This is one of the quirkiest lectures you will ever hear.There is a universal delight in being deceived and in this lecture Bertie Pearce takes his audience on a whistle stop tour of art which fools,surprises and amuses the viewer.Beginning and ending with the Belgian surrealist,Rene Magritte,it encompasses Trompe L'eoil,Banksy,Bridget RileyArcimboldo and Escher to name a few.Hold on to your seats and get ready to be visually fried.

Bertie Pearce

Bertie has lectured and performed on cruise ships,festivals,schools,U3A and is a member of the Inner Magic Circle.He has written articles for newspapers and magazines on entertainment and theatre and has a BA (Hons) in Drama and a Diploma Internationale.

We have all heard about audacious art heists that are more like blockbuster movies than run-of-the-mill burglaries. In this lecture, we are going to look at famous art thefts, discuss what motivates art thieves as well as examine what aspects the thefts have in common. We will also look at where the burglars made mistakes, which enabled investigators to swoop in and recover stolen masterpieces. In many cases, the police sting operations were just as daring as the thefts. 

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

 ALCOHOL IN ART

This is a talk about booze and intoxication in art. Since the early Romans and Greeks, alcohol has been an important subject for artists. We examine the way drink and drinking are depicted, the social messages portrayed, the happy and unhappy consequences, and how alcohol affected the lives of many artists, their families and friends.​

IAN SWANKIE

A Londoner with a contagious enthusiasm for art and architecture, Ian is an official guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Guildhall Art Gallery and St Paul’s Cathedral. He is also a freelance London tour guide. Since 2012 he has led a popular weekly independent art lecture group in his home town of Richmond in West London. He is an Accredited Lecturer of The Arts Society and a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars, one of the City livery companies.

THE BLAZING CAREER OF LEE MILLER

Gifted beautiful and rebellious.  Lee Miller’s career took her from the fashion pages of Vogue as one of the most sought-after models of the 1920’s, to the front line of the Second World War.  Her work behind the camera – first as a Surrealist photographer and later as a war correspondent – expanded the boundaries of photographic expression and she quickly became a leading figure in avant garde scenes of London, Paris and Cairo.  She was a woman way ahead of her time – she took risks in both her life and in her art and she remains among the greatest photographers of all time.

CINDY POLEMIS

Cindy Polemis is an art historian, independent lecturer and art guide. She has a BA in Modern History from Oxford University and as a mature student she went back to university to study first for a BA and then for a Masters in History of Art at Birkbeck College, London University. Before that she spent many years as a radio producer and presenter for the BBC World Service working in news and current affairs. Since 2016 Cindy has worked as  a lecturer and an official art guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern. She has also been a trustee at the Museum of the Home, formerly the Geffrye Museum. Cindy has accumulated a wide range of art historical knowledge ranging from 18th European and British art to the contemporary international art scene. She has been an official guide for  Frieze Masters art fair in London. She is particularly keen to draw parallels with art and social history and her lectures are accessible and engaging, drawing out the stories of art and artists which are steeped in human emotions and experiences which we all share.

NOT IN FRONT OF THE AUDIENCE: CENSORSHIP ON THE BRITISH STAGE

On September 26 1968, after 231 years of official censorship, Britain ended the power of the Lord Chamberlain to decide what the British public should and shouldn’t see. Official vetting and censoring of plays was established by the Theatres Licensing Act of 1737 and led to years of controversy, absurdity and fascinating battles between the theatre makers and the authority of the Theatre Censor.

Malcolm Jones

Malcolm has lectured on the Victoria & Albert Museum Short Course and Year Course Programmes since 2009, devising and developing a range of courses on Theatre History and Practice. Malcolm was Workshop and Events manager at the V&A Theatre Museum in Covent Garden for 10 years where he was responsible for lectures, Study Days and workshops for adults and interviewed many leading British actors and directors including Kenneth Cranham, Zoe Wanamaker, Barry Cryer, June Whitfield and Don Black. He has lectured and led workshops in the past at many drama schools including RADA, The Actors Centre and Rose Bruford College. He has also lectured on theatre for groups visiting the UK from America. He has chaired panels and post show talks for Ambassadors Theatre Group. While at the V&A Malcolm contributed as a speaker on theatre to many television and radio programmes. He also works with Age Exchange Community Arts since 2000 on many creative arts programmes with older people and intergenerational film and theatre projects.

Erté (Romain de Tirtoff): Designs of the Art Deco Master

Romain de Tirtoff (known more famously by his pseudonym, Erté) was a Russian-born, French artist and designer who became revered as the ‘Father of Art Deco’. Erté very much shaped the design ethos of the era with his signature look of sleek lines, geometric patterns and stylised forms. His career spanned eight decades and following a 1960s resurgence in the appeal of his work, new audiences have come to appreciate how Erte’s style and work has left a resounding mark on the art world.

Pamela Campbell-Johnston

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

1920s Tahiti - English-speaking writers and artists

What was the attraction of Tahiti in the 1920s? Why was there a South Seas craze and why did a group of English-speaking writers and artists such as Robert Keable, James Norman Hall, Charles Nordhoff, Dean Frisbie, George Biddle and William Alister Macdonald follow in the footsteps of Paul Gauguin, and decide to settle on the island. What were they trying to escape? Why did they choose to stay and how successful were they?   

Simon Keable- Elliot

  A graduate of Durham University, Simon was Head of Politics and Director of Model United Nations at Royal Russell School for 25 years. He now works as a writer, researcher, and lecturer. His first book Utterly Immoral, Robert Keable and his scandalous novel was published in November 2022, and he had also written articles for The Church Times, The History News Network, The Beresford Family Society Magazine, The Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, and Genealogy Today. He is a regular speaker at events run by The Arts Society, Western Front Associations, U3As and Family History Societies. 

Antoni Gaudí is well known and much loved. In this lecture, his work will be explored in detail. It will be shown how he engaged with nature in the most innovative and extraordinary ways. Inspired by honeycombs and spiders' webs, armadillo skins and mushrooms, trees and whales' bellies, he worked with extraordinary ceramicists, iron workers, tilers and decorative artists. We will look at his public and private buildings and his relationship with a wealthy and demanding patron. Private shy and retiring he was also humorous and witty in his extravagant style.

Jacqueline Cockburn is Managing Director of Art and Culture Travel, running residential courses in Andalucía, Southern Spain in the art and culture of the region as well as curated tours to Madrid, Tangiers, Barcelona, Paris and Venice. Jacqueline is a course director and lecturer at the V&A and also lectures at The Royal Academy,  She has toured New Zealand and Australia for The Arts Society. Her specialist field is Spanish Art, but she also lectures on European Art 1790-1950. She is currently working on a Monograph on Goya (Prestel, Spring 2024) and has guided Special Interest Private Tours of the State Apartments at Buckingham Palace.

'The Night Watch' of 1642 is Rembrandt's greatest painting and the most famous painting in the Netherlands. But why is it so special? It has become an icon of the Golden Age and of the modern Dutch Nation. Why? How was it commissioned and constructed?  How did Rembrandt paint it and where has it been hung throughout its life? Who are the characters represented? Why is there a lone woman and what is meant by the dead chicken trussed up in her waistband? What does this all tell us about changing Dutch society? This work redirected how group portraits were conceived. The traditional Dutch 'schutterstuk', a military group or shooting piece, became majestic and grandiose in Rembrandt's hands.

Formerly a curator and Print Room Superintendent at the British Museum, now Art History Education Officer in the Department of Learning & National Partnerships at the Museum, Hilary Wiliams now lectures for the British Museum and the Wallace Collection. She is founding Artistic Director of The Arts Society of North Kent Evening, a specialist in 17th century art and has published on Rembrandt. Hilary has vast experience of giving gallery talks as well as lecturing and leading art history tours in UK, Europe, New York and Boston. For the Royal Collection Trust she has guided Special Interest Private Tours of the State Apartments at Buckingham Palace.

Toby explores the way TS Eliot was indebted to, and himself inspired - whether as subject or as poet - some of the 20th Century's greatest artists. As a pioneer of literary modernism, TS Eliot inevitably influenced his counterparts in the visual arts. He was friends with several artists. Edward McKnight Kauffer and David Jones illustrated his work; Patrick Heron and Wyndham Lewis painted him; Jacob Epstein sculpted him. There are paintings and compositions inspired by his poems. And the reverse is also true; The Waste Land famously employs techniques borrowed from modern art.

Toby Faber 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. He has written three narrative histories: Stradivarius – Five Violins, One Cello and a Genius; Faberge’s Eggs; Faber & Faber – The Untold Story, and a novel; Close to the Edge.

Since the birth of the earliest human civilisations, dance has been an important part of ceremony, rituals, celebrations, a method of healing and a means of expression and entertainment. Before written languages existed, dance was one of the methods of passing stories down from generation to generation.

Using stills and video clips we take a look at dance as an art form from its earliest beginnings, the birth and rapid development of ballet throughout Europe, the explosion of modern dance in the early 20th century, a time of unprecedented creative growth for dancers and choreographers and with the growth of post-modernism from the 1960s together with mass culture, the expansion of street dance, hip-hop, break dancing and rock dance. 

Jennifer Toynbee-Holmes is an experienced guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern and lectures at various art societies and institutions.She has a special interest in British and European art of the late 18th, 19th and early 20th century. Having gained an MA in film and television practice, Jennifer had a long-standing career spanning twenty years as a television producer/director making documentaries and factual programmes for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. She was also a visiting lecturer at Goldsmiths College and Birkbeck, University of London and a senior lecturer at Southampton Solent University in the Faculty of Media, Arts and Society.

Dogs are man’s most loyal friend and are often used in art, as in life, to project our ambitions and anxieties. From the poignancy of Landseer, Queen Victoria’s favourite animal painter, to the dachshunds of Bonnard and Picasso, the whippets of Freud and many more, we explore how dogs have provided inspiration, solace and companionship throughout artistic lives.

Alexandra Epps is an Official Guide and Lecturer at Tate Modern, Tate Britain and the Guildhall Art Gallery. She is a qualified Guide to the City of London, offering walks, talks and tours about many aspects of the arts for societies, corporations and private individuals. She is also a member of the City of London Guide Lecturers Association and co-author of the book Lord Mayor's Portraits 1983-2014 (2015). Alexandra’s background is in design, having practised as a graphic designer running her own design consultancy for many years. She has a BA from Saint Martins School of Art and an MA from London College of Printing.

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in America we explore 25 iconic works. These include Grant Wood’s ‘American Gothic,’ Dorothea Lange’s ‘Migrant Mother,’ and Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks,’ of American art.

Marie - Anne trained as an artist before gaining a PhD in Art and Critical Theory from the University of Sussex. She has lectured in art history for the City Lit, Tate Modern, the Course, Art in London, London Art Salon, Dulwich Picture Gallery, HENI films. In addition she runs art history study tours abroad for ACE and is a Director of InFems art collective for whom she curates exhibitions and writes.

Originally intended to house an equestrian statue of William IV, the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square lay empty due to lack of funds for many years. Eventually, it was decided to use it for what has been described as ‘the smallest but most prominent sculpture park in the world’. The inaugural work, Ecce Homo, a poignant life-sized figure of Christ in white marble by Mark Wallinger, fittingly presided over the arrival of the new millennium and since then many contemporary artists have had their work displayed there. From horses to hotels, bottles to cockerels, we follow the course of the Fourth Plinth Commission, up to (and beyond) David Shrigley, who gives it a big ‘thumbs up’.

Rosalind has an BA and MA from Goldsmith’s College, and an MA (distinction) from Birkbeck College. She is an experienced guide at Tate Britain, Tate Modern, the Royal Academy and Greenwich. Rosalind lectures at theTate and also to independent art societies and on cruises.

Following in the footsteps of Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Pierre Auguste Renoir we analyse what was modern about Impressionist landscape paintings: their experiments with colour theory, new synthetic pigments, and, most importantly, the distinctly modern landscape that they chose to depict. We’ll be travelling by train, in and out of the Gare Saint Lazare in Paris, with boating trips and balloon excursions thrown in.

Lois has an MA in Venetian Renaissance Art and a PhD thesis on The Image of the Artist, Paris 1815-1855. She has curated major exhibitions at the V&A and the National Gallery, and is currently Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at the RA, Associate Professor in History of Art at the University of Notre Dame in London, and a Visiting Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute. She also writes audio and multimedia tours for a number of prestigious London galleries and has appeared on radio and TV. In addition Lois plays violin with Kensington Chamber Orchestra and the Endellion Festival Orchestra.

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, was the favourite of King James I - who addressed him as ‘my sweet child and wife’ - and subsequently chief minister to King Charles I. Buckingham was a beauty, and he surrounded himself with beautiful things. He enjoyed exquisite clothes, like the fabulous white silk suit encrusted with diamonds that he wore to visit the Queen of France. He was a superb dancer. When he cut capers during a court A king's favourite who amassed a great art collection masque King James startled visiting ambassadors by shouting out ‘By God, George, I love you!

Lucy Hughes-Hallett

Lucy is A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Historical Association, she has written on books, theatre and the visual arts for publications including The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Observer, The New Statesman and the TLS. She was Chair of the Judges for the 2021 International Booker Prize. Lucy is also an author of non- fiction and fiction books and The Pike: Gabriele d’Annunzio  won all three of the UK’s most prestigious prizes for non-fiction - the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize and the Costa Biography Award.

Learn how one company came to control the world's flow of diamonds into the marketplace for over a century.  The De Beers Diamond Cartel convinced diamond miners & traders to only buy or sell via their single market channel, forming a bond so tight it was impossible to move diamonds without them.  At one time, De Beers held 40,000,000 carats of rough diamonds in a 3 story basement vault in London- a 20 year supply of gemstones.  De Beers took the jewellery market by storm with the slogan "A Diamond is Forever" voted the advertising slogan of the century.  Come learn how De Beers really did "Romance the Stone".

Laurie Wickwire

A graduate of GIA London, IGI Antwerp, and DeBeers Institute of Diamonds, Laurie is both a certified diamond grader and certified pearl grader. Additionally, she holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in International Business & Finance, and a Bachelor of Arts in French.   With over 35 years in the diamond industry, diamond expert Laurie Wickwire represents the industry across all sectors: mining, sorting, grading and brokering some of the world’s key rough stones. Laurie presents Diamond shows on a variety of T.V programmes and is  a speaker on Luxury Cruises .She creates the historical jewellery range for Buckingham Palace and  Windsor Castle, as well as crafting a piece for the Duchess of Cambridge and the Princes trust.

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

Ian Swankie

Ian is a Londoner with a passion for art and architecture, Ian is an official guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Guildhall Art Gallery and St Paul’s Cathedral, and gives tours around each venue. He is also a qualified and active freelance London guide and leads regular tours for various corporations and organisations. Since 2012 he has led a popular weekly independent art lecture group in his home town of Richmond in West London. He is a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars, one of the City livery companies.

From the ancient world to artists like Tracey Emin and Lucien Freud, portraits have been used to show power, status, virtue, beauty, wealth & taste. I look at how portraiture has changed throughout the ages and how the genre shows us how to communicate with 

Cindy Polemis is an art historian, independent lecturer and art guide. She has a BA in Modern History from Oxford University and as a mature student she went back to university to study first for a BA and then for a Masters in History of Art at London University. Before that she spent many years as a radio producer and presenter for the BBC World Service working in news and current affairs. Since 2016 Cindy has worked as an official art guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern. She has also been a trustee at the Museum of the Home. Cindy has accumulated a wide range of art historical knowledge ranging from 18th European and British art to the contemporary international art scene. She has been an official guide for both Frieze Masters and Frieze Art Fairs in London. She is particularly keen to draw parallels with art and social history

The Maya lived in Central America between 1000 B.C. and 1528 at which time they were conquered by the Spaniards. The peak of their civilization was between 300 and 900 AD. During that time, they built enormous monuments, produced jade and ceramic items of great beauty and developed a calendar that was far more advanced than anything in Europe at the time. They had an advanced understanding of mathematics and astronomy and developed a hieroglyphic script which scholars are beginning to decipher, allowing us to understand their achievements much more fully. 

Duncan was educated at Oxford and London universities. He has written articles mainly on Mayan ceramics. . The Protoclassic in the Maya Lowlands was published in 2000 by British Archaeological Reports and more recently publication on Early Maya Ceramics in "Pre-Mamom Pottery Variation and the Preclassic Origins of the Lowland Maya.

2024 marks the bicentenary of the founding of the National Gallery. This lecture tells the story of the establishment of the NG collection beginning in 1824 when Lord Liverpool’s government purchased 38 paintings for £57,000 from the collection of businessman and philanthropist John Julius Angerstein. The paintings were initially displayed at 100 Pall Mall, Angerstein’s townhouse and by 1838, it was decided that a purpose built building was required, giving us the William Wilkins designed building we know and love on Trafalgar Square. During the course of the lecture we examine some of the high (and low) points of the early years of the gallery including suffragette sabotage, bombs and theft. We also take a close up look at some of the original "Angerstein 38” paintings…

Simon Whitehouse is a (recovering) actor, lecturer, presenter, Alexander Technique and voice teacher and award winning London Blue Badge guide.

He has worked as a guide lecturer in house at Shakespeare’s Globe, the Royal Opera House, the BBC and the National Gallery guiding both public and private tours. He is on the faculty of Ithaca College and also lectures for the Blue Badge Guide training course on the performing arts and English literature.

Simon’s specialisms and passions are theatre, literature, fashion and art history but whatever the subject, Simon will weave a wonderful story from it.

Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley in Somers Town.

Get to know more about the life of Mary Wollstonecraft, the great early feminist and her daughter Mary Shelley. Mary Wollstonecraft lived and died in Somers Town – then in the parish of St Pancras on London’s northern fringe. Her daughter, the great early novelist, was born there. This talk explores the Somers Town they knew –a place of political exiles and refugees. Find out about the site of the home Wollstonecraft set up on radical principles with the proto-anarchist William Godwin and the people they knew and influenced. Discover the secret spot where that philanderer Percy Bysshe Shelley used to wait for his 16year old lover Mary Godwin. And 200 years after Frankenstein’s monster first appeared, absorb some of the influences which shaped that most enduring and compelling of characters from English literature. 

Charlie Foreman  is a member of the City of Westminster Guide Lecturers Association, his 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 Charlie has absorbed a deep understanding and appreciation of the capital. He`s 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.Charlie`s publications include Spitalfields: A battle for land.

Towards the end of her life May Morris (1862-1938) - designer, craftsperson, and younger daughter of William Morris – wrote, ‘I’m a remarkable woman, always was, though none of you seem to think so’. Overshadowed in her lifetime by the achievements of her illustrious father, thankfully today May Morris is recognised as a leading figure in the Arts & Crafts Movement. Excelling in the field of embroidery, she was Head of Embroidery at Morris & Co. by the time she was twenty-three. May also designed wallpapers, made jewellery and was a talented amateur watercolour artist. She was instrumental in founding the Women’s Guild of Arts formed to support women working in the arts and crafts field at a time when they were excluded from similar organisations. A skilled editor, May spent her later years editing the 24 volumes of her father's collected works.

Fiona Rose has been lecturing about topics she feels passionately about since 2010 including William Morris and his circle, the Arts & Crafts Movement, Frida Kahlo and Frank Lloyd Wright. She has a BA in Social Psychology and aims to include the human story behind the artistic endeavours of her subjects. After an early career in public health Fiona founded and runs a home interiors business featuring the work of the great C19th designers such as Morris, Dearle, Voysey and Mackintosh. Fiona is a member of the museum Collections committee for The William Morris Society where she served as a Trustee. She is also a contributor to the Society’s Magazine and Journal of William Morris Studies. Fiona is a volunteer Tour Guide with the Arts & Crafts gem The David Parr House.

Richard`s lecture tells the fascinating story of how painting and architecture went their separate ways, exploring the complex reasons behind their dramatic divorce, including:

The “special status” of painting as the heralded product of artistic genius

A change in the form and function of the picture frame

The emergence of the commercial art market

The rise of the public “Art Exhibition”

Embracing the likes of Michelangelo, Watteau, Whistler and Matisse, this broad-ranging survey culminates with the Bauhaus and its legacy in the USA – and ends by asking whether the partnership between art and architecture might be revived in the 21st Century.

Richard Whincop is a professional artist who graduated in English and Art History from York University in 1986. From 1988-1994 he lectured at the adult education departments of Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities, and then went on to become a full-time figurative artist, executing large-scale public commissions, and exhibiting widely throughout the UK. He now lives and works in Chichester, West Sussex. 

Anna looks at the establishment of the British Museum and tells the stories behind some of the most important pieces. These are the finest objects highlighting the development of civilisations as made by the hand of man.

Anna Warrillow   graduated as a Blue Badge Guide early in 2013 and won an award for the best new guide at Westminster Abbey. Since then she has been conducting bespoke private tours of London and now has her own guiding company Canvas and Stone Tours in 2018 (www.canvasandstonetours.co.uk).Anna`s background and passion is Art & History, she has a BA in History of Art & Italian and an MA in Renaissance Decorative Arts & Design .Anna worked for 6 years as a curator in the Sculpture Department at the Victoria & Albert Museum as well as in smaller collections such as the Henry Moore Family Trust. As well as guiding she is adjunct lecturer at The American International University in London where she teaches undergraduates the history of London. Anna lectures regularly for societies and provides training courses and Continual Professional Development courses for students and guide members of the Institute of Tourist Guides.

One might call the paintings of Johannes Vermeer typical examples of Dutch art from the so-called Golden Age. Yet, when compared with the works of his contemporaries, Vermeer’s serene interiors emerge as somehow oddly different. this particular difference has preoccupied scholars ever since the ‘rediscovery’ of Vermeer in the nineteenth century. What exactly is the subject of a painting by Vermeer? Is it the merry couple enjoying wine and music, the elegant furnishings, or is it the light and shadow which suffuses every detail and creates the tonal nuances of his compositions? We will review the various interpretations that have accrued around Vermeer’s art over time while also considering the circumstances that may have influenced the artist in his own day.

Albert Godetzky’s research concentrates on Northern European art of the early modern period. He is currently Associate Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute where he received his PhD with a thesis on ‘Haarlem Mannerism’. Before joining the Courtauld, Albert was Visiting Lecturer at The Victoria & Albert Museum and the Harry M. Weinrebe Curatorial Fellow at the National Gallery, London, where he contributed to exhibitions including Rembrandt: The Late Works and Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure. Albert also works as a cultural advisor to several international corporate institutions and private individuals, drawing on his experience in the field and using education to widen understanding of and participation in the study of art history.

This lecture looks at the story of a remarkable book published in 1539 called In Chaldaicam Lingua. It was published by Theseo Ambrogio who had been the Pope’s enforcer of doctrine, with the Lord’s Prayer and selected psalms translated into multiple languages for missionaries to use. However Ambrogio also had an eccentric uncle who was an inventor and had invented a brand new kind of bagpipe that no one wanted to make, so he died with his vision mostly unrealised. Feeling that his uncle’s legacy shouldn’t be forgotten, Ambrogio included the designs for his Uncle’s Bagpipe in his new book of prayers. As well as the details of a seance he held with the devil;complete with the devil’s answer. Sophie will play a reconstruction of the Uncles Bagpipes and also brings an original copy of the book.

Sophie Matthews is a musician well-known for her prowess on the English border bagpipes and has become one of the foremost players of the instrument in the UK. She also plays a variety of early woodwind instruments such as shawm, rauschpfeife, crumhorm and recorder. She’s also one of a handful of British players of the baroque musette, an 18th century French bagpipe similar to the Northumbrian smallpipes.

When not touring with with GreenMatthews, Sophie also makes instruments (she made her own baroque oboe) and works with respected luthier Tony Millyard on his flutes. Sophie is self-taught on all of her instruments.

Here's a treat to get into the mood for Christmas. Join Margaret for a seasonal hour of Christmas bygones and entertainment as she brings to life the joy of music through the ages at this time of year.

Keeping to a brief history of the harp, she concentrates more on the incredible pedal mechanism invented for the harp and demonstrates on her own instrument through a variety of music. She explores some of the old Christmas Carols and their origins.

Margaret Watson studied harp under the late Sidonie Goossens OBE and Sussex harpist Helen Arnold. She holds a Diploma in Music Performance on the harp and is also a Fellow of The Guild of Musicians and Singers.

Now one of the busiest harpists in the Southeast, Margaret has played for Royalty, National Trust, City Guildhall, Clarence House, Garrick Club, Savoy, Ritz, Dorchester and Hilton Langham Hotels in London, Glyndebourne Opera House, Covent Garden and for many weddings, private parties, group meetings, receptions, launches, corporate, civic and charity functions.

Margaret is a very active member of the charity ‘Music in Hospitals and Care’ and gives bedside concerts for patients and mentally or physically disabled people in hospitals, hospices, and specialist care centres and nursing homes.

Visionary and eccentric, the worlds created in the paintings of Stanley Spencer are quite unique.  Just as remarkable was his relationship with his two wives. Hilda Carline, capable of sensitive and tender portraits and landscapes Hilda’s career never fully progressed after her marriage. Spencer then met Patricia Preece. She too was an artist but less gifted than her ‘companion’ Dorothy Hepworth. Paintings by Dorothy were exhibited and sold as by Patricia.

Spencer became obsessed with Patricia but for her his only attractions were his celebrity status and money. Four days after divorcing Hilda he married Patricia. But Patricia and Dorothy continued to live together, deluding the art world with their paintings. This lecture examines the art produced by this infamous group of artists, including some of Spencer’s most powerful paintings.

Alan Read holds Master’s and First Class Honours degrees in History of Art from Birkbeck College,  University of London. He is a gallery guide at Tate Britain, Tate Modern and the National Portrait Gallery and has lectured at many galleries including the Dulwich Picture Gallery, Plymouth City Art Gallery and the Natinal Portrait Gallery. He is also a London Blue Badge Guide and City of London Guide.

Mario Testino and David Bailey may be household names that spring to mind when we think of the great fashion and portrait photographers of the 20th century. But where does Jorge Lewinski fit in? Born in Lwow, Poland (now Ukraine) in 1921, Lewinski has an unparalleled reputation for capturing portraits of the iconic British painters and sculptors of the 20th century. Having based his home and career in London from 1942, Lewinski photographed over 300 leading British artists principally between 1962 and 1995. We learn about his prolific career as an artist, focusing on 20th century Royal Academicians and a selection of great 20th century British artists.

Pamela Campbel-Johnstone has an MA Hons Art History. She has lectured for over 30 years, has conducted guided tours and focused gallery talks on individual works of art. Pamela specialises in British Domestic Architecture and Modern British Art and has over 12 years' experience at the Royal Academy. She has work experience at Bonhams, The Art Loss Register and National Trust and is now a freelance art consultant and lecturer.

Ealing Studios is often hailed as the most quintessentially English of all film studios and reached its zenith in 1949.  Ealing's films have a reputation for cosiness, whimsicality, and an ever-so gentle subversiveness. This talk revisits these films and reads them again, this time in the light of the post-war new waves that were beginning to emerge across Europe. Viewed as comedies of rubble, they take on a far more serious set of meanings than their whimsical reputation suggests.

Benedict Morrison is a lecturer in Literature and Film at the University of Exeter. He has published a book entitled Complicating Articulation in Art Cinema and is now producing works on post-war British comedy films, the response by the arts and humanities to Covid-19, and cultural narratives of extinction.

This is the extraordinary story of a million selling boy’s magazine created by a vicar and an art student in 1950. 20% of the readers were girls. This is the backstory of why and how they created this magazine and then sold it to Hulton Press. The lead story of Dan Dare was the only one to have its own full studio producing the weekly double-page spread. See how this studio worked and the graphic tricks artist Frank Hampson used to create reality. Why did the Ministry of Defence order six copies each week and what prize did David Hockney win in 1950? All is revealed in this lecture.

Howard Smith was educated in Scotland and gained an MA from Trinity College, Dublin. In the 1960s he worked for UK and International advertising agencies before starting his own marketing and print company in Canterbury.

The popular and not inaccurate view of the Vikings is of thuggish invaders and ferocious fighters. Whilst it’s always acknowledged that they were also masters of navigation and sea-faring and were great traders, not much attention is paid to their culture and how some of it influenced later church art in Britain. Their religious beliefs worked seamlessly with their legends so sometimes the two are hard to separate. Sagas tell of heroic deeds by both man and monster, whilst others unintentionally show the nuts and bolts of Scandinavian society. Skaldic poetry with its strange metaphors is more specific – deliberately so – composed so that it couldn’t be altered by future generations and so the story couldn’t be lost. The lecture looks at runes and picture stones and how the various artistic styles developed over the two centuries of the Viking Age. It may show the more sensitive side of the Viking character, but it never forgets that they were warriors at heart. 

After nearly 20 years in the British army, Imogen Corrigan attended the University of Kent, studied Anglo-Saxon & Medieval History and Art, graduated with 1st class honours, followed by an MPhil from the University of Birmingham. She is a freelance lecturer and runs study tours and courses and is a Freeman of the City of London, being a Member of the Company of Communicators. Imogen has also written Stone on Stone: The Men Who Built the Cathedrals, published 2019

Discover fascinating stained glass stories all hidden in plain sight within the heart of London. From the sacred to the secular, cathedrals to churches, the Knights Templar to the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, Women’s suffrage to an icon of culinary delight, the Houses of Parliament to a boutique hotel, and a Gothic mansion to a greenhouse!

Alexandra Epps has a BA from Saint Martin`s School of Art and MA from The London College of Printing. She is an official guide and lecturer at Tate Modern, Tate Britain and Guildhall Art Gallery, a Pallant House Gallery lecturer and a qualified guide to the City of London. Alexandra is co-author of the book Lord Mayor's Portraits 1983-2014 (2015). She has a background in design, having practised as a graphic designer running her own design consultancy for many years.

Even though ‘work’ was the bedrock of Victorian progress and improvement, Queen Victoria’s reign saw the greatest upsurge in leisure pursuits ever witnessed. People earned more money and worked shorter hours than ever before and with the birth of the Railways and a desire to be health conscious it was a golden age for the art of entertaining oneself and being an amateur in the true sense of the word. This talk celebrates a pre-television age when the ability to amuse and entertain was paramount.

Bertie Pearce has a BA(HONS) in drama and a Diploma Internationale. He`s a member of the Inner Magic Circle, with Gold Star. Bertie has lectured and performed on cruise ships, to U3A, historical societies, festivals ,schools and colleges, has toured worldwide with a magic show and a one man show entitled All Abroad and written articles on entertainment and theatre.

Impressionist Berthe Morisot is known for her light-filled canvases of modern life, afternoons boating on a lake, young women in ballgowns and children playing. She was much admired by Renoir and the art critic Paul Girard. Lois traces Morisot’s engagement with eighteenth-century culture, and highlights what set her apart from her predecessors and contemporaries. Her talk complements an exhibition about Morisot at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Dr Lois Oliver studied at Cambridge University, and the Courtauld Institute of Art, has an MA in Venetian Renaissance Art and a PhD thesis on The Image of the Artist, Paris 1815-1855. She worked at the Harvard Art Museums, the V&A and the National Gallery, where she curated and contributed to major exhibitions. Lois is currently Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at the Royal Academy, Associate Professor in History of Art at the University of Notre Dame in London, and a Visiting Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute. She also writes audio and multimedia tours for clients including the National Gallery, Royal Academy, Royal Collection, and Tate, and has appeared on BBC Radio and TV. Lois also regularly plays violin with Kensington Chamber Orchestra and the Endellion Festival Orchestra.

Covent Garden was an artistic hub in the 1700s and we will see how important artists such as Willi Hogarth and Reynolds chose the area as a fashionable address; how geographically Covent Garden placed them in between patrons in the Royal Court at Westminster and the wealthy merchants of the City of London; and how local craftsmen such as framemakers, colourmen and printers supported artists' work. We will also see how the 1700s was also a century in which British Artists became much more ambitious and campaigned for the first public exhibitions and art schools, which arguably led to the Golden Age of British Art.

Sarah Ciacci has an MA in History of Art.She has been a Blue Badge Guide for London since 2008, specialising in art, museums and galleries, has trained Blue Badge Guides in the National Gallery and is an art lecturer for trainee guides in Tate Britain, Tate Modern and for a period the National Portrait Gallery. She is a gallery educator and Adjunct Faculty at Richmond University, teaching the History of British Art, the History of Museums in London and the History of London, and runs regular courses and independent lectures on a variety of art historical periods.    

Join Harry, in what promises to be, a very entertaining lecture, fit for the last lecture of 2022.In 'The Art Of The Cartoonist' Harry will be tracing the history of his profession with examples from early practitioners like Cruickshank and Hogarth, to more contemporary artists such as Giles and Schulz, bringing events right up to date with cartoons produced fresh on the page that day! Yes, Harry will be drawing live. Prepare to hear some tricks of his trade and learn where to put eyebrows for maximum effect. Be ready to have some fun!

Harry Venning graduated from the University of Wales, with a BA in history, formed a touring theatre company bringing new plays to audiences in rural Wales, was then employed for a year as an actor/writer with the Channel Theatre Company in Ramsgate, Kent, before giving up acting and becoming a cartoonist. Harry has had publications in the UK and abroad, including the strip Clare in the Community which has been a weekly feature in The Guardian since 1996 and in 2016 was awarded Strip Cartoonist of the Year by the UK Cartoon Trust. Harry writes radio comedy and for the last ten years has been performing his cartoon workshop Release Your Inner Cartoonist.

This colourful lecture draws on Elizabeth’s time in Morocco in visits spanning more than 25 years. It focuses on the stories behind the blue pigment used for the fishing boats and doorways of photogenic Essaouira on the Moroccan coast, and the Majorelle Blue developed and patented by French artist Jacques Majorelle in Marrakech in the 1920s. The story of Morocco’s blues takes us from Berber veils to Yves Saint-Laurent, via Modernist Orientalist art and a protected mollusk...

Elizabeth Gowing studied at Magdalen College Oxford before training as a teacher and working in Lambeth, Hackney and Islington. She moved to Kosovo in 2006 and there worked with the Ethnological Museum in Prishtina and co-founded ‘The Ideas Partnership’, a charity working on education and cultural heritage projects. Elizabeth speaks fluent Albanian has translated two books and is the author of four books about Kosovo. She`s a regular contributor to Radio 4 (Saturday Live, Excess Baggage, From Our Own Correspondent) and the BBC World Service and is Member of the advisory board of GuideKS, the NGO for Kosovan tour guides, and of the board of Faktoje, the Albanian fact-checking organisation

Step into the wonderful world of Handel.  Peter, as a musician and scholar, will take us into the life of one of the greatest composers and as a musician will perform various music. Despite his German birth and his Italian musical training, Handel remains one of the most important composers that England ever nurtured. His music had a direct influence on his musical contemporaries.  His larger-than-life personality had a profound effect on the literary, visual and decorative arts as well – both in his lifetime and after his death, in 1759. This lecture assesses the cultural influences Handel had on a nation - as he once wrote, “from whom I have receiv’d so Generous a protection”.

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

Sue`s lecture walks us through the history of Spitalfields Silks.  Visiting the merchants, designers, mercers, dyers, throwsters, master and journeyman weavers. From the end of the 17th century, French taste was supreme.  So how lucky was it that a wave of skilled Huguenot craftsmen escaped to London, bringing advanced skills and innovative techniques in silk weaving and easily attracting influential patronage. These luxurious garments raised English style and elegance to a level deemed superior to that of France by the mid-18th century.

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.

As one of the great painters of the Victorian era Atkinson Grimshaw created some of its most beautiful atmospheric paintings. In rain and mist, moonlight and gaslight, the River Thames, city streets, winding lanes and grimy docks all appear as if clothed in poetry and mystery. Discover the unique vision of the ‘master of moonlight’ - an artist who transformed the humdrum of everyday Victorian life time and time again into a magical ‘Grimshaw’.

Alexandra Epps has a BA from Saint Martins School of Art and MA from The London College of Printing. She is an official guide and lecturer at Tate Modern, Tate Britain and Guildhall Art Gallery, a Pallant House Gallery lecturer and a qualified guide to the City of London. Alexandra is co-author of the book Lord Mayor's Portraits 1983-2014 (2015). She has a background in design having practised as a graphic designer running her own design consultancy for many years.

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

Mary Alexander has 30 years' experience as a lecturer, with a BA in History and History of Art and a MA with distinction in History of Art from University College London. Experience includes public lectures in museums, tutoring for the Open University, visiting lecturer at Christie's Education in London, museum curator at Platt Hall, the Gallery of Costume, Manchester. Now a freelance lecturer to various arts, heritage and antiquarian societies. Mary`s background combines an unusual blend of academic and visual communications skills.

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. 

Rosalind Whyte has a Masters in Art History from Goldsmiths College, University of London and a Masters in Gender, Society and Culture from Birkbeck College, University of London. She is a guide and lecturer at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, as well as guiding at the Royal Academy and leads Art Appreciation holidays to various locations. 

A chance to explore the distinctive forms and functions of medieval gardens through contemporary illuminated manuscripts, goldsmiths’ work and tapestries.  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 , 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. 

Sally Dormer is a lecturer and tutor for the Early Medieval Year Course at V&A. Dean of 'European Studies' for 2 US Universities. Freelance lecturer for The Art Fund. Study tours, cruises and tour groups. BA (History) University of Durham; PhD (Medieval Manuscript illumination) and MA (Medieval History of Art) Courtauld Institute.

Have you had this experience? You go to a gallery, an exhibition and are stopped dead by an unknown picture: you look at the label and find you have never heard of the artist. How does it come about that there can be such wonderful painters of whom we have never heard? This lecture will consider some of the many reasons for a good artist’s obscurity, from the brevity of his life to the misfortune of his being born and working in the shadow of a larger reputation, such as Leonardo or Rembrandt. But above all it is an excuse to spend an hour gorging on beautiful paintings, finding hidden treasures.

MA in History of Art from Edinburgh, PhD from the Warburg Institute, London University, with 40 years' experience as a lecturer, Chantal Brotherton Ratcliffe has taught at Sotheby's Institute of Art on the MA in Fine and Decorative Arts since 1989.  She is a freelance lecturer for a number of societies in London, Italy and America. Having also trained as a paintings conservator, she brings an understanding of the making and the physical painting to her lectures and study sessions.

Brighten up your January with a colourful lecture by the Fan Museum‘s Curator, Jacob Moss. Be dazzled by the story of how The Fan Museum in Greenwich came to fruition. The lecture is interwoven with the fascinating biography of its founder, whose fan collection forms the basis of the Museum’s holdings. From an especially rare Elizabethan-period embroidered folding fan to contemporary examples decorated by street artists.

Jacob Moss has a postgraduate degree in Fashion Curation from London College of Fashion and is The Fan Museum`s Curator,  responsible for co-organising its temporary exhibition programme and overseeing loans from the Museum’s extraordinary collections to organisations such as the Palace of Versailles and Metropolitan Museum of Art.

London not only has a world-class reputation for art in its many galleries, but also a remarkable range of art outside in the streets. We tour around the capital discovering some of the most interesting works from across the centuries. They range from huge and expensive commissions to unofficial graffiti, which is sometimes audacious and often playful, but they all have a place in our society. We look at why art is there, how it has developed over the years and discover many hidden gems.

Ian Swankie

Ian is a Londoner with a passion for art and architecture, he is an official guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Guildhall Art Gallery and St Paul’s Cathedral, and gives tours around each venue. He is also a qualified and active freelance London guide and leads regular tours for various corporations and organisations. Since 2012 he has led a popular weekly independent art lecture group in his home town of Richmond in West London. He is a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars, one of the City Livery companies

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.

Brian Stater

Brian is a Senior Teaching Fellow at University College London, where he has lectured since 1997. His principal academic interest lies in the appreciation of architecture, while a strong personal enthusiasm is for photography. He therefore explores both business and pleasure by offering lectures on each of these subjects.

He has written on architecture for a wide range of publications and an exhibition of his own photographs has been held at UCL. He is a member of the Association of Historical and Fine Art Photography and he works with a pre-War Leica camera, as used by his great hero, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and many others.

Brian is an engaging and amusing speaker who seeks to entertain as well as inform his audience.

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. From great architects such as Inigo Jones and Frank Matcham, to practitioners such as Granville Barker and Gordon Craig and designers Cecil Beaton and Oliver Messel, Bertie brings to life the magical world of theatre.

Bertie Pearce

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 Bertie has toured the world with a magic cabaret show and a one man show entitled All Aboard. Bertie has written articles for newspapers and magazines on entertainment and theatre.

As promised, a video produced by an Arts Society in Spain about the fire and passion of Flamenco will be available for you to see from midday 31st August to midday 1st September.  You will not have to load any programmes.  We'll send you an email and you simply click the button at the time convenient for you.

Indian classical music has a rich heritage stretching back beyond the thirteenth century. Its two major traditions - the Hindustani and the Carnatic - have given rise to some of the most beautiful and deeply spiritual music ever conceived. Yet Westerners tend to find it baffling. This lecture aims to break down barriers to artistic appreciation by providing an introduction to the major traditions, artists and concepts that form the basis of the Indian classical tradition. By the end of the lecture you will know your sitar from your sarod, your sarangi from your shehnai, and your tanpura from your tabla. Through musical examples and stunning images of India’s musical heritage, you will be given a key to unlock a wondrous world of music that you can continue to explore and enjoy for years to come.

Dr John Stevens

Dr Stevens is a Research Assistant at SOAS, University of London, and a member of academic staff at the SOAS South Asia Institute.  His PhD in History is from University College London. He teaches British Imperial History, Indian history and Bengali language and is a regular visitor to India and Bangladesh.  He publishes widely in the fields of British and Indian history.  His bigraphy of the Indian guru Keshab Chandra Sen - Keshab: Bengal's Forgotten Prophet - was published by Hurst and Oxford University Press in 2018.  He appears regularly in the Indian media and was a guest on BBC Radio Four's In Our Time, discussing the poet and artist Rabindranath Tagore. 

Painting is Lady playing sitar.  Kalighat painting. Unkown artist

Our industrialised throw-away culture has recently been answered by a resurgence in craft, as makers set up shop to shape wood, mould glass, beat metals, to marble and bind paper, leather and much besides.  Great craftspeople turn raw materials into objects of purpose and soul through intelligence and skill.  But what are the makers' stories?  After writing well over a hundred articles on artisans for the Financial Times Weekend, through interviews that encountered triumphs, rebirths, extinctions and even explosions, the speaker reflects on what it takes to create objects of beauty and utility and to make a living through a life of making.

Jonathan Foyle

Dr Jonathan Foyle was Chief Executive of World Monuments Fund Britain for eight years and a Curator of Historic Buildings at Hampton Court for as long, during which time he took his 2002 PhD on reconstructing Wolsey's palace.  He is a frequent feature writer for the Financial Times on issues of architecture, history and craft, and is approaching his fourth published cathedral monograph: Canterbury, Lincoln, Lichfield - now Peterborough.  A presenter of numerous television series including BBC4's Henry VIII: Patron or Plunderer? and BBC2's Climbing Great Buildings, he lectures frequently on a range of art-historical topics.  He brings teaching experience as a former Course Director for the University of Cambridge Summer Schools and is an Honorary Professor in Conservation at the University of Lincoln.

This lecture marks the 200th anniversary of the death of Napoleon Bonaparte, Statesman/General (1769- 1821)

How was Napoleon such an excellent self-promoter?  What was it that drove him?  What on the other hand drove his wife?  And what was it that made Napoleon and Josephine one of the most followed couples in history?  These questions can be answered giving a true insight into their character by exploring the collections at the Chateau de Malmaison.  The Estate, which was bought by the couple as their private retreat, away from the Pomp and Ceremony of the Official Residences, was made into a National Museum in 1905 amassing a huge collection of their possessions. Paintings, personal objects, complete room layouts and some magnificent pieces of porcelain are just some of the things on display

Carole Petipher

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.

Throughout the ages Women in Japan have been revered as goddesses and deities, elegant courtesans, poets and writers, activists and valiant samurai wives; today’s women are equally as varied in their outlook, careers, style and innovation in fashion, from the current empress to cosplay girls in Harajuku.

Suzanne Perrin

Suzanne is an independent researcher and historian specialising in Japanese History, Art & Culture, and founded Japan Interlink in 1995 to promote the understanding of Japan in the UK. Suzanne studied Nihonga traditional Japanese painting at Nagoya University of Arts and gained a certificate there and reached Level 3 in Japanese Language at the Japan Foundation in London.

Suzanne has lectured to a wide range of institutions. She taught Japanese History & Culture at Richmond American International University in London for over ten years, lectures for the Arts of Asia course at the V&A,  British Museum and London Institute Universities, the University of Cape Town. and University of Brighton Art & Design School.  She has given lecture tours for DARTS in South Africa, AADFAS in Australia and for The Arts Societies in Europe (Spain, Germany, Malta, Belgium).  She has also organised exhibitions of Japanese arts and crafts including Kimono exhibitions for demonstration and display.

Suzanne has published articles on Japanese culture and contemporary living for various magazines and published her first book in 2016 titled: Bridges: Anglo-Japanese Cultural Pioneers 1945-2015.  She is working on her second book on Japanese craftspeople in Kyoto and visits Japan regularly to continue her research.

Discover the eclectic collection and awesome seaside home of Sir Merton and Lady Annie Russell-Cotes situated on the East Cliff of Bournemouth. Funded by their ownership of the Royal Bath Hotel and astute art dealing they acquired remarkable Victorian and Edwardian artworks partly inspired by their world travels. After their deaths in the 1920s curators acquired Modern British Art, and additional paintings from the C19th including Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s masterwork Venus, turner of hearts. In fact, the museum features an exceptional range of female subjects that underpin this talk.

James Taylor

James 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. Publications include illustrated histories of Marine Painting (Yachts on canvas ), The Voyage of the Beagle  ship, Careless Talk Costs Lives  and Your Country Needs You. 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).

From the Alhambra to William Morris, patterns can be gorgeous, yet pattern has often been dismissed as “mere ornament” in comparison with painting. We will discover what a mistaken view that is as we look at the ideas that inspired some of the great pattern inventors and traditions from around the world. We’ll see that whilst some glorious effects depend on very simple patterning procedures, others can be wonderfully clever, as we watch patterns evolving across the screen in beautiful animations.

David Phillips

David studied History at Oxford, and from 1968-82 worked for Nottingham Castle Museum. From 1982-98 he was Lecturer in Museum Studies and Art History at University of Manchester. David published a book about museum practice with Manchester University Press, Exhibiting Authenticity 1997.

Possibly the most admired historic English building outside London, Blenheim Palace is an uncompromising World Heritage monument to English military ambition and one family’s self importance.  The story of its construction is a fascinating catalogue of excess and outrage, while the result is both monstrous and sublime.  But it is in the effect that its perceived spirit has had on the consecutive generations of Marlborough’s, that it is most revealing.  It is also, of course, from within this ‘cauldron’ that a Churchill was born, recently voted the “The Greatest Britain of all time”.   This lecture explores these themes and the characters involved, marvelling at the genius of Vanbrugh and considering the real impact the palace has left on the nation.

Anthony Russell  is a cultural historian, writer and artist. He has travelled much of the world combining painting with tour lecturing - principally to American university students on bespoke tours and to the Arts Society (formally NADFAS).
 
He spent six years as a consultant for Luke Hughes advising on the furniture needs of prestigious buildings throughout Britain, including museums, palaces, schools and cathedrals.
 
Now based in London, he spends much of his time lecturing and undertaking research. At the British Museum, where he runs outreach events and hosts visiting lecturers, he has been described as "Hugh Grant meets the Dalai Lama."

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

Jacqueline Cockburn

Jacqueline is a linguist and art historian, with first degrees in French and Spanish and Art History, an MA in Applied Linguistics and a PhD in Art History and Spanish. She is now Managing Director of an art tour company, is a course leader at the V & A and a freelance lecturer at Christies Education. Jacqueline has written various books and is the  co- author of the recent publication, “A Taste of Art-London”.

The antiques market has changed dramatically and now pieces that were made during the 1970s can fetch many times more than a piece made in the 1770s. Why has the teak sideboard you threw out become so desirable? Who is this Eames person? Drawing a blank with Timo Sarpaneva? Who’s buying what and what are they doing with it? This practical and inspirational lecture looks at furniture, ceramics, glass, lighting and metalware, identifies key designs and designers, and examines the revolutionary design movements they began.

 Mark studied History of Art & Architecture (BA Hons), and began his career as a porter and Junior Cataloguer at Bonhams before moving to Sotheby's where he was a Specialist in the Collectors' Department. He became director of an internet company forming and running a ground-breaking deal with eBay Live Auctions. Mark was co-author of the internationally published Collectables Price Guide with Judith Miller from 2002-17 and founded his own publishing company in 2005 and has since published over 12 books on specialist subjects in 20th century design and decorative arts. A Miscellaneous expert on the Antiques Roadshow since 2007, and has co-presented three primetime factual TV series on antiques and collecting for BBC2. An auctioneer running 20th century design auctions in partnership with Dawsons Auctioneers. Has lectured across the world, including at the V&A in London, and contributed to many newspapers, magazines, radio and TV programmes and is a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Arts Scholars and a Freeman of the City of London.

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 revealing 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.  

Jo Banham is a freelance curator, lecturer and writer. From 2006-2016 she was Head of Adult Learning at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and before that Head of Learning and Access at the National Portrait Gallery, and Head of Public Programmes at Tate Britain. She has also been Curator of Leighton House and Assistant Keeper at the Whitworth Art Gallery. She has published on many aspects of Victorian and early 20th century decoration and interiors. She is also Director of the Victorian Society Summer School.

Sophie is a musician well-known for her prowess on the English border bagpipes and has become one of the foremost players of the instrument in the UK. She also plays  a variety of early woodwind instruments such as shawm, rauschpfeife, crumhorm and recorder. She’s also one of a handful of British players of the baroque musette, an 18th century French bagpipe similar to the Northumbrian smallpipes.

When not touring with GreenMatthews, Sophie also makes instruments (she made her own baroque oboe) and works with respected luthier Tony Millyard on his flutes. Sophie is self-taught on all of her instruments.

William Morris led a revolution against the products of the machine age.   This inspiring lecture explores the lives of these truly passionate potters and celebrates their extraordinary and beautiful creations. The first of our ‘passionate potters’, William de Morgan, was a friend of Morris who rediscovered the secrets of Near Eastern lustre glazes.  In contrast, the eccentric and argumentative Martin Brothers created a range of elaborate salt glazed pots unparalleled in their imaginative breadth. Sir Edmund Elton, the ‘potter baronet’, made pots which combine startling glazes with exotic forms.  And finally, Bernard Leach, the father of English studio pottery, not only married the arts of Japan and England but created a legacy that is still alive today. 

Julian Richards studied archaeology at Reading University and has since worked as a professional archaeologist, in commercial archaeology, for English Heritage, for the BBC and as an independent.  He was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1992 and is being awarded an honorary doctorate.  He has been involved in teaching and outreach projects, lecturing widely in continuing education, to groups and societies and to special interest tour companies.  A career in broadcasting involved researching and presenting. He is the author of a number of English Heritage publications on Stonehenge, including the previous and current guide books to the monument and landscape. He was Guest curator of Wish you were here, an exhibition of his own extensive collection of 'Stonehengiana' which is currently on display at the new Stonehenge Visitor Centre and also curated an exhibition for the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute in Vienna, in 2016. 

England’s Tudor century was an explosive one.   It transformed or swept away much of its medieval inheritance for new worlds - geographical, political, religious and cultural.   

This lecture focuses on the cultural such as Holbein’s portraits and in particular his drawings from the Royal collection - the miniatures of Hilliard and Oliver which are ‘England’s greatest contribution to the art of painting during the Renaissance (Roy Strong) and music from the recently rediscovered Nicholas Ludford to the later works of Tallis, Byrd and Elizabeth’s Madrigalists. 

Mark Cottle was born on the Isles of Scilly and educated at Truro School, Cornwall, and Birmingham University.  His career has been spent in education and training at home and abroad.  He has lectured at Exeter College on Medieval and Tudor history, St Mark's and St John's University College, Plymouth, and at Bath University on Anglo Saxon and medieval England.  He currently runs two small companies providing training and study breaks.

This instructive lecture examines the impressive development of British art during this 500 year period. It ranges from the Elizabethans, with their exquisite miniatures and hieratic portraits of the Queen, to the extraordinary diversity of works produced in the reign of our present Queen. 

Val Woodgate is a lecturer and guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, and also at many other London galleries and art organisations. She is a former member of the teaching team at Dulwich Picture Gallery. She lectures to arts organisations in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Val is also a lecturer and runs courses at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester.  Val has talked to us before including a study day.

The term trompe l’oeil was not used until the 19th century (in order to refer to illusionistic painting in general) but the intriguing game of simulation designed to foster the illusion of reality can be traced all the way back to the Classical era.

The most famous written example comes from Pliny the Elder with his charming description of a competition between two well-known Greek painters Zeuxis and Parrhasius, who attempted to fool each other with the brilliant realism of their works, an anecdote which continued to inspire artists for hundreds of years.

This fascinating lecture traces the history of the technique and defines what exactly constitutes a trompe l’oeil painting (not as easy as it might seem), looking at many extraordinary and entertaining examples from the masters of illusion in Flanders such as Memling and van Eyck, through Italian portraitists and Dutch still life specialists. We define and explore a number of specific techniques including anamorphosis and quadratura, as well as variations on a theme, such as the quod libet still life and peepshow, with particular reference to works in the National Gallery, London.

Sian Walters studied at Cambridge University and is a lecturer at the National Gallery and The Wallace Collection and taught at Surrey University, specialising in 15th and 16th century Italian painting, Spanish art & architecture, and the relationship between dance and art.

She also teaches private courses, and organises lectures, study days and art holidays abroad and has lived in France and Italy, where she worked at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice.

Prague is one of the great treasure houses of Europe. Reduced to a near ruin under the communists, it has now been restored to its former glory, a unique blend of Gothic, Baroque and Art Nouveau architecture.  

This impressive lecture shows us the rich fabric of Prague’s past, its legends and its history, as well as the artists, composers, statesmen and rogues that have illuminated this fairy tale city.

 Douglas Skeggs read Fine Art at Magdalene College Cambridge and is a seasoned lecturer on paintings at universities, colleges and art societies.

 He was the director of The New Academy of Art Studies and is presently a regular lecturer at The Study Centre and on other London courses.

 He has lectured and has taken numerous tours in Europe, helped set up Abercrombie & Kent’s Private Label tours and is presently cultural adviser to Ultimate travel.  

Douglas has written and presented TV documentaries on notable artists and is also an exhibiting artist who currently has 6 novels and a widely published book on Monet to his credit.

Captain Cook’s fame largely rests on the three expeditions to the Pacific that he led in the 1760s and 1770s. In addition to their important role in the history of European exploration, they are notable for being the first such voyages to include professional artists among the crew. These artists played a critical role in recording the places visited and the people and flora and fauna encountered on the voyages. But how did they deal with the novel surroundings they encountered? And how did their work go on to shape European understanding of those settings?

Prasannajit De Silva completed his doctorate in 2007, researching the art of the British in India during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His lecturing covers British visual culture of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, including art produced in various colonial settings. He is particularly interested in the relationship of aspects of art, architecture, and design to their broader cultural, social, and political contexts, and also teaches courses on the methods and theoretical approaches of art history. His current work includes roles as Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London and Sessional Lecturer for the WEA.  

This 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.  This lecture is a treat for those with a sweet tooth.  Tasha feels that the subject of food and art through the ages is most exciting in the realms of the dessert . Topics covered include; the origins of the dessert (including  Renaissance banqueting houses),sugar and spectacle, food as artistic medium and the future of food.

Tasha Marks is an award-winning food historian and artist, who explores the relationship between food, art and history.  Her practice, AVM Curiosities, champions the use of food as an artistic medium, with projects ranging from museum-style exhibitions and sculptural installations, to interactive lectures and limited-edition confectionery.  Recent academic achievements include publication in the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, where Tasha authored the entry on Mrs Beeton, one of the Victorian era’s most influential cooks

Zaha Hadid died on March 31st 2016 aged 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.

Colin is a Professor of Architectural Theory.  He is the former editor of Architects Journal and contributor to magazines worldwide.  His books are entitled Thinking About Architecture, Key Houses of the Twentieth Century, The Prefab Home, High Tech Architecture and has monographs on the work of Foster, Hopkins and Grimshaw.

How did Leonardo transform the ordinary housewife and mother of two into the icon of mystery which is the Mona Lisa, when other women, more distinguished and beautiful than her, come across as merely virtuous, shrewd or marriageable? How did unpopular and undistinguished men come down in history as figures of valour, status and importance? What do marriage portraits tell us about the perceived place of men and women in the home and in society? We will look at the subtle ways in which artists manipulate likenesses to respond to the ideas and values of their time and the whims and vanity of their patrons.

Lydia was born in Poland and studied for her BA in Fine Art at University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (John Christie Scholarship and the Hatton Award), and achieved her MA in History of Art from Courtauld Institute, London, (19th-20th century art - Distinction for thesis on Matisse's Illustrations to Poetry). Has lectured to diverse adult audiences, notably in London's National Gallery and MFA Boston USA. Her book on Great Themes in Art is being considered for publication by Merrell Books for worldwide distribution.

This is the story of the epic rivalry between the two giants of British art, J.M.W. Turner and John Constable.

These two creative geniuses were as unlike in background and temperament as their paintings were in style. But both transformed the art of landscape.

This lecture sets them head-to-head and examines their differences, similarities, battles and shared triumphs. But who will ultimately be crowned star painter?

As well as giving an overview of Turner and Constable, the subject provides insight into the British art world during the nineteenth century.  

Nicola Morby is an independent art historian specialising in British art of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She studied at the University of York and Birkbeck College, London. Formerly a curator at Tate Britain she has curated a number of exhibitions and has published widely on J.M.W. Turner, including contributions to the forthcoming online catalogue of the Turner Bequest. She is also co-editor and author of How to Paint Like Turner (Tate Publishing, 2010). In addition, she has published on Walter Richard Sickert and is co-author of Tate's catalogue of works by the Camden Town Group.

In 1856 an 18-year-old student at the Royal College of Chemistry accidentally discovered the first fully synthetic colour. This lecture takes us from Perkin’s discovery and comes right up to date with the development and challenges of dyeing in the 20th and 21st centuries with synthetic dyes and fibres. It is a story of serendipity, science, war, innovation, trial and error, environmental concerns, economics and fashion, all of which have had changing demands on the dyeing trade over the last 160 years.

Susan is Chief Executive of the Royal School of Embroidery based at Hampton Court Palace.  She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Chartered Institute of Marketing  .In 2015 Susan was made a Fellow of the Society of Dyers and Colourists in recognition of her work on the history of dyes.  Susan has a longstanding interest in textiles, especially colour, and published her first book, The Story of Colour in Textiles in 2013. She has extensive lecturing experience and has been invited to lecture in the USA, Canada, China, Japan and Taiwan as well as for the V&A and across the UK.

This lecture will attempt to revive the reputation and celebrate a great artist that, although born in Switzerland, went on to become a great British Neo-Classical artist, with a reputation equal to her male contemporaries in an age that rarely recognised women in this field. This lecture will not only look at her training and early paintings, but also the influence on Kauffman of Italian painting and the great Renaissance masters, not to mention Dutch painting. The lecture will also chart Kauffman’s rise to fame on the Continent, along with her association with the most famous figures of the age including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 –1832) and Joshua Reynolds (1723- 1792) to name but a few. The lecture will also look at Kauffmann’s controversial private life, her arrival in England and subsequent success in a relatively short period of time, and what happened to Kauffmann after leaving England. Thorough the use of existing documentary evidence gained from the National Portrait Gallery’s Heinz Archive the lecture will not only chart the rise of Kauffman, but also look at how her work was received by the critics of her day and beyond.

Short reading list: Roworth, Wendy Wassyng: Angelica Kauffman: A Continental Artist in Georgian England (Reaktion Books, 1992) Natter, Tobias (ed). Angelica Kauffman: A Woman of Immense Talent (Ostfildern: Hatje-Cantz, 2007) 

Leslie holds a BA in Art History and an MA in Renaissance Studies from Birkbeck College, University of London. He was Visiting Lecturer in Art History at the University of Reading in 2005 and 2007, and gives lectures and guided tours, plus special talks, at both the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. Also lectures at the City Literary Institute and has presented a series of talks at the National Maritime Museum and the Courtauld Institute.

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.  To tie in with The Age of Jazz exhibition, a collaboration between The Arts Society and The Bulldog Trust at London’s Two Temple Place running from January-April 2018, Sandy Burnett’s lecture covers the early years of jazz from its beginnings through to the start of the Second World War.  Drawing on his practical experience both as musicologist and gigging musician, Sandy is able to shed light on jazz from the inside.  His illustrations range from early pre-impressions by Maurice Ravel and others 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.

After studying music at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and working as music director for the RSC, National Theatre and in London’s West End, Sandy Burnett spent a decade as one of the core team of music presenters on BBC Radio 3.  He enjoys a varied career that embraces broadcasting, conducting, playing double bass and communicating his passion for music.  His radio series for Ireland’s RTÉ Lyric FM, Great Moments in Classical Music, recently won silver in the Specialist Music category of the PPI Radio Awards.  He regularly leads cultural lecture holidays and is the author of the Idler Guide to Classical Music.

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

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 1970’s skatepark in Essex, a world first that made the 10 o'clock news.

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

Aliki studied at The Ruskin School of Fine Art, Oxford, The Slade School of Fine Art, London and the Courtauld Institute, where she was awarded a distinction for her masters in 17th century painting.  A regular freelance lecturer for the National Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, Tate Galleries, Courtauld Gallery and Wallace Collection.  An Associate Lecturer for the University of the Arts London, and she teaches courses on the Slade School of Fine Arts Summer programme.  Aliki also regularly exhibits her photographic work internationally.

The multi-talented Frank Brangwyn was born in Bruges and died in Ditchling in 1956.  His design work was probably influenced by A H Macmurdo, William Morris, Siegfried Bing and Japanese arts and crafts.  Starting with a brief history of the artist, the lecture will then discuss the varied disciplines which he mastered from mosaics, stained glass, furniture, carpets, ceramics, glassware and jewellery to architecture and interiors, with special reference to works in the vicinity of the particular society.

Libby is a freelance art historian, curator, film producer, lecturer and writer.  Libby is the world's leading authority on the multi-talented artist Frank Brangwyn and is compiling the catalogue raisonne of all his work - both fine and decorative art - estimated to be in excess of 12,000 items!  Frank Brangwyn: Stained Glass was published in 2010 and Brangwyn at WAR! was published in 2014. The irrepressible Libby has recently written film scripts about Fay Godwin, Fiore de Henriques, Gordon Russell, John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens (Patrick Reyntiens: Catalogue of Stained Glass was published in 2013) and her lecture repertoire reflects her eclectic range of interests.

Primarily an exploration of the music chosen by ballet choreographers through the years, proving that the right piece with the right moves and design can create modern masterpieces and timeless classics.  We transition through the grandness of Imperial Russia with Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty into the current modern repertoire of The Royal Ballet.  Includes historical and recent video clips.

Nigel Bates is the Music Administrator of The Royal Ballet and has been a performer for nearly forty years in and out of the Royal Opera House, including seventeen years as Principal Percussionist with the Orchestra.

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 twenty years, including arts societies and conservatoires in the UK and across Australia.

After WW1, there was rejoicing in Paris, but there was also an uneasy feeling that once again this peace may not be everlasting.  It seems the people of Paris decided to throw caution to the winds and simply enjoy the peace whilst it lasted.  Aspects of Paris of the time are considered including – the five major artistic movements of the era, the eccentric personalities and the visiting American jazz musicians.  This talk contains a lot of art history and sets our artists and their work within their time - and within the lively Paris of the 1920’s and 30’s.

Reading : “The Twilight Years: Paris in the 1930s” William Wiser,  Carroll&Graf publishers Inc, New York, 2000 / “Paris between the Wars: Art, Style and Glamour in the Crazy Years” Vincent Bouvet & Gerard Durozoi, Thames and Hudson 2010 / “Paris Montmartre: A Mecca of Modern Art 1860-1920” Sylvie Buisson & Christian Parisot, Editions Pierre Terrail, Paris 1996 / “Tate Modern: The Handbook”  Tate Enterprises Ltd, 2016.

Linda Collins previously talked to us in 2016 on the new Hampton Court gallery.

She is a lecturer for the Historic Royal Palaces and the National Trust, a freelance lecturer for Tate Modern and the National Gallery. She is also an Independent lecture organiser and a Member of the Association of Art Historians. 

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.  She later won 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.

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 to an entire house.  In every case, the finished works reveal unexpected associations, and can be extremely moving.

Reading : “Rachel Whiteread” by Charlotte Mullins, Tarte Publishing 2004

Linda Smith has previously talked to us in 2011 and 2017 on “James Gilray” and “Paula Rego”. Her   talk about the life and art of Paula Rego made quite an impact on members.

She holds two first-class degrees in Art History, is an experienced guide and lecturer at Tate Britain, Tate Modern and the Dulwich Picture Gallery, and lectures to secondary school audiences and independent arts societies.

This talk introduces painting in the American colonies during the second half of the 18C.  Two of the key artists in the development of English 18C and early 19C history painting were the Americans Benjamin West (1738-1820) and John Singleton Copley (1738–1815).  They were important founding members of the Royal Academy (in West’s case he succeeded Joshua Reynolds as the second and fourth President).

West was the first American artist to gain an international reputation - he initially painted portraits in 1750s Pennsylvania and New York  His most famous painting, a modern-dress history painting, caused a sensation when shown at the Royal Academy in 1771.  He was an important mentor and teacher to younger English and American artists including John Constable and Gilbert Stuart.  His impact on the development and achievements of post-Revolutionary American painting was profound.

John Singleton Copley was born in Boston, Massachusetts.  By the early 1760s he emerged as New England's best portraitist:  his startling likenesses of persons and objects in oil painting, pastels, and miniatures eclipsed anything that had been executed by his predecessors.  Copley left America in 1774 and settled in London where, while running a busy portrait studio, he produced ambitious history paintings.  The most successful of these take subjects from contemporary events such as The Death of Major Peirson of 1783 and the Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar. 

Despite having left America to escape the War of Independence, Copley Square in Boston is named after him.

Reading: “American adversaries: West and Copley in a transatlantic world” Emily Ballew Neff with Kaylin H. Weber, Houston Museum of Fine Arts 2013 / “Five Early American Painters: Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, John Trumbull”, Donald Braidin, (Meredith Press 1969).

Martin Heard previously talked to us in 2015 about four women impressionist painters Mary Cassatt, Eva Gonzales, Berthe Morrisot and Marie Braquemond.

He studied the History of Art and afterwards worked in the editorial department of a fine art publishing company.  His later career gave him the opportunity to work and live for several years in Europe and North America.  He now devotes his time to researching mainly 18C English art and late 19C French art and architecture.

Ravilious has been described as the greatest English water colourist of the 20th century and his images of the landscape and of everyday objects attract passionate devotees.  A prolific painter, printmaker and designer, he became an Official War Artist in 1939, and was killed in 1942 but his legacy is a body of work reflecting deep delight in the world in which he lived.  This talk looks at his work and that of some of his contemporaries working on the Home Front in the Second World War.

Reading : “Eric Ravilious” Alan Powers, Lund Humphries 2013 / “The War Paintings” James Russell, Mainstone press / “Ravilious & Co” Andy Friend, Thames & Hudson 2017 / “Long Live Great Bardfield” Tirzah Garwood, Persephone Press 2017

Jo Walton previously talked to us in 2009 about “Ben Nicholson – Still Lives” and in 2017 about the “Festival of Britain”.

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

This talk will take us on a tour, or even romp, of Montmartre during the mid to late 19th century. This often sinister and dangerous place with its labyrinth of winding lanes and alleyways cascading down the hill with its renowned windmills became the places of entertainment and inspiration to many artists in the area - artists such as Renoir in the Moulin de la Galette, painting his famous crowd scenes, to Toulouse Lautrec's vibrant and evocative can-can girls and late night revellers in the Moulin Rouge.

Reading : “In Montmartre – Picasso, Matisse & Modernism 1900-1910” by Sue Roe, Penquin 2015

Douglas Skeggs previously talked to us in 2004 about “Titian”. He is an art historian, international lecturer, author and TV presenter.

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, tapestries 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’ll look at the character inside the flamboyant frocks.

Reading : “Grayson Perry” Jackie Klein, Thames and Hudson 2013 / “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl”  by Grayson Perry and Wendy Jones, Penguin Books 2007 / “The Descent of Man” by Grayson Perry,  Penguin Books 2017.

Ian Swankie is a Londoner with a passion for art and architecture.  He is an official guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Guildhall Art Gallery and St Paul's Cathedral, and gives regular tours at each venue.  Also a qualified and active freelance London guide and a member of both the City of London and Westminster Guide Lecturer Associations.  Clients include WEA groups, Transport for London, the National Trust and London Open House.  In 2012 he established a weekly independent art lecture group in Richmond and gives talks on a variety of subjects.

Kahlo's paintings offer a stunning visual record of the life one of the 20th century's most gifted and original artists.  Born in Mexico City just three years before the Revolution, her works reflect a deep pride in the rich cultural heritage of her homeland, from its vibrant colours and decorative costumes to its indigenous mythological and religious traditions.  But it is the self-portraits which remain her most striking and memorable body of work:  these are not simply a record of her physical likeness but also a vehicle for exploring the dramatic and often poignant events of her life, as well as her emotions, her family, her body and her political sympathies.  Our lecture traces Frida's life and work through these powerful and often moving images, exploring themes of nationalism, proto-feminism, surrealism and auto-biography.

Reading “Frida”Hayden Herrera, Bloomsbury Publishing 2003 / 'Frida' film - available on dvd with Salma Hayek.

Sian Walters has talked to us previously on the “Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao and the Architecture of Frank Gehry” in 2014 and a special interest day in 2016 on “Exploring Venice”.

She studied history of art and was a Lecturer at the National Gallery and Surrey University, specialising in 15th and 16th century Italian painting, Spanish art and architecture, and the relationship between dance and art. She also teaches private courses, and organises lectures, study days and art holidays abroad.  She has lived in France and Italy, where she worked at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice.

Artists and designers have always imitated their predecessors.  Their motives for doing so range from genuine respect to outright parody, and the more a work is copied, adapted, quoted and repackaged, the more it lives on in the public imagination.  This is a lecture that deals with artistic borrowing, drawing on a very wide range of art and design, including painting, sculpture, photography, graphic design and fashion. The artists on whom it touches include Constable, Leonardo, Manet, Warhol, Turner, Dali, Harry Beck (creator of the Tube Map), Alexander McQueen (fashion designer), the photographers Martin Parr and Lewis Morley.  It concludes with the strange 'afterlife' of Alfred Leete's famous WW1 recruiting poster of Lord Kitchener.

Reading : “From Christ to Coke: how image becomes icon.” Martin Kemp Oxford University Press 2012 / “Turner inspired - in the Light of Claude. “ Ian Warrell Yale University Press 2012 / “Picasso – Challenging the Past” Elizabeth Cowling and Neil Cox  Yale University Press 2010 / “Appropriation: documents of contemporary art” David Evans (editor) Whitechapel Art Gallery 2009.

Barry Venning has talked to us previously - on “Cartoonists’ Views of Modern Art” in 2016 and, at short notice, on “American Abstract Art” in 2017.

He is an historian of British art with a particular interest in the work of JMW Turner, on whom he has published widely, including the volume on Turner in Phaidon's Art & Ideas series, and several catalogue essays for exhibitions in the UK, Germany, Italy and Poland.  He was the BBC's script consultant on Turner's Fighting Temeraire and has recently taken part (2013) in a BBC documentary called The Genius of Turner: Painting the Industrial Revolution.  He has also published a study of John Constable's paintings.  His interests and his teaching extend from medieval architecture to contemporary British art.  He is currently Associate Lecturer with the Open University and lecturing on a freelance basis for The Arts Society, Christie's Education and other organisations.

The talk charts opera’s close connection with the society that is paying for it and moves from the 17th and 18th century preoccupations with princely patronage, classical plots, courtly manners, high voices, enormous costumes and happy endings - through the gear change of the war and revolution to the 19th century concerns of nationalism, epic themes and doomed heroines.  The talk is based on years of writing articles, programme notes and lecturing for the Royal Opera House and the BBC.

Sarah Lenton describes this talk as her calling card.  She has spent her working life in the theatre, principally at the Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne and the English National Opera.  She gives lectures on current operas and ballets.  Broadcasts live for operas and prepares podcasts for BBC Radios 3 and 4.  She has written and directed many shows for the Royal Opera House Linbury Studio Theatre and for the Glyndebourne Touring Opera.  She is also a cartoonist.

Dublin in the 18th century was the second city of the emerging British Empire.  Viceroys, usually English noblemen, presided over a glittering society renowned for its liveliness and hospitality.  This society of Anglo-Irish nobles, gentlemen and rascally drunkards and gamblers lived in surroundings of enormous grandeur, presided over by women of singular independence such as the renowned diarist, Mrs Mary Delaney.  Their buildings were of unprecedented grandeur.  The Parliament House by Sir Edward Lovet Pearce, Trinity College and many exquisitely detailed buildings by James Gandon create a dazzling impression.  Their private houses were often conceived almost on the scale of European Palaces.

This world is looked at through contemporary records, paintings, engravings and the buildings themselves, many of which have survived.

Recommended reading : Dublin 1660 – 1860, M Craig, 1992

After a generation in University life, Tom Duncan has retired from teaching to concentrate on lecturing to a wider public, and to leading tours to his major areas of interest: the architecture and archaeology of Ireland, and the Mediterranean basin.

A story teller with a brush!  A celebrated and prolific twentieth century painter and illustrator whose work has probably been seen by a larger audience than any other artist in history!  In America his work enjoys broad popular appeal.  Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations he created for ‘The Saturday Evening Post.’ Today his work sells for millions of dollars.

The 2011 exhibition of Rockwell’s work at the Dulwich Picture Gallery was an unprecedented success.  It was the second most visited exhibition that the gallery had ever presented (beaten only by Canaletto).

Recommended reading :”The Best of Norman Rockwell” by Tom Rockwell, Sept  2005

John Ericson was formerly Director of Studies in the School of Education, University of Bath, with responsibility for the professional development of teachers.  He has worked extensively overseas as an educational consultant and this has given him the opportunity to give lectures and presentations at conferences all over the world.  In 2008 and in 2011 he undertook extensive lecture tours of Australia and he has been a popular speaker on the NADFAS circuit for a number of years.  In his professional life he has developed a particular interest in presentation skills, including the role of pictures in learning and the appropriate use of PowerPoint.

John has previously talked to us in February 2012 and February 2013 about “The World of Colour” and “Shakers of North America”

How did a German refugee from Hitler, an internee and a jobbing journalist, become the Grand Old Man of English art history? The answer lies in his extraordinary one-man survey of all the architecturally significant buildings in the country, county by county. This lecture explores what Pevsner said, rightly or wrongly, about buildings in Surrey – churches, houses, shops, town halls, tower blocks – and sets his pronouncements in the context of The Buildings of England as a whole.

Recommended reading :”Nikolaus Pevsner” by Susie Harries, 2011

Susie Harries is a writer, editor and lecturer specializing in culture, history and the arts. She has co-authored seven books with her husband, including  The Academy of St Martin in the Fields (1981), The War Artists (1983), Opera Today (1986) and A Pilgrim Soul: a Life of Elisabeth Lutyens (1989).

Her most recent book is Nikolaus Pevsner: the Life (2011), the first comprehensive biography of Pevsner, which won a Wolfson History Prize in 2012 and was short-listed for the Duff Cooper and James Tait Black Prizes. In 2015 she edited for the Victorian Society the fifth issue of ‘Studies in Victorian architecture and design’ on ‘Pevsner and Victorian architecture’.

Contemporary sculptor and installation artist Cornelia Parker is best known for her large-scale installations such as Cold Dark Matter:   An Exploded View (1991), the suspended fragments of a garden shed and its contents, which she had blown up by the British Army and installed around a single light bulb, to create the dramatic effect of an explosion frozen in time.  With such pieces as that and Thirty Pieces of Silver (1988-89), she creates works of beauty from acts of destruction, transforming everyday objects and investigating their nature and value.  This lecture explores her intriguing and thought-provoking work.

Recommended reading :”Cornelia Parker” by Iwona Blazwick and Yoko Ono,  April 2014

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

The New English Art Club was founded in 1886 as a society to promote the French influence in British art, and as an alternative to the Royal Academy.  Early members include the Glasgow Boys, the Newlyn School and the London Impressionists.  After a historical introduction, Julian Halsby looks at the paintings of contemporary members of NEAC including Ken Howard, Bernard Dunstan, Diana Armfield, Peter Kuhfeld, Fred Cuming, Tom Coates and Ruth Stage.  He shows how all their work is based on fine draughtsmanship.  Julian knows all of these artists personally and has written about all of them in articles and books.  He believes that this is a lecture which restores your confidence in modern art. 

Recommended reading :”The New English : A History of the New English Art Club” (Royal Academy of Art 2006).

Julian Halsby studied History of Art at Cambridge and was formerly Senior Lecturer and Head of Department at Croydon College of Art.  His publications include Venice - the Artist's Vision ( 1995), The Art of Diana Armfield RA (1995), Dictionary of Scottish Painters ( 4th edition 2010), A Hand to Obey the Demon's Eye (2000), Scottish Watercolours 1740-1940 (1991), A Private View - David Wolfers and the New Grafton Gallery (2002).

He interviews artists for the Artist Magazine and is a member of the International Association of Art Critics and The Critics Circle.  A practising artist, he was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1994 and appointed Keeper in 2010.

Bustling, noisy and vibrant, New York epitomises the modern city at its best and occasional worst.  This talk includes many unique images of the familiar and less familiar – including the two cathedrals, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Central Park, the Flat Iron and the refurbished Grand Central Station.

Recommended reading : The AIA Guide to New York City (2000)

Andrew John Davies is an Extra-Mural Tutor for London, Essex and The Open University; author of nine books, including The East End Nobody Knows;  frequent contributor to radio and television; has lectured all over the world; and organises walks to complement his lectures.

Andrew has previously talked to us in January 2016 on the “Rise and Fall of the British Music Hall”, and March 2009 on “The changing face of London” (Special Interest Day). In addition many of SDFAS’s members have joined him on walks around London.

In the mid-1940s a new seriousness, originality and inventiveness entered American painting through the works of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko and others.In this talk, Eric Shanes explores that tremendous breakthrough and shows how it was deeply rooted in expressing responses to modern realities, despite its non-representational or abstract imagery.

Our April speaker was to have been Eric Shanes but very sadly he died in March.

Barry Venning will now deliver the April talk and will keep to the same title. Barry last talked to us on Cartoonists and Modern Art in September 2016.

He is an Art historian who has published widely on Turner. He was the BBC's script consultant on Turner's Fighting Temeraire and has recently taken part (2013) in a BBC documentary called 'The Genius of Turner: Painting the Industrial Revolution'. He is currently an Associate Lecturer with the Open University as well as lecturing for NADFAS, Christie's Education and other organisations.

Founded in 1911, and inspired by French Post-Impressionism and working class life in London, the short-lived Camden Town Group chronicled changes in British society immediately before and during World War I, and heralded a new modern spirit in British art. A major retrospective of the group's works was held at Tate Britain in 2008. This show did not include eight of the members, among them Duncan Grant, J.D. Innes, Augustus John, Henry Lamb, Wyndham Lewis and J.B. Manson.,

Recommended reading :”The Camden Town Group” by Wendy Baron, “Modern Painters: The Camden Town Group” published by the Tate

Valerie Woodgate is a lecturer and guide in Tate Britain and Tate Modern, and in other major galleries, including the Dulwich Picture Gallery, and on religious art, in churches and cathedrals. Together with her husband she is a script-writer for Living Paintings Trust (art for the blind and partially-sighted).

Valerie has previously talked to us in April 2015 about the history of Australian Art.

Paula Rego is best known for her depictions of folk tales and strikingly unusual images of women. Her mature style places a strong emphasis on clear draughtsmanship and the human figure. She produces works which suggest complicated narratives full of psychological tension, drama, and emotion. Frequently she depicts women and girls in disturbing or ambiguous situations and poses, which has caused some controversy, but her insistence on the physicality of her female figures, and her refusal to idealise or revert to cliché, has earned her global recognition and many awards. She was made a DBE in 2010.

Recommended reading:  'Paula Rego' by Fiona Bradley, published by the Tate.

Linda Smith is a well-qualified art historian with a special interest in British art, and the art of the twentieth century. She is an experienced gallery guide, especially at Tate Modern and Tate Britain in London. She has taken on a wide range of assignments in many venues including universities, cruise liners and private arts societies in the UK and overseas.

Linda has previously talked to us about James Gilray in May 2011.

This talk explores the art, design and enormous enterprise that created the Festival 60 years ago on London's South Bank. When the Festival of Britain opened on 3rd May 1951, it was intended to offer 'A Tonic to the Nation'. In the midst of the worst weather since 1815, with strikes, disputes and a plague of rats bedevilling the site on London's South Bank, the press and the public were surprised and delighted to find an exhibition filled with ingenuity, whimsy and startling modernity.

The origins of the Festival are considered, including the 1851 Great Exhibition and the 1900 Paris World Fair. Also explored are the works created for the Festival by artists such as Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and many others, and the lasting legacies of the Festival, in the fields of architecture and design.

Recommended reading : Tonic to the Nation: Festival of Britain, 1951 by Mary Banham (Editor), Bevis Hillier (Editor)

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

Jo has previously talked to us in March 2009 about Ben Nicholson, and in November 2012 about Sir Christopher Wren and English Baroque (Special Interest Day)

Unfortunately, the date previously shown for this lecture was incorrect.  The correct date is as shown above, 22nd November 2016.

The new Cumberland Art Gallery occupies a restored suite of rooms designed by William Kent for a Georgian prince.  After two years of meticulous research Kent's Cumberland Suite has been returned as closely as possible to his original scheme. 

This new Royal Gallery houses a changing display of artworks from the Royal Collection which continues the Palace's long history as a destination for the work of renowned artists. Through this lecture we shall discover a selection of the Royal Collection's finest paintings: masterpieces by Holbein, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Bassano, Gainsborough and other artists who worked for, or were collected by, four centuries of Royal patrons.

Linda Collins is a lecturer for the Historic Royal Palaces, National Trust, Tate Modern and National Gallery, London and is also an independent lecture organiser.

This lecture looks at the painting and photography of America in the period leading up to and during the Depression, in the context of some of the literature of the period. 

The two outstanding figures in the visual arts are Edward Hopper and Walker Evans. The lecture also includes works by painters such as the so-called Regionalists, Grant Wood (of American Gothic fame) and Thomas Hart Benton, and photographers like Charles Sheeler (who was also a painter).

Particularly exciting is the linking of Walker Evans’s 1930’ photos of the rural poor with, for example, John Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’.  On the purely visual front, parallels exist between Evans’s photos taken surreptitiously on the New York subway in the late 30s and Hopper’s paintings of the same period.

Recommended reading:   ‘American Realism’  by Edward Lucie-Smith (2002), chapter 7 of ‘American Visions’ by Robert Hughes (1997), and for photographs - Tate Modern’s 2003 exhibition catalogue  ‘Cruel and Tender’ ( which is still available).

Frank Woodgate lectured to us in June 2015 on ‘John Singer Sargent - more than a modern Van Dyke’. He is a lecturer and guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, and for Tate on cruises.  He is also a lecturer at Dulwich Picture Gallery, and scriptwriter for the Living Paintings Trust (art for the blind and partially-sighted). 

Ever since the  mid-nineteenth century, modern art has been (and remains) a popular subject for satire.  Constantly changing and often seemingly bizarre, it made an irresistible target for a host of cartoonists, humorous writers and wise-guys.

Some artists, such as Gustave Courbet, welcomed their attention, in the belief that there was no such thing as bad publicity, others, like Jackson Pollock, were hurt by what they took to be an attack on their integrity.  The cartoonists themselves could be funny, cruel and, at times, extremely perceptive. From the French humourist, Cham, through the work of the gifted staff on the New Yorker, to the Daily Telegraph’s brilliant cartoonist Matt, they provide an absorbing, illuminating and, above all, a funny, revealing and sidelong view of 150 years of modern art. 

Barry Venning is currently an Associate Lecturer with the Open University and freelance lecturer with Nadfas, Christie’s Education and other organisations. He has a particular interest in J M W Turner and he took part in a 2013 BBC documentary  called ‘The Genius of Turner: Painting the Industrial Revolution.’  In 2005 he was the BBC’s script consultant and expert commentator for a documentary on Turner’s ‘Fighting Temeraire’. He has published widely on Turner, including Phaidon’s Art & Ideas series and catalogue essays for exhibitions in the UK, Germany, Italy and Poland.  He has also published a study of John Constable’s paintings.

The Schroder collection is one of the finest collections of Medieval and Renaissance silversmiths’ and goldsmiths’ work in private hands.  Mainly formed between 1870 and 1930, the collection includes masterpieces from princely collections, church treasuries and civic institutions in England, Germany, Italy and beyond, including the Dolgellau chalice and paten from the Royal Collection.  Many incorporate rare or exotic materials such as polished nautilus shells, early Chinese porcelain and carved rock crystal.

Timothy  Schroder’s publications include ‘The National Trust Book of English Domestic Silver’, ‘Renaissance Silver’ (2007), and ‘Gold and Silver in the Ashmolean Museum’ (2009).

 He will explain the history of the Schroder family silver. He is silver specialist and has been an auctioneer at Christie's, a curator of decorative arts at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a director of Partridge Fine Arts, keeper of the Gilbert Collection at Somerset House and most recently a freelance exhibition curator. He became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1994, he is a Member of Court of the Goldsmiths' Company, London, and was awarded a DLitt (Oxford) in 2013.

The artists of the Newlyn School first arrived in Newlyn, Cornwall in the early 1880s. They included such artists as Stanhope Forbes, Frank Bramley, Elizabeth Forbes and Henry Scott Tuke who had met as students in France.  They relied on contrasts of tone rather than bright colours. They startled the Royal Academy with their large, powerful pictures and became famous throughout the British Empire.

From the 1890s a younger group of artists, based at Lamorna, began to exert its influence.  It later included Harold and Laura Knight and Alfred Munnings.  They were more influenced by the impressionists and painted more freely and with brighter colours.

The talk ends with the tragic death of Florence, Alfred Munnings’ first wife and a fine portrait of her, bathed in Edwardian sunlight. 

Recommended reading:   ‘The Shining Sands – Artists in Newlyn and St.Ives’  2008 by Tom Cross, ‘Dame Laura Knight’  1988 by Caroline Fox. 

David J Evans was brought up near Newlyn and knew some of the Newlyn and Lamorna artists in their later years.  His father was closely involved with the colony and is a principal character in the novel ‘Summer in February’ by Jonathan Smith, which is about Lamorna and the artists.

He has worked in Africa, India, and the Far East with Cranfield University and Unilever. He was a member of the Council of the National Trust and lectures for the National Trust and the National Art Collections Fund.

Immortalised in Cole Porter’s lyrics ‘You’re the top! You’re a Waldorf salad’, the Waldorf Astoria hotel, New York was home to world leaders and international celebrities. Built at the height of the Depression and famous before it opened, its glittering Jazz Age interiors were created by leading European designers, artists and sculptors.

The equally iconic predecessor on Fifth Avenue, which was demolished in 1929, was also the place to meet and be seen, where high society paraded in the latest Parisian fashions in Peacock Alley, and where business tycoons and acquisitive art collectors such as J P Morgan and Henry Clay Frick met to ‘do deals’ - finance or art. This lecture recreates the stunning interiors of both hotels, the personalities who created them, and the people who met, feasted and lived there.

Recommended reading:   ‘When the Astors owned New York’ 2007 by Justin Kaplan, ‘Art Deco New York’ 2004 by Watson Guptil, also www.waldorfarchive.com for superb photographs.

Mary Alexander has thirty years’ experience as a lecturer, including public lectures in museums, tutoring for the Open University, visiting lecturer at Christie's Education in London, museum curator at Platt Hall, the Gallery of Costume, Manchester, and for ADFAS Australia and New Zealand in 2011 and 2013. She also worked in the Pentagram design consultancy in London and New York, organising conferences and special events.

She is the author of various articles on design and visual awareness issues.

Art history is peppered with sons following in their fathers’, even grandfathers’ footsteps as artists. There are also some examples of daughters taking up their fathers’ artistic careers. But mothers and sons? Far, far, rarer, which makes the lives and careers of Suzanne Valadon and Maurice Utrillo even more remarkable.

Seamstress, then acrobat and artist’s model, Suzanne Valadon posed for Renoir and  Toulouse Lautrec. Encouraged by Degas who admired her drawings, she herself became a painter. Her son Utrillo, born to her when she was only 18, also led an unconventional, often deeply troubled, existence, from which he sought escape in drink and his work.

Valadon painted portraits, still-lives and bold, challenging nudes. Utrillo’s finest work depicts the streets of Paris in an equally powerful, distinctive way. The backdrop to their often turbulent relationship was Montmartre, then the centre of artistic life in Paris.

Recommended reading:   ‘Mistress of Montmartre: A life of Suzanne Valadon’  by June Rose  

Ann Clements previously lectured to us in January 2006 on ‘George Stubbs’ and in November 2007 on ‘Artists response to Snow’.

She has wide experience lecturing at home and abroad. Her earlier work includes cataloguing English watercolours and drawings for the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, research for the Paul Mellon Foundation, and university lecturing.  

Winslow Homer (1836-1910) is very little known in the UK, although he is a national icon in the United States, being the country's greatest nineteenth century painter.

Entirely self-taught, Homer started his career as a magazine illustrator before going on to paint memorable Civil War scenes, sympathetic pictures of black people that were outstanding for their racial tolerance and understanding, portrayals of town, country and seaside life, hunting, shooting, fishing and sailing scenes, and wonderful bleak coastal seascapes, full of energy and sublimity. He even spent a year painting the fisher folk in Northumberland.

Recommended reading:    ‘Winslow Homer: An American Vision’   by Randall C. Griffin (2006)

Eric Shanes lectured to us on ‘David Hockney’ in May 2013 and the ‘History of American Art’ in January 2015.

He is a painter and curated the 2006 Dulwich Gallery exhibition of paintings by Winslow Homer. He has conducted many tours of art in America and has lectured at the National, Tate and Clore galleries. He has written widely on art with books on Warhol, Pop Art, Brancusi, Dali and 13 books on Turner. He recently retired as Chairman of the Turner Society.

This lecture examines the impact of the arts and crafts movement on design in Scandinavia, at the end of the 19th century. It includes the interiors of Karl Larsson (for many the direct precursor of the IKEA Swedish style), the metalwork of the Dane Georg Jensen (which drew heavily on the English Arts and Crafts movement), and Swedish and Danish glass and ceramics - Orrefors, Rorstrand and Copenhagen. The impact on Scandinavian designers of Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Modernism will also be assessed, bringing us up to the 1950s when Scandinavian design came of age. Scandinavian Modern, as it was christened in America, offered an ideal life-style for the post war era, based on clean lines, natural materials and the notion that ‘less is more’. Founded on principles of economy and self-reliance, Do-It-Yourself-IKEA has globalized Scandinavian Modern design. Recommended reading : ‘Scandinavian Modern Design 1880 – 1980’ by David Revere, McFadden 1982; ‘Scandinavian Ceramics and Glass in the 20th C’ by Jennifer Opie 1997.

Anne Anderson lectured to us in 2004 and 2013 on ‘Art Nouveau Glass’ and ‘Frank Lloyd Wright’. She was an archaeologist for eight years, then senior lecturer for 14 years on the Fine Arts Valuation degree courses at Southampton Solent University. She is currently Hon. Research Fellow at Exeter University, a Fletcher Jones Fellow of the Huntington Library, California, a fellow of the Henry Francis Du Pont Winterthur Museum and Library, and consultant for Lord Frederic Leighton's Studio-House, Kensington. Her 2008 exhibition ‘Ancient Landscapes, ‘Pastoral Visions – Samuel Palmer to the Ruralists’ attracted some 47,000 visitors. She has published books on Roman pottery, Art Deco teapots and Edward Burne-Jones. Her television credits include BBC's Flog It!

Lively, colourful and exuberant, the history of the English Music Hall tells us much about social history and architecture from the early nineteenth century up to the 1950s. This fully illustrated lecture will include the world’s first music hall (the Canterbury) and the oldest, active music hall (Wilton’s in the East End of London). Recommended reading: ‘The East End Nobody Knows’ 1990 by Andrew Davies , ‘Marie Lloyd’ 2001 by Midge Gillies.

Andrew Davies is an Extra-Mural Tutor for London, Essex and The Open University. He is the author of nine books, a frequent contributor to radio and television, and has lectured all over the world. SDFAS members have very much enjoyed participating in the London walks that Andrew Davies organises to complement his lectures.

This talk incorporates high quality recorded music. It begins with a history of nursery rhyme books from their humble beginnings in the 18th century to the classic productions of Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway in the 1870s and 80s. Then comes a historical examination of the rhymes themselves, concluding with a discussion of the fanciful theories developed about origins by Victorian antiquarians. For example, there is little evidence that 'Ring a Ring a Roses' has anything to do with the plague!

Recommended reading : The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes by Iona & Peter Opie (1997)

Jeremy Barlow lectured to us in May 2008 on Chopin and Parisian Artistic Life. He is a performer and writer on music. Recent books include 'The Enraged Musician: Hogarth's Musical Imagery' (Ashgate) and 'The Cat and the Fiddle: Images of Musical Humour from the Middle Ages to Modern Times' (Bodleian Library). He contributed more than 150 entries to the 'Oxford Companion to Shakespeare'. His many CDs include the complete 'Beggar's Opera' (Hyperion), which received an Edison award.

David Battie reports that this is his most requested lecture.

David Battie has appeared on Antiques Roadshow since its first programme was broadcast. He began his career in the Arts when he joined Sotheby’s as a porter in 1967; he rose to be Director from 1976. His writing includes the editing of Sotheby’s encyclopaedias of Porcelain and Glass, and books including “Understanding 19C British Porcelain”.

Louis Comfort Tiffany was the son of the founder of “Tiffany and Company”. He is the American artist most associated with the Art Nouveau and Aesthetic movements. The US President Chester Alan Arthur commissioned him to refurnish 5 of the rooms in the White House. He also designed glass, stained glass, lamps, mosaics, enamel, jewellery and pottery; and established factories to produce them.

Eric Knowles has over twenty five years' experience lecturing to museums and galleries around the world, including the V&A, British Museum, Ashmolean Museum, Art Deco Society of New York, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, and the South African Antique Dealers Fair, along with countless antique societies in the UK. He hosts fine art, antiques and architectural trips in the UK, USA and Europe, and has broadcast for thirty years with the BBC's Antiques Roadshow.

Hans Christian Andersen was an artist not only with words. As a child he made puppet costumes; later he sketched and made extraordinary collages, together with papercuts of swans, ballet dancers, court ladies and dancing millers, based on folk tales. He was a passionate traveller over much of Europe and part of Asia and was a sharp observer of human nature, including his own. He was thrilled by the scientific discoveries of his day, anticipating the Channel Tunnel in a story THE MILLENIUM in which young Americans see over Europe in a week, directed by their guidebook entitled EUROPE IN SEVEN DAYS - foresighted for the 1860's. The lecture is illustrated by Andersen's own sketches, papercuts and collages; by illustrations to the Stories by artists from all over the world, and by paintings from Andersen's contemporaries; artists of what has since been described as the Golden Age of Danish Painting.

Recommended reading : The Wild Swan (biography) Monica Stirling, The Fairy Tale of My Life & A Poet’s Bazaar (his travels) both by H.C. Andersen.

Karin Fernald has been a NADFAS lecturer for 25 years, and has lectured in Australia, New Zealand, Brussels and Germany and Japan. In January 2013 she gave a course of three lectures on Hans Christian Andersen's life, stories, papercuts and travels, at the University of Cape Town Summer School. She undertakes extensive research into diaries and letters to bring writers from the 18th and 19th centuries to vivid life. She began in the theatre, and portrayed Anne Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga. She has also published a children's book on Queen Victoria's fraught childhood, “The Dumpy Princess”.

Born in Florence in 1856 to American parents, Sargent spent a nomadic childhood before going to Paris to study painting. He learned quickly and by the 1880s had begun the steady climb to fame that ultimately placed him at the centre of his world, with a circle of friends and rivals that included Henry James, Claude Monet, and James McNeill Whistler and patrons such as Isabella Stewart Gardner. In his lecture Frank Woodgate looks beyond the ravishing society portraits for which John Singer Sargent is so famous.

Recommended reading : “John Singer Sargent” by Carter Radcliff.

Frank Woodgate is a Lecturer and Guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, and for Tate on cruises. He is also a Lecturer at Dulwich Picture Gallery and scriptwriter for the Living Paintings Trust (art for the blind and partially-sighted).

Ian Pickford is a well known lecturer, writer and broadcaster. He is a Freeman of the Goldsmiths Company and of the City of London and is a Member of the Panel of Advisers on Antique Plate to the Goldsmiths Hall. He has lectured widely and is a Consultant to Dreweatts and Bonhams Silver Departments. He is also the author of a number of books and numerous articles on antique silver. He has broadcast on radio and his is a familiar face on television, particularly on The Antiques Roadshow, the Priceless Antiques Roadshow, The Great Antiques Hunt and Collectors World.

Andy McConnell is one of Britain’s leading authorities on glassware of all types, and his books have covered the subject from 1650 to the present. He is the first glass specialist recruited to BBC TV’s Antiques Roadshow, for which he has now recorded five series. He lectures widely on glass and has written for journals as diverse as The Times, Country Life, BBC Homes & Antiques and Glass Circle News. His 550-page opus, The Decanter, An Illustrated History of Glass from 1650, covers the ‘antique period’, whilst the research for his new, best-selling 20th Century Glass led him on a voyage of discovery across Europe. This quest, involving visits to glassworks in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Czech Republic and Venice, has resulted in his richly illustrated new book, 20th Century Glass. Andy is a witty, spontaneous speaker who is delighted to share his knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject with the audience on the day. He says that his mission is to engage, entertain and educate. He has never delivered the same talk twice, doesn’t work from notes and rearranges his slides for every talk. ‘I am serious about my subject, but a lecturer’s primarily responsibility is to take the audience with him. By the end of a talk, nobody should be left regretting their decision to abandon a comfy fireside armchair for a hard seat in a hall’. Andy owns around 25,000 pieces of glass and 20,000 glass-related images. He has 15 prepared talks and willing to create new ones directed towards specific locations, events or themes. He also welcomes Study Day groups of up to 50 to Glass Etc, at Rye, East Sussex, the site of his shop/exhibition complex.