japanese artists such as Hiroshige, Hokusai, Utamaro and Kunisada became hugely influential on the direction painting was to take. We focus on the works of Manet and Van Gogh, two major artists of the latter half of the 19th century, and look at the way Japanese prints had a powerful impact on ideas about composition, space, colour, form and expression of line. 

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

Welcomed at first with open arms and bringing luxury skills, the Huguenots’ fortunes fluctuated wildly. I talk about their early 18th-century houses that still stand, how they were decorated and lived in; I discuss 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.

  Self- assured, affected and irreverent, the owner of a razor sharp wit, Whistler scandalised London society during the 1870's. American by birth, he trained as an artist in Paris where his bohemian lifestyle made him one of the personalities of the city. Annoyed by the criticisms of his work at the Salon des Refuses he moved to London only to find the English even more opposed to his ideas. When John Ruskin savaged one of his Nocturnes in an article, accusing him of “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”, Whistler took him to court where he scored a moral victory, received a farthing in damages and ruined himself financially.

The lecture explores the paradox of this man whose flamboyant and eccentric ways made him both admired and detested in equal measure and yet whose quiet, meditative paintings, in which more is suggested than actually seen, ultimately assured him a place alongside Oscar Wilde as one of the high priests of the Aesthetic Movement.

The Camden Town Group was a small, short-lived group of artists which flourished between about 1911 and 1914. Key members of the group were Walter Sickert, Harold Gilman, Charles Ginner, and Spencer Gore, and it was named after the area of London in which several of them lived and worked. Inspired by the work of artists like van Gogh, Gauguin and Cézanne, these painters adapted the Europeans’ brilliant use of colour and energetic brushwork to very British subject matter, creating a vibrant visual style in the process.

One of their principal subjects was London, and these artists were certainly interested in the fast-changing cityscape of glitzy modern buildings and spectacular new kinds of entertainment like the cinema; but they were also drawn to the quieter, more prosaic world of the suburbs, and occasionally their pictures focussed on the downright sleazy.

Remarkably, archaeological excavation in Iraq have produced musical instruments, musical texts, images of musicians and letters about them dating from the middle of the third millennium BC and later. Putting all this evidence together produces results that ten years ago could hardly be anticipated, so that today we can have a good idea of what the music of Sumerians and the Babylonians sounded like, two thousand years or more after the last string vibrated. The triumph of the musicologist.

– How did they do it? In June 1520 Henry VIII and Francis 1 meet to ratify an Anglo-French alliance and celebrate the betrothal of Henry’s daughter Mary to the Dauphin. The two handsome ‘Renaissance Princes’ are in their 20s with similar reputations in military prowess, sport and patrons of the arts. Both have imperial ambitions and are eager to display themselves as magnificent nobleman and warrior kings. Each brings an entourage of 6,000 to a field south of Calais for 18 days of various events and entertainments staged to display the skill and splendour of each King and country. The logistics of transporting, accommodating, ordering, feeding and watering, protecting and entertaining the English contingent for this spectacular event is staggering and the supply chain, often through the City of London Guilds, is equally fascinating. 3,217 horses shipped across the ‘Narrow Sea’ to Calais; a vast quantity of wood sourced from Flanders and floated along the coast; a huge temporary palace is built on stone foundations with brick and timber-framed walls reaching to 40 feet. Royal palaces were virtually emptied of their silver, gold, tapestries and furniture to decorate the temporary palace, other principal tents and a chapel (with an organ); gold and silver cloth, velvet and sables, jewels and pearls were imported to ‘dress and impress’.

2020 is the 500th Anniversary of this extraordinary event.

A talk on historic stonemasonry and the men who shaped not only the material but the architectural appearance of the Medieval period. The discussion looks at the processes of quarrying, transporting, setting out, cutting and fixing stonework. The place and influence of stonemasons in the history of architecture and how that relates to exciting new discoveries made by the Thames Discovery Programme of stonework from the Medieval Palace of Westminster is also covered.

Raphael died in Rome on Good Friday, 1520, aged only 37. The Pope, his most prestigious patron, was devastated and earth tremors were felt around the city. He was buried in the Pantheon – Rome’s most important classical building – a fitting tribute to an artist who rivalled the greatness of the Ancients. (He was also charming, handsome and polite – which couldn’t be said for all Renaissance polymaths.) This lecture looks at his short, but astonishing career as painter, architect, administrator and superb draughtsman and considers his lasting influence on subsequent artists.

The extraordinary story of the rebuilding of the Cathedral as a symbol of peace and reconciliation and its inspiring commitment to the modern. Experience the work of many of the world - class artists associated with its treasures including Epstein, Frink, Piper and Sutherland.

Gibbons (1648-1721) came to England from the Netherlands, and developed a virtuoso style of carving, well suited to the Baroque interiors of late 17th century England. His limewood carvings with their festoons of fruit, flowers, fish and game embellished Windsor Castle, Hampton Court, and Kensington Palace, as well as country houses such as Petworth and Belton. His work was commissioned for public buildings and churches, and he also worked in marble, making church monuments. Two superb wood carvings are in the Victoria & Albert Museum: his Lace Cravat and the relief panel of The Stoning of Stephen.

 Accomplished botanical painter and inveterate traveller, Marianne North (1830-1890) led an unconventional life capturing the life essence of exotic and rare plants in their native lands. Born in Hastings, her pursuit of plants took her round the world. This talk explores both the life and social context of Marianne North, including discussion of why her paintings troubled deeply conservative Victorian society and the eventual creation of her gallery at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.

Wool, cotton and silk have each played a crucial role in the fortunes of Central Asia. Wool created the clothing and housing needed by the great nomadic cultures that were to dominate Middle Asia. Silk was more valuable than gold and used as currency, creating a network of trading routes that led to the first outbreak of globalisation. Cotton was the cause of Russian and then Soviet Colonisation and continues to cause controversy today as well as human misery and environmental catastrophe.  The felts, carpets, embroideries, robes and veils of the Silk Road stratified wealth, displayed religious and political entrenchments and changed the fortunes of this fascinating part of the world; a meeting place between Mohammed and Marx. 

Biography

Chris was born in Turkey (hence the name Aslan) and spent his childhood there and in war-torn Beirut. After school, Chris spent two years at sea before studying Media and journalism at Leicester University. He then moved to Khiva, a desert oasis in Uzbekistan, establishing a UNESCO workshop reviving fifteenth century carpet designs and embroideries, and becoming the largest non-government employer in town. After a year in the UK writing A Carpet Ride to Khiva, he moved to the Pamirs in Tajikistan, training yak herders to comb their yaks for their cashmere-like down, spending three years there. Next came two years in Kyrgyzstan living in the world’s largest natural walnut forest and establishing a wood-carving workshop. Since then, Chris has studied and rowed at Oxford, and is now based in Cambridge and focussed on writing fiction, including Alabaster, Manacle and Mosaic, and currently completing The Broken Hexapus. He also lectures for the Art Society and leads tours to Central Asia to pay the bills. He is missing a large chunk of his heart which will forever remain in the -stans.

Dame Zaha Hadid died on March 31st 2016 at age of 65. Architectural historians of the future will surely recognise her as one of the most important architects of the early 21st century. She was born in Iraq and her reputation was global, but she made Britain her home. This lecture tells the story of her career from the visionary projects of the 1980s, through the years of frustration when her designs were considered unbuildable, to the prolific crop of successful projects built all over the world in the last decade of her life. 

Lecturer .....Colin Davies .....Prof of Architectural Theory. Former editor Architects Journal and contrib to mags worldwide. Books: Thinking About Architecture, Key Houses of the Twentieth Century,The Prefab Home, High Tech Architecture, A New History of Modern Architecture (published by Laurence King) and monographs on work of Foster, Hopkins, Grimshaw.

Everyone is aware about “1066 and all that” without necessarily knowing the exact facts about this momentous event. This lecture will present in details the historical, cultural and artistic aspects of that unique masterpiece, the Bayeux Tapestry, which provides posterity with such a startling testimonial of peoples’ lives in the late Viking age. 

 " 5,000 years of Glass in 60 minutes'ish! "

From an Iraq beach to lenses, architecture, fibre optics...... Mankind's greatest discovery and tool .  We'd be lost without glass.

Andy was the first expert on the Antiques Roadshow who specialised in glass.

Andy started buying and selling antiques when he was 14 and he is now a specialised glass dealer, running Britain’s largest antique and vintage glass shops in his home town of Rye in East Sussex. He has written several books about glass including The Decanter: An Illustrated History of Glass from 1650 and 20th Century Glass, which covers the more recent past. He is currently researching a new book about Swedish glass. Andy lectures widely and writes for journals as diverse as The Times, Country Life, and Glass Circle News. His passion for his subject is reflected in his personal collection of over 30,000 pieces of glass.

Andy joined the Antiques Roadshow in 2005 as the first specialist to deal solely with glass. He regularly keeps visitors entertained with his unique style and passion. Before working in the antiques business full-time, Andy had a successful career as a music journalist.

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.

 (As part of this lecture, there is an option for live music performance; faithfully reproduced solo lute music and/or accompanying the voice and other instruments.)

Despite the traumatic nature of their dislocation and the obstacles they often encountered on arrival in the UK, those who fled here from Nazi-dominated Europe in the 1930s and 1940s made a deep, pervasive and long-lasting contribution to British culture. Focussing on the visual arts, this new lecture will examine the nature of this contribution, embracing not only familiar names such as Gombrich, Kokoschka, Moholy-Nagy, Schwitters and Heartfield, but also lesser-known figures such as Albert Reuss, Josef Herman and Marie-Louise von Motesiczky.

Exhibition at National Gallery … 13 Feb. – 16 May 2021

“Durer- travels of a Renaissance artist”

One of the most accomplished 17th Century female painters. She trained under her father Orazio and worked in Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples and London for the highest echelons of European society,  including the Grand Duke of Tuscany and Philip 1V of Spain.

THIS LECTURE WILL BE HELD USING ZOOM

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. Historical developments and religious and philosophical influences have informed the Japanese approach to the visual arts. This lecture will also draw upon wider examples to illustrate the distinctive qualities that the Japanese have brought to garden design, an approach that has been successfully adapted to modern domestic settings and to Japanese gardens abroad. 

In the light of recent government advice and to safeguard our members, we regret to inform you that this  Arts Society Highgate talk has been cancelled.

In making this decision we have been guided by the Arts Society national organisation and we shall keep in touch with them as this crisis progresses to see

what, if any, alternative provision is proposed.

Field of Cloth of Gold: 6,000 Englishmen in France for 18 days - how did they do it?

In June 1520 Henry VIII and Francis 1 meet to ratify an Anglo-French alliance and celebrate the betrothal of Henry’s daughter Mary to the Dauphin. The two handsome ‘Renaissance Princes’ are in their 20’s with similar reputations in military prowess, sport and patrons of the arts. Both have imperial ambitions and are eager to display themselves as magnificent nobleman and warrior kings. Each brings an entourage of 6,000 to a field south of Calais for 18 days of various events and entertainments staged to display the skill and splendour of each King and country.

The logistics of transporting, accommodating, ordering, feeding and watering, protecting and entertaining the English contingent for this spectacular event is staggering and the supply chain, often through the City of London Guilds, is equally fascinating. 3,217 horses shipped across the ‘Narrow Sea’ to Calais; a vast quantity of wood sourced from Flanders and floated along the coast; a huge temporary palace is built on stone foundations with brick and timber-framed walls reaching to 40 feet. Royal palaces were virtually emptied of their silver, gold, tapestries and furniture to decorate the temporary palace, other principal tents and a chapel (with an organ); gold and silver cloth, velvet and sables were imported to ‘dress and impress’.

How was it all achieved? 2020 is the 500th Anniversary of this extraordinary event.

In the light of recent government advice and to safeguard our members, we regret to inform you that this Arts Society Highgate talk has been cancelled.

In making this decision we have been guided by the Arts Society national organisation and we shall keep in touch with them as this crisis progresses to see

what, if any, alternative provision is proposed.

formed by accident 5,000 years ago on an Iraqi beach, glass has gradually evolved into Mankind’s most important creation and its greatest tool in shaping the modern world.

By its nature, glass is virtually invisible and out-of-sight means out-of-mind. As a result, most people are oblivious to its impact on our daily lives. From lenses, though architecture and transport to the fibre-optic cables that connect the world. And that’s not to mention the glass that sits in our hands of an evening!

Lenses enable the poor-sighted to see and scientists to work. Without glass, our homes would be little more than lightless caves, there would be no screens, for cars & planes, televisions or phones. There would be no functional or artistic glassware.

This talk traces the history of glass from its earliest beginnings, demonstrating how its gradual evolution has benefitted us and our forebears. We’d be lost without glass, Mankind’s greatest discovery and tool.

As a scientist once said, ‘Glass is the answer. Now, what’s the question?’

In the light of recent government advice and to safeguard our members, we regret to inform you that this Arts Society Highgate talk has been cancelled.

In making this decision we have been guided by the Arts Society national organisation and we shall keep in touch with them as this crisis progresses to see

what, if any, alternative provision is proposed.

Edward Lear: Landscape painter and Nonsense poet

Edward Lear, eminent Victorian and friend of the laureate, Tennyson, was an eccentric. Loved by earlier generations of children for his nonsense verse, he was an adventurous traveller who earned a reputation as a brilliant watercolourist and painter of Italy, Greece, Egypt and India.  This lecture, set firmly in the context of an illustrated and fascinating biography draws on the poems, paintings and present day locations to evaluate a colourful and creative life.

Suggested reading:

Edward Lear   : Nonsense Verse – various collected and selected editions

Vivien Noakes: Edward Lear “The life of a wanderer”   London 1968

Catalogue of Royal Academy Exhibition of Lear 1811-1888     London 198

Selected letters, Oxford 1988

The painter, Edward Lear, London 1991

Peter Levi:  Edward Lear, a biography.  Macmillan 1995

Jenny Uglow: Mr. Lear; A Life of Art and nonsense.    Faber 2017

Mirrors of stone: The art of Greek & Roman mosaics

Mosaics offer a glimpse of life which few other artefacts can better.  They portray daily life on the estates and farms, to gladiatorial combats, chariot races, food, the gods, and even realistic portraits.

Mosaics left the floors and adorned the walls giving us  the  stunning  Christian mosaics of Ravenna and Norman Sicily.

 An unparalleled reflection of real life in the ancient world. 

Looking for Georgia: My travels through New Mexico in the footsteps of Georgia O’Keeffe

A personal account by the landscape painter and art historian, Lydia Bauman, of her journey through New Mexico in search of the iconic motifs painted by American painter Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986).

Hear of the insights and discoveries made about the life and work practice of the legendary painter and see how the desert of New Mexico, Miss O'Keeffe's 'backyard' for over fifty years - inspired a very different artist working today in London.

The 1700's was a period when the people of England seemed to be especially gullible. They believed a woman could give birth to rabbits; a man could climb inside a two pint bottle and sing inside it; and where a blond-haired European could write a book claiming that he was born in Taiwan. These hoaxes were not just written about extensively in the newspapers and journals but also brilliantly and amusingly depicted by cartoonists of the day.

Underground Cathedrals… The world- class art, architecture and design of The London Underground

The world’s first underground railway has a wonderful heritage of architecture, ingenious design, powerful advertising posters and unique calligraphy. In this talk we plot the early development of the Underground, examine the legacy of Frank Pick and Charles Holden, look at some of the iconic posters, and celebrate the award winning architecture of the modern Tube in the Jubilee Line Extension. We’ll also take a peek at some of the new Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) stations, designed by some of the world’s top architects.

Madman or Visionary?  The Art and Life of William Blake

 Today, we view the exquisite images and passionate writings of William Blake (1757-1827) as key elements of our culture, masterpieces of both British art and English literature. To his contemporaries in the 19th Century he was both radical and subversive, an obstinately individual writer and artist who refused to compromise, even if that left him ignored and living abject poverty.

Revolution, political ferment and the industrial revolution were taking place during Blake’s life, changing the world he saw around him in previously unimagined ways. Against this background, we’ll explore Blake’s life and works and see how his personal vision reflected what was happening in the wider world.

We’ll also look at how the appreciation of his works changed across the century after his death. The eccentric printmaker who wrote strange poetry is now acknowledged one of our finest poets, with his work “Jerusalem” considered as our unofficial National Anthem.

Exhibition: Tate Britain 11 Sept 2019 -2 Feb. 2020

The Body as a Place: The sculpture of Antony Gormley  

 
Antony Gormley is probably best well-known for his iconic ‘Angel of the North’, imposingly situated beside the A1 near Gateshead.  However, this 20-metre high landmark sculpture is just one of a host of memorable pieces that he has created during the course of a prolific career that already spans over four decades.   Having known Gormley since he was a student at the Slade and written two books on the artist’s drawings, I review the development of this major British sculptor from a unique perspective.  Discussing his work and artistic interests across time and through changing forms, I consider his continuous fascination with the body as a place - both of experience and of interaction with its surroundings. 

Anna Moszynska

Exhibition: RA 21 Sept- 3 Dec. 2019

PLEASE NOTE THE DATE OF THIS LECTURE - THE THIRD THURSDAY IN JUNE AND NOT THE LAST THURSDAY IN JUNE.

Captain Scott and his four companions died in the Antarctic in 1912. Although they had lost the race to the South Pole to Norwegian Roald Amundsen, their deaths unleashed an astonishing wave of tributes not only in Britain but around the world. This lecture will examine the different ways in which artists represented death in the polar wasteland and portrayed failure as heroic sacrifice.

PLEASE NOTE DATE OF LECTURE - THE FOURTH THURSDAY IN MAY AND NOT THE LAST THURSDAY IN MAY

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

PLEASE NOTE THE DATE OF THIS LECTURE - THE THIRD THURSDAY IN APRIL AND NOT ON THE LAST THURSDAY IN APRIL.

PLEASE NOTE THE DATE OF THIS LECTURE - 3RD THURSDAY IN MARCH AND NOT ON THE LAST THURSDAY IN MARCH

Calcutta was the second city of the British Empire and a hub of cultural and artistic production throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This lecture provides an overview of the arts (poetry, theatre, literature, song) and architecture of this extraordinary city, which was India’s capital until 1911. At the epicentre of the ‘Bengal renaissance’, Calcutta played a central role in shaping the arts and culture of modern India, as a huge variety of artists sought to interpret India’s classical heritage in new ways, and to combine this heritage with Western cultural forms. This lecture examines how Calcutta’s arts and architecture were affected by British rule, and explores the fascinating ways in which Indian artists viewed the British in India

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.

How old is embroidery? An impossible question to answer but we know Aristotle was aware of it.  This lecture takes the long view through the history of embroidery as a story of embellishment for decoration, devotion, royalty, education, fashion and as a major decorative art form with examples from many centuries and countries.

PLEASE NOTE THE DATE OF THIS LECTURE -THE SECOND THURSDAY IN DECEMBER AND NOT THE LAST THURSDAY IN DECEMBER

An overview of 2 outstanding exhibitions at National Gallery Oct 2018- Jan 2019. Firstly, the enigmatic portraits of Lorenzo Lotto. And secondly exploring the relationship between brothers-in-law Mantegna & Bellini, through a series of exciting loans.

One hundred years ago the Viennese artists who led the famous Secession were struck down by the Spanish influenza: Schiele, his wife and unborn baby died.  This talented artist was only 28. Otto Wagner, the architect who attempted to transform Vienna into a City Beautiful, also died as did the painter Gustav Klimt. In 1897 Klimt had led the Secession, a ‘break-away’ group who strove to live by their manifesto ‘To each age its Art, to Art its freedom’.  These words were inscribed above the door of the Secession Building where the very latest modern art was shown: paintings by Klimt and Schiele shocked and dismayed the Viennese. They were accused of creating pornography, of revelling in the ugly and bringing art down into the gutter. Both tackled taboo subjects; Klimt celebrated the femme fatale, while Schiele was fascinated by the fragility of youthful innocence. Their paintings can be mysterious and baffling. The surface of Klimt’s The Kiss (1907) is richly covered with complex patterns that are esoteric and hard to decipher. Yet we are fascinated by such images, as we are by the man himself; Klimt’s obsessions spilled over into real life, his amorous liaisons the stuff of legend.   With the success of Edmund de Waal’s Hare with the Amber Eyes, ‘fin de siècle’ Vienna continues fascinates us.

Exhibition RA –Schiele & Klimt drawings

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, beliefs and structures that had supported European culture for two millennia began to give way.  This lecture attempts to find out why this happened, and what the consequences were in the disciplines making up our culture.  The belief that the fine arts reflected a visual reality gave way through the fragmentation of Cubism.  The purpose of language, which was to communicate, began to dissolve as punctuation was dismantled by Joyce, Wolf and Gertrude Stein.  The disciplines of classical ballet were rejected first by Isadora Duncan but comprehensively by Stravinsky and Diaghilev in The Rite of Spring.   “The disease of civilisation” was propounded by the rebel Gauguin whose Tahitian idylls were darkly sinister, while Henri Rousseau’s moonlit jungles and snake-charmers tempted a return to a primitive world.  Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ set in the Congo, plus the flood of African tribal masks that came to Paris for the World Fair – shockingly presented  a world untouched by the great canons of Classical Greek art and thinking – order, beauty, control, balance – that had been the bedrock of European, art, architecture, philosophy, and the sciences, for so long.  The Renaissance, quite suddenly, may as well never have happened.

The seduction of primitivism in which Christianity, Democracy, and the Rule of Law did not exist, began to exert an irresistible pull, especially in Paris.  These changes suggest an embracing of the idea of destruction and brokenness as irresistibly attractive, and as a force sweeping through Western culture.   The consequences of this sea change in the zeitgeist came to a head around 1913 – and within months, in August 1914, the love affair with destruction became a reality as the World War broke out.  How much were the artists, mystics, dancers, writers, musicians and scientists, to blame for this tragedy?  Or were they prophetic mystagogues, warning of darkness to come?  Have we now, a century later having closed the door on the twentieth century, returned to our Apollonian roots or not?

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) arguably Mexico’s most original painter, made herself the principal theme of her art. Her paintings reflect her experiences, dreams, hopes and fears. 

The exhibition at The Victoria and Albert Museum shows Kahlo's flamboyant clothing and some of her work: Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up  16 June to 03 November 2018

Chloë Sayer is an author and curator, specializing in the art and culture of Latin America. She has made ethnographic collections for the British Museum, and is a Research Associate with the Department for World Cultures at the Royal Ontario Museum. In 2016, the Mexican Government awarded Chloë the Ohtli medal to thank her for her commitment to Mexican culture. 

From its beginning in Shad Thames to its new home in “the tent in the Park” in Kensington

 There is something incomparably romantic about a long-lost country house, and although Britain still possesses some of the finest of these architectural treasures to be found anywhere, many have been destroyed.  A single ruined lodge or pavilion, an over-grown drive or group of mature trees are sometimes all that now exists to remind us of a lost house and pleasure-ground. This lecture tells the story of just some of these losses to our National Heritage – destroyed for a variety of reasons; from neglect, arson, enemy action, incompetence, family rivalry, financial disaster or even insanity!   In the mid-twentieth century particularly, profound social change, wars, high taxation and bad management often contributed to the demise of many grand houses. Hundreds were demolished after 1945 – some beautiful, some ugly, but each lost house, as the lecture shows, is fascinating in its own way.

A look into the lives of ordinary people through their furniture. Most furniture in museums and books is representative of the wealthier social classes and so tells us little about the living conditions of the “humbler classes”. Vernacular, in the sense of “every day” and “common” was seldom “crude” or “primitive” and often displayed as much sophistication in construction and design as more costly items. 

This lecture tells the story of an extraordinary and rare little book.

 Annalia Dubrensia, or the Annals of Dover, was printed in 1634, and contains a series of tributes to Robert Dover, founder of the modern Olympics Games.

The Games are still held each year in Chipping Campden, and have just celebrated their four hundredth anniversary. They are a fabulously eccentric affair: handling the pike, back swords, spurning the hammer and shin kicking are a few of the highlights.

 The Dover Games Society acquired their copy of the book in 2012, and asked me to carry out conservation work to the text, and create a new binding for it.  From mending the pages and resewing the book, to the new leather cover and historical gold tooling, this is a step-by-step journey through the project, and it is my chance to show you the bookbinder at work.

 This is a fascinating glimpse into two obscure worlds: the wonderfully silly Cotswold Olympics and the seriously challenging business of conservation.

This lecture invites you to explore Chinese landscape painting through the ages in an attempt to convey the development and evolution of this important tradition. While the title, ‘Travellers Among Mountains and Streams’, is based on that of an 11th century work by the great Northern Song master, Fan Kuan, its key elements, mountains and water, or ‘shan sui’, represent the essence of all Chinese landscape painting. Using ink and brush and a variety of techniques and formats, the artist’s response to the natural landscape and to man’s place within it, has been said to evoke ‘landscapes of the mind’. By introducing a range of examples from different periods, this lecture will reveal ways of ‘reading’ Chinese landscape painting and understanding the differences in content, style and philosophical inspiration that have contributed to the uniqueness of this artistic genre.

 SUGGESTED READING

1.                  Cahill, James, Chinese Painting (1978)

 2.                 Cahill, James, Hills Beyond a River: Chinese Painting of the Yuan Dynasty, 1279-1368 (1976)

3.                 Clunas, Craig, Art in China (Oxford: 2009)

 4.                 Clunas, C and Harrison-Hall, J (eds), Ming: 50 years that changed China (London, 2014)

5.                 Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, The Cambridge Illustrated History of China, 2nd ed, (London, 2010)

 6.              Fahr-Becker, Gabriele (ed), The Art of East Asia, (2010)

7.                 Lee, Sherman, A History of Far Eastern Art (London, 1975)

8.                 Sickman, L, Soper, CS, Coburn, A, The Art and Architecture of China (London, 1971)

 9.                 Sullivan, Michael, Symbols of Eternity: The Art of Landscape Painting in China (Oxford, 1980)

10.            Zhang, Hongxing (ed), Masterpieces of Chinese Painting, 700-1900, (London, 2013)

This lecture will put the present exhibition at Tate Britain (Nov 2, 2017 to Apr 29, 2018) into the context of the movement altogether. The last third of the nineteenth century saw the rebellion of several young painters in France against traditional academic art. Step by step, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro and others evolved their own styles which became known as impressionism - characterised by contemporary subject-matter, bright colours, sketchy brushwork, small scale - often painted out-of-doors. It is difficult to understand today that these delightful pictures were violently rejected at the time!

Rachel Whiteread is a Turner Prize winner, and one of the most important and respected British artists working today. In 2005, she provided one of the series of impressive site-specific sculptures for the enormous Tate Modern Turbine Hall. Her preoccupation with the hidden spaces in between things has resulted in an extraordinary range of objects which form a series of eloquent tributes to the silent and overlooked.

This lecture gives an account of her career to date, showing examples of how she has used ordinary domestic objects to create enigmatic and evocative works of art. The range in scale of her works is huge: from tiny objects derived from light switches or hot-water bottles, to multi-component installations, to an entire house. In every case, the finished works reveal unexpected associations, and can be extremely moving. It was this quality which won her the prestigious commission to design a Holocaust Memorial for the city of Vienna, one of her most demanding and difficult assignments to date, but also one of the most successful.

She uses an ancient technique: casting, but an astonishing variety of materials. The talk carefully explains the fascinating processes required to achieve the effects she wants.

Along with a number of other so-called Young British Artists like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, Rachel Whiteread has attracted a good deal of tabloid attention. Unlike them, however, she has always been uncomfortable with her celebrity, and never actively seeks the limelight. This talk will also have a look at her relationship with the YBAs, the press, and the public, but is mainly concerned with introducing the audience to the unexpected beauty of her works, from the unassuming and mundane, to the truly monumental. 

Several artists have claimed to be the first Western painters to fully adopt total abstraction. Wassily Kandinsky is probably the best-known of these, mostly for his radical works of the teens of the 20th century, in which he abandoned content in favour of harmonious relationships of colour and line. Inspired by the imaginative freedom of orchestral music, the reduced colour relationships of Bavarian folk art, and the desire to communicate spiritual ideas to his viewers, Kandinsky pioneered a version of abstraction that changed Western art completely, and continues to have an effect to this day.

The autumn exhibition  will be an exploration of the ways in which Pre-Raphaelite painters explored northern renaissance paintings in the newly formed National Gallery in order that they might develop a new style of painting with glowing colours, meticulous techniques and medieval subject-matter.  The lecture will provide an over-view of the exhibition: National Gallery Oct- April ‘18

The first serious use of wallpaper in Britain began in the late 17th century and the designs were influenced by the more costly fabrics, cut velvet and damask which inspired flock wallpaper. The arrival of the first hand painted Chinese wallpapers is thought to have helped develop the softer pastel shades used in interiors after 1730. London was the centre of production, although later in the 18th century Leeds and York also created wallpapers. Madame de Pompadour is known to have ordered a flock paper for her private apartments at Versailles, and later Marie Antoinette had an English blue paper hung in her apartment at Versailles. By the 19th century the range of quality was enormous, with most papers being stuck to the walls, whereas the earlier quality ones had been hung, stuck to a linen backing. French wallpapers were popular in the early Victorian period, since they were still taxed and therefore more costly. Morris and Company wallpapers are well known and Christopher Dresser was to produce a wide range, including some fine anaglypta designs in the Japanese taste. The Art nouveau style produced some fine floral papers and the great French decorator Ruhlmann some outstanding Art Deco examples. Artists have contributed in the twentieth century, most famously Andy Warhol. 

Monet and Boudin introduce us to the world of the seaside, but within a generation, Philip Wilson Steer,our finest Impressionist after Turner, took on the British mantle. The first British seaside resort was, improbably, Scarborough, nearly 300 years ago; later came Bighton. The Arts Society AGM has been held in Scarborough and Eastbourne so the lecture will give an interesting insight into the growth of such resorts. We see this through the eyes of many Victorian painters; in the 20th Century we find Picasso, Dorothea Sharp (above) Dame Laura Knight and the Newlyn School.

In addition there are splendid railway posters from between the wars: the period of Art Deco. For each Society, Nicholas Reed tries to use locally relevant posters, many of them commissioned from Royal Academicians.

The Arts Society Highgate AGM will also take place on 29th June 2017

George IV was the single greatest Royal collector of art and instigator of architectural projects. He was passionately fond of lavish decoration and display. As Prince of Wales, he refurbished Carlton House in London and built Brighton Pavilion. As King, he converted Buckingham House into Buckingham Palace and made huge changes to Windsor Castle.

He furnished his palaces magnificently with French furniture, clocks, porcelain and sculpture. He was an avid collector of Dutch and Flemish paintings, including works by Rembrandt, Rubens and van Dyck. He patronised contemporary artists such as Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence and Stubbs  together with the sculptors Canova and Chantrey. He assembled the greatest collection of Sevres porcelain in the world and a huge amount of historic and contemporary silver and gold objects.

Edward Hopper (1882-1967) was without doubt the most important representational painter the United States of America produced in the 20th Century. His work wholly captures the loneliness, alienation, stagnation and spiritual vacuity of modern urban and rural existance - indeed some of Hopper's images such as Early Sunday Morning (1930) and Nighthawks(1942) have become modern icons because they typify the anonymity and isolation of contemporary life. In this lecture Eric Shanes will explore Hopper's development, from his training in France as a minor impressionst artist, through his career as a commercial illustrator, to his emergence and triumph as the supreme realist painter of the American scene in modern times.

Widely known for his appearances dressed as his feminine alter ego, Claire, Grayson Perry RA is now a core part of the art establishment. Ten years after winning the Turner Prize he gave the brilliant BBC Reith Lecture in 2013. His works of ceramics, textiles and prints are highly sought after. Often controversial, he is able to tackle difficult subjects in a poignant yet witty way. This talk will examine Grayson Perry's works, his exciting and thought provoking exhibitions, and we will look at the character inside the flamboyant frocks.

Donatello may have been born in Florence over 600 years ago but his scuplture is so powerful that it still speaks directly to us today. Working alongside masters such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti and Masaccio, he was one of the pioneers of the Renaissance and helped to change the way people looked at the world. From delicate idealism and startling realism, to the astonishing emotional force of his later works, this survey looks at the huge range of his sculpture, setting it against the vivid and colourful world of Italian politics in the age of the Renaissance.

In the contect of Hals, what was so special about Haarlem and how it was different from Amsterdam, Leiden, Delft, the Hague and other centres of painting at the start of the Golden Age. The development of the "Schutterstuk" group portraits, the context of the "doelen" and how Hals develops a type which is brought to an all-time high by Rembrandt in the "Night Watch" - he could not have done it without Hals! Besides Hals' own development, he leaves a legacy as a teacher, through the art of Molenaer and Judith Leyster.

Dick Bolton is a "Man of Kent". He was born in Dover and lives in Wickhambreaux near Canterbury. He is a Registered Blue Badge Guide for the South East of England and the City of Canterbury. He is a Guide in Canterbury Cathedral and is also accredited to Rochester Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral and York Minister. Dick specialises in Stained Glass and Architecture, paricularly brickwork. He lectures and leads tours on these and other subjects. He is a member of the British Brick Society! Dick is a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Glaziers and Painters of Glass.

This talk explores the development of window glass since Saxon times. It looks at the jewel like quality of early coloured glass and the revolution in the glass painter's art with the introduction of stained and later enamelled windows. Changes in worship and influence from abroad affected fashion and design. Destruction and lack of interest took its toll in the 17th century but there was renewed interest in the medium in the 19th century which led to its widespread use once again. The Arts and Crafts Movement then gained momentum and led the way to a variety of brilliant skills in the last century. 

The story ends with an appreciation of the skills of today's Conservators so that our unique collection of windows in Cathedrals, churches and public buildings can be enjoyed by future generations.

This lecture looks at the life and work of the Danish silversmith Georg Jensen (1866-1935) and the work of designers such as Nanna Ditzel and Henning Koppel who worked for Jensen in the mid 20th century. Jensen first established a worldwide reputation as a designer of flatware, hollow-ware and jewellery in the Arts and Crafts style in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and went on to achieve fame worldwide as a designer of elegant and refined silver jewellery and metalware in the modernist style. Pieces by Georg Jensen and the work of many of the designers associated with the firm are highly sought after by collectors today and he is considered to be one of the most influential designers of the 20th century.

Over the past 50 years the Italian baroque artist Caravaggio has risen from relative obscurity to superstar status in the world of art. His use of chiaroscuro has always been acknowledged but he is now seen not only as one of the earliest creators of still life and genre paintings but his ability to rethink mythological and biblical themes in a contemporary, realistic and approachable manner has also captured the public's imagination. 

Caravaggio was born in the town from which his name derives near Milan in 1571 but it was only when he went to Rome some 20 years later that he began to produce the works for which he is now acclaimed. Ever the outsider and rebel, he was inevitably attracted by the low-life and tavern environment of Rome in the late 16th and early 17th century and this led him to be involved in many skirmishes and brawls, which are documented in police records and eventually to the killing of someone. Thereafter on the run, his last years which took him to Malta, Sicily and Naples, were still amazingly productive, but eventually he died in obscurity, to be buried in a pauper's grave before he was 40 while trying to return to Rome where his lasting fame had been established.

Exhibition in the National Gallery Sept 2016 to January 2017.

In this light-hearted look at the rituals and practice of cannibalism, Louise will first show how they have inspired some extraordinary works of art - from great paintings to the cannibal cartoons of the Victorian era. She will then look at cannibal myths deeply embedded in some cultures and at how these may have originated in actual rituals in the ancient past . Finally, Louise will take you to the jungles and highlands of Papua New Guinea, following in the foorsteps of Miklouho-Maclay, a young Russian explorer, who became "King of the Cannibals" there in the 19th century.

A fascinating picture of Britain in the 1930's and 40's on the Home Front

His work explained in the context of 20th Century European avant-garde art

Understanding medical practices of the 17th and 18th centuries through the role of these beautiful but practical vessels

Architectural triumphs and great craftsmen of the time

Venturing into a male preserve and scandalizing London society in the 18th and 19th centuries

Witty, vitriolic caricatures of both politicians and royals alike, Spitting Image and Gerald Scarfe of his day.

Tracing theirs manifestations from avenging to guardian angels through the eyes of Giotto, Fra Angelico to Stanley Spencer.

The inspired international designer of the Olympic cauldron, the new London bus and the proposed Garden Bridge

From gentle scenes of rural life to dark nightmare images of the horrors of war. Exhibition National Gallery 7 )ctober - 10 January 2016

Jasleen Kandhari will explore the world of Indian textiles from the Punjab to Bengal and the Coromandel Coast. Exhibition at the V&A from 3 October - 3 January 2016

Thousands of war memorials were erected across the country and artists developed new strategies to represent such huge loss of life. Bitter disputes arose between protagonists for useful works and champions of artistic quality.

In the talk we see the arrival of the Greeks, whose colonies such as Agrigento, Syracuse and Segesta preserve some of the Mediterranean's most stunning ruins. With the Romans came peace and prsperity, reflected in the beautiful public buildings at Syracuse and Taormina. Finally we look beyond Rome to Norman Sicily with its extraordinary artistic richness, seen in particular in the wall and ceiling mosaics of the churches. Exhibition at the British Museum in 2016

William Hogarth longed to be an actor but his small stature was against him( in the eighteenth Century Hamlet was hard to imagine as five feet tall.) However, Hogarth portrayed the greatest actors of his day and was the first major artist to give us an understanding of actual performance in such artistic masterpieces as ‘The Beggar’s Opera’, Garrick as Richard III and the Royal children watching Dryden’s ‘The Indian Emperor’ at the home of John Conduitt, Master of the Mint. There was dramatic life too, on the streets of London at Southwark Fair and Covent Garden. We shall look at the great sequences such as ‘The Rake’s Progress’, ‘Four Times of Day’, and ‘Marriage a la Mode’ to recreate Hogarth’s life and times. Hogarth had a close friendship with David Garrick, the actor and his paintings of Garrick and his wife in their domestic setting show that though Hogarth never quite escaped from the lure of the Comic and Dramatic Muses he was also a painter of exquisite taste and gifts. Frances Hughes, after spending 38 years in Education is now a free-lance lecturer in Art & Theatre History. She is Chairman of the Irving Society and of the Henry Irving Foundation. Frances has written and performed in programmes on Sarah Siddons , Dame Edith Evans and Dame Ellen Terry at Epsom Playhouse , Wimbledon Theatre ,the King’s Head, the National Portrait Gallery and Tate Britain.

The lecture looks at decorative plasterwork in buildings ranging from Tudor palaces to Stuart town houses, how elaborate festoons of flowers, pendants and figures were created, and at the rescue of fragile friezes and sagging ceilings with modern techniques.

This lecture will preview a major Sargent exhibition which opens in early February 2015 at the National Portrait Gallery, devoted to the artist’s portraits of artists, actors, writers and musicians – in fact his whole cultural milieu, with a cast of creative personalities that embraces Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet, Ellen Terry, Gabriel Fauré, Henry James and other stars. Sargent was far more than simply a brilliant performer with the brush; he was deeply cultivated, widely read, immersed in the theatre, a gifted musician and a very influential musical patron and connoisseur. This is a quite new view of the artist and it is supported by some stunning and original portraits of people he admired and learnt from, many of them his good friends. Richard Ormond, CBE, is the president of the Highgate branch of NADFAS. He is the curator of the exhibition and an acknowledged expert on the work of the painter. He is the co-author of the John Singer Sargent catalogue raisonné, of which seven volumes have been published by Yale University Press (1998-2012; two more to go). He is also a great-nephew of the painter, and will be drawing on family papers and photographs for the lecture. He is a former deputy director of the National Portrait Gallery, and a former director of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (1986-2000). He is currently chairman of the Watts Gallery in Compton, Surrey. As a member of the executive committee of the Friends of Kenwood, he co-organizes the monthly programme of lectures at Kenwood. He is also president of the Friends of Leighton House.

The fire at Windsor Castle in 1992 is described and illustrated, together with the remarkable restoration which was completed five years later. The Queen commissioned watercolour paintings of the Castle after the fire and after the restoration. Many of these are shown. The lecture puts the restoration in the context of the Castle's 900 year history and particularly the changes that were made by Edward III in the 1360s, Charles II in the 1670s and George IV in the 1820s. The way that The Queen and Prince Philip use Windsor Castle is illustrated, including Garter Day processions and the visits of foreign Heads of State.

Domestic, exotic and sometime utterly fictional animals are depicted in medieval manuscripts. Who used them and how were they used?

The use of these two organic gem materials through the ages, the animals from which they are derived, and how to recognise fakes!

The Chinese Emperors, often discerning and sometimes obsessive patrons of art, were united in their appreciation of fine porcelain made at the imperial kilns at China's porcelain capital, Jingdezhen. From the early years of the Ming Dynasty in the 14th century to the twilight of the Qing in the late 19th century, Imperial porcelain was used in important rituals, such as the blue vessels used at the sacred Temple of Heaven, or white vessels used at Buddhist altars. During the 18th century plates, vases and bowls were decorated in jewel-like colours with birds and flowers, inspired by the gardens of China. Imperial porcelain is invariably a technical accomplishment which delights the eye. The lecture traces the history of porcelain manufacture in Jingdezhen, the profound symbolism of the designs and looks at examples of Chinese imperial porcelain in museums in China and the West.

Berthe Morisot was considered by her contemporaries to be the archetypal Impressionist and a painter of the first rank. She was the first major female artist to make visible a female response to the world. Admired by all her fellow Impressionists, her intense and productive relationship with Edouard Manet is surrounded by rumour and mystery. The lecture will celebrate her life and achievement and discuss her relevance to artists past and present and, not least, her role as an inspiration to me in my early years as an artist and mother.

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