This Special Interest Day with Aliki Braine explores developments and innovations in the production of paintings in Western Europe, from the Renaissance to the present, by investigating and demonstrating different materials and techniques. The day starts with presentations about egg tempera painting and the use of silverpoint, followed by the development of oil paintings and use of impasto, finishing with printmaking and photography, to give us a fuller understanding of how masterpieces were made.

Alike Braine was born in Paris in 1976.  She 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. After working for the National Gallery for 20 years, she now teaches for Christie’s Education and the Wallace Collection and is an Associate Lecturer for the Camberwell College of Art, University of the Arts London. Aliki is also a practising artist who regularly exhibits her photographic work internationally.

Tickets £30 include a light lunch

On sale at our January and February meetings

Tickets £30 include a light lunch

On sale at our October meeting.

Blenheim Palace has been used as a filming location in a wide variety of TV programmes and adverts and has appeared in both Hollywood and Bollywood blockbusters.  It has starred in films such as Hamlet, The Young Victoria, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Gulliver's Travels and more recently, Mission Impossible 5, Spectre and the popular Netflix series, Queen Charlotte and Bridgerton.   Antonia will explain what happens at the Palace when Hollywood descends and will also look at how TV documentaries and films are made there, sometimes involving the colourful characters who work at the Palace. 

Antonia joined Blenheim Palace in 2008 as a member of the Education Team, later becoming the Palace’s Social Historian and Researcher. Both roles have involved her curating a number of Palace exhibitions.  An experienced public speaker, both virtually and in person, Antonia has been ‘In Conversation’ with fashion editor Caroline Issa, designers Stephen Jones and Zandra Rhodes and TV and radio presenter Sue Perkins. She has been a guest on Radio 4’s Saturday Live with the Reverend Richard Coles and has made various TV appearances.   

Tickets available at our next meetings

This lecture argues that the modern Olympics owe more to Victorian Britain than to classical Greece. With their love of rules and regulations, often allied to their passion for gambling, British pioneers of the 19th century revolutionised the way ordinary people ‘played the game’. WG Grace made cricket a national obsession. The Scots refashioned ancient games such as golf, football and bowls. The invention of the lawnmower and of vulcanised rubber heralded the invention of lawn tennis. Artificial ice rinks, shale running tracks, indoor swimming pools and landscaped golf courses – all were made possible by Victorian innovators. 

Writer and historian Simon Inglis specialises in the architecture and heritage of sport and recreation. 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. Since gaining a history degree at University College London, he has freelanced for various publications, been a regular contributor to radio and television, has edited numerous technical guidelines on stadium design and safety, 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. One highpoint in his work for English Heritage was the listing of a 1970s skatepark in Essex, a world first that made the 10 o'clock news. 

The day runs from 10.00 to 15.00 to include a light lunch.  Tickets are £30.00 and we'll let you know when they will be on sale.

London’s sumptuous Victorian and Edwardian department stores changed the capital – and changed its women. Shoppers of every rank were lavishly wooed, seduced and often undone by the temptations laid out before them in these new ‘cathedrals of desire’. This varied and fascinating day brings to life the untold stories behind objects, institutions and ‘invisible’ people of the Victorian and Edwardian era.

Tessa Boase is a freelance journalist, author, lecturer and campaigner with an interest in uncovering the stories of invisible women from the 19th and early 20th-centuries – revealing how they drove industry, propped up society and influenced politics.

She’s the author of three books of social history: The Housekeeper’s Tale: The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House (2014); Etta Lemon: The Woman Who Saved the Birds (first published as Mrs Pankhurst’s Purple Feather in 2018), and London’s Lost Department Stores: A Vanished World of Dazzle and Dreams (2022). Since uncovering the feminist origins of the RSPB, Tessa has been campaigning for public recognition of its female founders with plaques, portraits and a statue. 

The day runs from 10.00 to 15.00 to include a light lunch.  Tickets are £30.00 and will be on sale at the September and October lecture meetings.

The event will last from 10.00 am to 3.00 pm

Harry Venning was an incredibly popular lecturer at Sanderstead Arts Society last year. He had everyone in fits of laughter explaining why cartoons and cartoonists are so great. We therefore decided to ask Harry to run a cartoon workshop for our March 2024 SID.

You can learn how to transform a flat piece of paper into a riot of laughs, an explosion of adventure, a cacophony of sound and a gobsmack of disbelief. All shot through with the real emotion that comes from drawing eyebrows in just the right position. Discover the many uses of the humble asterisk, how to do a caricature, when to use a speech bubble.

Come and have fun- no talent necessary!

Harry Venning graduated from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth 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.

He has had work published in the UK and abroad, including the strip Clare in the Community which was a weekly feature in The Guardian from 1996. In 2016 he was awarded Strip Cartoonist of the Year by the UK Cartoon Trust.

He is also a Sony Award winning writer of radio comedy, including the shows Coach Karen’s Half Time Team Talk and Clare in the Community starring Sally Phillips, currently recording its twelfth series.

For the last ten years he has been performing his cartoon workshop Release Your Inner Cartoonist in its many different guises, to audiences as diverse as schoolchildren, business executives and festival goers.

He admits that he can’t draw hands or horses!

Tickets will be on sale at the January and February meetings. Cost £28 to include coffee before the lecture and a light lunch.

The day runs from 10.00am to 3.00pm with a break for lunch.

J.M.W. Turner is one of Britain’s best known artists, responsible for some of the world’s most famous landscape paintings (who, after all, doesn’t know ‘The Fighting Temeraire’!). This study day, however, offers an insight into a more private and unfamiliar Turner, examining in detail some of the lesser-known areas of his output such as his sketchbooks and watercolour studies. It unlocks some of the secrets of his extraordinary technical genius and reveals the truth behind some of the oft-repeated myths. 

Nicola Moorby 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.

Tickets will be on sale at the September and October 2023 meetings.

Cost £28 to include coffee before the lecture and a light lunch.

The day runs from 10.00am to 3.00pm with a break for lunch.  In the afternoon there will be a mini-Antiques Roadshow, with an interactive identification and valuation event of 20th century ceramics and glass items brought in from home by members who attend the event. It promises to be a fun and lively end to the day!

Mark Hill 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. He was co-author of the internationally published Collectables Price Guide with Judith Miller from 2002 to 2017.

Mark founded his own publishing company in 2005 and has published over 12 books on specialist subjects in the decorative arts.  He has appeared on BBC2's Antiques Roads Trip and has co-presented three primetime TV series on antiques and collecting for BBC2.

Mark is a Senior Vice President at a company offering digital solutions to the antiques industry.  He has lectured across the world, including at the V&A in London, and contributed to many newspapers, magazines and radio and TV programmes.  Mark is a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Arts Scholars and a Freeman of the City of London.

Tickets will be on sale at the January and February 2023 lecture meetings.

Or contact Jackie Godfrey on 020 8647 7602 

Cost £25 to include coffee before the lecture and a light lunch.

10.00am to 3.00pm with a break for lunch

The operas of Gilbert & Sullivan are rich in contemporary satire and witty personal allusions. This lecture tells how each of the 14 operas, on which the partners collaborated, drew inspiration from the world in which they lived by drawing on celebrities, politicians, social mores, manners, artistic taste, as well as the class system. The lecture explains how the then first Lord of the Admiralty, WH Smith, became the model for Sir Joseph Porter KCB in HMS Pinafore, how Oscar Wilde inspired Bunthorne in Patience, and how Gilbert himself may have been the model for the Judge in Trial by Jury.

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.

Cost £25 to include a light lunch.  Tickets are on sale from 9.30 am at the September and October 2022 lecture meetings.          

It is often argued that Britain possesses the finest collection of ‘living’ stately homes in the world. It is harder to deny that they represent one of the country's greatest assets and its greatest contribution to the decorative arts worldwide.

This lecture goes back in time to explain their origins in British history, the changing nature of society and the way country houses have evolved. This journey through their history illustrates the most magnificent examples in all their grandeur and beauty, while considering the impact they have had on society and its development. Consideration is given to changing roles and if they can still exert a powerful hold on society. How should we look on them today and how are they to survive and evolve in the future? 

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

Committed to the 'search for civilisation' and as an advocate of nonviolence, he is the founder of The Chandos; supporting causes that promote understanding and cooperation, is on the committee for Uniting for Peace and a contributor to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Democracy in Burma. He is author of the book ‘Evolving the Spirit - From Democracy to Peace' commended by Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Laureate, as meaning a great deal to her. He was also Founder of the Brockley Festival of Ideas and a Founding Advocate of CIVIL-ISATION. He is currently undertaking research for a new book on civilisation; what it is, whether we have it and how you get it.

Tickets for this Special Interest Day, to include a light lunch, will be on sale from 9-30 a.m. at the March and April 2022 lecture meetings.

This Special Interest Day looks at the fascinating process by which young boys were selected and sponsored to take the Imperial Examinations with the objective of eventually being appointed as a Civil Official in the Court and Government of the Chinese Emperor. Consideration will be given to the highly complex system of regulated insignia and costume that officials had to adhere to whilst conducting their duties.

David Rosier, our speaker lived in Asia for more than 25 years and whilst living in Hong Kong, he assembled a collection of more than 700 predominantly Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), Imperial and related textiles and costume accessories.

Tickets for this Special Interest Day, to include a light lunch, will be on sale from 9-30 a.m. at the November 2019 and January 2020 lecture meetings.

10.30 am to 3.00 pm to include a light lunch.  Coffee will be served from 10.00 am

In this Special Interest Day John tells the extraordinary story of the Shakers of North America, exploring their beginnings, what they believed and how they lived their lives before examining examples of their wonderful buildings and furniture.  For it is only with such an understanding of their devout faith and way of life that we can begin to appreciate their intriguing legacy.

Tickets for this event will be on sale from 9.30 am at the September 2019 meeting.

10.30 am to 3.00 pm to include a light lunch.  Coffee will be served from 10.00 am

The Special Interest Day will explore Theatre during the period from Charles 11 to David Garrick

Theatre had officially closed for 18 years under the Puritan Government when Charles II returned to England and re-opened the playhouses, giving patents to two actors to open theatres in London and making it legal for women to act on the stage.

Restoration Theatre reflected the explosion of immorality and freedom associated with the restoration.  Fun though it was, Theatre became ill-disciplined both in performance and in audience behaviour and a place to which respectable people would not go.

Over the next hundred years actors and managers like David Garrick sought to create a professional and artistically respected art form.

Tickets for this event will be on sale from 9.30 am at the November 2018 meeting.

Tuesday, 13th November 2018.  10.30 am to 3.00 pm to include a light lunch.  Coffee will be served from 10.00 am.

The language of symbols is a fascinating study and one that is essential for a full understanding of art, whether medieval or modern.

This Special Interest Day looks at paintings from the 14th to 20th centuries to examine the way in which artists have used signs and symbols to give deeper layers of meaning to their work.

The day will explore the interpretation of symbols in Christian art and in Greek myths which can be read as Christian allegories; the use of signs and symbols in 17th century Dutch painting in Hogarth’s Moralities, in Victorian art and in modern artists’ use of both traditional and personal symbols to produce some of the most powerful works of 20th century art.

Tickets  for this event will be on sale from 9.30 a.m. at the September 2018 meeting.

Tuesday, 6th February 2018 10.30 am to 3.00 pm to include a light lunch.  Coffee will be served from 10.00 am.

On our Special Interest Day we will be taken on a journey beginning in Outer Mongolia in the 5th century BC and follow the 11th century migrations from Turkmenistan, the cradle of weaving, into the Caucasus, Persia and Afghanistan. We will be introduced to the nomadic tribes of these countries and their woven rugs, carpets and dowry bags, with particular emphasis on those of the 19th century and earlier. These tribal weavings illustrate the skill of the women who produced exquisite works of woven art, using vegetable colours and age-old designs whilst living and travelling in primitive conditions and hostile landscapes.

The tribal weavings of the 19th century and earlier represent the pinnacle of achievement and wonderful free expressions of the art of the weaver.

Today, these weavings are highly desirable and collectable works of woven art.

Tickets for this event will be on sale from 9.30 a.m. at the January 2018 meeting.

Tuesday, 7th November 2017.  10.30 am to 3.00 pm (to include a light lunch).  Coffee will be served from 10.00 am.

At the turn of the 20th century Glasgow was the centre for an avant-garde movement of art and design innovation in Europe, which we now refer to as The Glasgow Style.  While the ‘Glasgow Boys’ group of painters has been widely written about, their female contemporaries have received far less attention.

Dr Sally Hoban, our speaker for the Study Day, will look at the fascinating but little known contribution that women designers made to the art and design in Glasgow in the late 19th and early 20th entries. 

Women such as Margaret and Frances MacDonald and Jessie Marion King produced exquisite metalwork, jewellery, textiles and book designs and received international recognition for their work.  Dr Hoban will also discuss their achievements in the wider context of women in art and design at the time.

The speaker will be Rachel Ward who was Curator of Arab-Islamic material at the British Museum from 1983-2000 and Director/Vice President of the Royal Asiatic Society from 2002-2008.  Rachel will cover the most decorative of the decorative arts, inlaid metalwork, painted pottery and enameled glass, of the Islamic world.  Her published works include books on Suleyman the Magnificent and Islamic Metalwork and Enameled Glass.

10.30 am to 3.00 pm (to include a light lunch).  Coffee will be served from 10. am.

Simon Rees was Dramaturg at Welsh National Opera in Cardiff for over twenty years, working with set, costume and props designers.

The study day will explore opera from its beginning to the present day and will be illustrated by costume and set designs, early photographs, modern pictorial records and musical examples.

A study of the history of textile dyes from pre-history to the present day and how they have been used in tapestry - the ultimate wall decorations.

10.30 am to 3.00 pm (including a light lunch).  Coffee from 10.00 am.

Dr Kay-Williams is the Chief Executive of the Royal School of Needlework, Hampton Court.

Coffee served from 10.00 am. Tickets to include lunch at £22 will be on sale from 9.30 am at the SDFAS meetings on 25th November and 27th January 2015.

10.30 am to 3.00 pm (including lunch). Coffee served from 10.00 am. The remaining 15 tickets for this Study Day will be on sale at the meeting on 28th January 2014 from 9.30 am at £20 each.

Jonathan Hinden was the Principal Coach and Head of Music Staff at Glyndebourne, Professor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and at the Royal Academy of Music. He is a Tutor at the National Opera Studio, and a frequent lecturer on operatic subjects for NADFAS and other cultural societies.