Leading Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones was consumed for decades by his Briar Rose series of paintings, one of the greatest works of Victorian art. They tell the story of Sleeping Beauty in a mystical dream-world that intertwines medieval romance, decorative craftsmanship and natural beauty. Their exhibition in 1890 caused a sensation, and artists, royalty and thousands of ordinary people flocked to see them. This lecture will look at these beautiful paintings in depth, and recount their creation, exhibition, and the magnificent setting that Burne-Jones designed for them at Buscot Park in Oxfordshire, where they still hang today.

About the lecturer:  Dr Amy Lim is an art historian and curator, specialising in British fine and decorative arts from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. She is curator of the Faringdon Collection at Buscot Park, Oxfordshire, and of the Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham. She is also an exhibition researcher at Tate, contributing to British Baroque: Power and Illusion (2020) and the forthcoming Women Artists in Britain. Amy has degrees in History and Literature & Arts from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. She runs an online art dealership, and has published articles and essays on a variety of art-related topics from gothic garden monuments to female patronage.

Winston Churchill came to fine art in early middle age. This lecture explains why the great man began to paint, considers some of the subjects he chose and the style he adopted.

About the lecturer: Angela Smith PhD from the Warburg Institute, London University. Author of numerous articles and several books including A Timeline of Art History (2013). Experienced lecturer who has taught for several universities. Catalogued paintings in galleries for the National Inventory Research Project. Has led a number of cultural tours on the continent and has lectured for several cruise lines. Regularly runs courses of study days for The Arts Society on subjects including ‘Women artists down the centuries’ and English church art and architecture. Has contributed to television programmes, most recently an episode of Digging up Britain’s Past.

This lecture draws on Elizabeth’s time in Morocco in visits spanning more than 25 years. The lecture focuses particularly 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 who restored Majorelle’s Marrakech garden, via Modernist Orientalist art and a protected mollusk...

About the lecturer:  Elizabeth Gowing studied at Magdalen College Oxford before training as a teacher and working in Lambeth, Hackney and Islington. 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. Speaks fluent Albanian and has translated two books (the unauthorised biography of Yugoslavia’s longest-held political prisoner, Adem Demaci, and the memoirs of one of the leaders of the 1912 uprising). Also the author of four books about Kosovo – Travels in Blood and Honey; becoming a beekeeper in Kosovo (2011), Edith and I; on the trail of an Edwardian traveller in Kosovo (2013); The Rubbish-Picker’s Wife; an unlikely friendship in Kosovo (2015) and The Silver Thread; a journey through Balkan craftmanship (2017). Regular contributor to Radio 4 (Saturday Live, Excess Baggage, From Our Own Correspondent) and the BBC World Service. Member of the advisory board of GuideKS, the NGO for Kosovan tour guides, and of the board of Faktoje, the Albanian 

Image  Jardin Majorelle   Carlos ZGZ

The earliest cars were purely functional and lacked even the most basic of passenger comforts, such as doors or even windscreens to protect passengers from the elements. However, progress was rapid and by the mid-1920s we entered a golden age of automobile design. A new generation of stylish cars were influenced by the art deco movement and the ‘Great Gatsby era’ included some of the most famous and fabulous cars ever built. This period was followed by the Streamline Moderne influenced cars of the 1930s and 40s, with aerodynamic shapes and lots of chrome detailing. This talk covers some of the most beautiful cars ever built, and focuses on the work of the coachbuilders, who were inspired by the art movements and created ‘mobile works of art’. 

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

This lecture explores Art Deco jewellery during the 1920s and 30s. These were decades when jewellery was still widely worn in society and diamonds predominated. The title quotation - and indeed the term Art Deco - comes from the 1925 Paris Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs, at which a breathtaking selection of jewellery was shown. The lecture covers work by the finest makers of the period, especially those from Paris (Cartier, Boucheron, Fouquet, Van Cleef & Arpels and Chanel) alongside other major houses like Tiffany in New York. It was a time when jewellery responded very directly to women’s lives being less constrained, something illustrated in the lecture with lots of entertaining contemporary references and a colourful cast of characters - from Hollywood to aristocrats and royalty.

About the lecturer:  Clare Phillips (M.A. Royal College of Art, London) has been a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum since 1989. As a jewellery historian she is part of the small team dedicated to the V&A’s jewellery collection and is the author of the V&A’s classic book ‘Jewels & Jewellery’. In addition to her work with the permanent collection, she has been responsible for the more focussed jewellery content within many major V&A exhibitions from ‘Art Nouveau: 1890-1914’ in 2000 to ‘Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up’ in 2018

Medieval bestiaries are wondrously colourful worlds, blending fact with fiction, morality with mythology. They represent an understanding of the physical world, but also fulfilled the need for symbolic creatures to supplement biblical stories, offering a wide array of noble or crude behaviours with which to compare ourselves. What happened if you chased a bonnacon? What was a beaver's superpower? What did owls mean? And how did animals graduate from bestiaries into the realm of heraldry? In the course of an hour, we'll explore all these and more.

About the Lecturer:  Dr Jonathan Foyle is not an 'establishment' academic, but uses the original research he has gained over a 25-year practical career in the world of historic buildings and applied arts to inform architectural conservation projects, broadcasts, books, articles, and talks for groups including the Arts Society. A former Curator at Hampton Court, and Chief Executive of World Monuments Fund Britain for eight years, he has authored seven volumes on great cathedrals and castles, and is best known for presenting series such as BBC2's Broadcast Award-winning Climbing Great Buildings and contributing to series like Channel 4's Time Team and currently Channel 5's Secrets of the Palaces.

THIS LECTURE WILL TAKE PLACE AT THE CORN EXCHANGE AND THE TIME HAS BEEN CHANGED TO 7.30PM

THE CHRISTMAS PARTY (ticketed event) will take place before the lecture.

Robert Keable was a famous novelist in the 1920s who is virtually unknown today. His first novel Simon Called Peter, about a WW1 chaplain's affair with a nurse, shocked many, was name checked in The Great Gatsby, and became a huge international best seller. What no one knew at the time was it was semi-autobiographical. His grandson tells the extraordinary story of the book and of the author's life. Robert Keable was a Cambridge educated priest who served as a missionary in Africa, before becoming chaplain to ill-treated black labourers in France. After the war he left the church, and his wife, and ran away to Tahiti with his mistress to live for a year in Paul Gauguin’s house. He stayed in Tahiti, built his own house, continued writing and married a Tahitian princess.

About the lecturer

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 (to be published next year) and Genealogy Today. He is a regular speaker at events run by Western Front Associations, U3As and Family History Societies. 

The Seventeenth Century Golden Age in Dutch painting coincided with political and spiritual independence from ruling Spain. Increasing mercantile prosperity provided new patrons of the arts who no longer wanted pictures containing a traditional iconography related to the Catholic Church. Artists needed to respond to the moral issues of the day with a new artistic code of interpretation. Into this world we meet Frans Hals, Rembrandt and Vermeer, together with artists less well known who specialised in topics such as the new “still life” painting. Such images were full of hidden meaning that had to be decoded. They were then contemplated and reflected upon with the same degree of reverence that had hitherto been accorded to their religious predecessors. 

About the lecturer

Alice has lectured for Oxford University Department of Continuing Education since 1998. She lectures regularly at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and at the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock. Her busy freelance career includes organising History of Art study days with colleagues, and regular weekly classes in Oxfordshire and Worcestershire. In 2004 Alice joined The Arts Society and has lectured in Britain and in Europe. In 2025 she undertakes tours of Australia and New Zealand.  Since 2003 Alice has been a tutor on study holidays in Italy. Currently, Alice is a residential tutor at the Argyll Hotel on the Isle of Iona, specialising in Scottish art.   In 2010 she was elected President of Banbury Fine Arts Society.

Image: Creative Commons 0 - Public Domain. Optional attribution: Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust, licensed under CC0  The Music Lesson, 1670-72
By Jacob Ochtervelt  Bequeathed by E E Cook through the National Art Collections Fund, 1955.

Jane Austen was a gifted social satirist.  Despite the fact that her novels are best known today as love stories, throughout her work she takes delight in lampooning human folly and vanity.  We know that Austen was inspired by satirical writings of the 18th century, but to what extent may she have been influenced by the satirical art of her day?  This lecture will explore links between the visual image and the written word; it will draw on a range of satirical prints published during Austen’s lifetime – including those by Thomas Rowlandson and James Gillray - and consider how far these visual images may have influenced and inspired one of our greatest and best loved novelists.

About the lecturer

Following a career in teaching, Annalie spent several years working on education programmes at museums and literary houses across the UK, including the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere; Wordsworth House in Cockermouth; Jane Austen’s House in Hampshire; and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. At Jane Austen’s House, Annalie won 2 Sandford Awards for Excellence in Heritage Education; she also worked with the British Library, the Bodleian Library, and Chawton House Library in promoting Austen’s work to young people.  Annalie’s lectures focus on aspects of Romantic and Victorian literature.

Image James Gillray, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: Matrimonial Harmonics

This fast moving lecture charts opera from its classic 17th century beginnings to its evolution in the 18th (brocade, high voices, happy endings) and on through war and revolution to the 19th (nationalism, grand opera, and dead sopranos). As we hit the troubled 20th century the genre begins to spin out of control but, to everyone’s surprise, it’s landed in the 21st in good shape, with more festivals and opera houses than ever. On the way we discover how closely connected opera is with the politics and tastes of the people who pay for it.

About the lecturer

Sarah Lenton has spent her working life in the theatre: her principal employers are the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Garsington Opera. She writes programme articles, radio and play scripts, gives lectures on the operas and ballets in the rep. and broadcasts regularly for BBC Radios 3 and 4. She is also a cartoonist.

Image: Enrico Caruso Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It wasn’t just L S Lowry who was inspired to paint Manchester, the northern powerhouse that burst onto the world stage as Cottonopolis during the Industrial Revolution. This lecture explores the history of the city as seen through the eyes of artists, from George Cruikshank, a Londoner who was moved to put pen to paper by a great event which unfolded here - the Peterloo Massacre – to Adolphe Valette, the Manchester Impressionist, and ending with Halima Cassell, a contemporary sculptor whose fascination with the buildings of the city began with childhood visits here and inspired her later work.

Julia Marwood our lecturer became an Accredited Lecturer of The Arts Society in 2020, specialising in Scottish art from 1880 and the art of Manchester.  She will also be our guide when we go round the Manchester Art Gallery.

Image:  Adolphe Valette's Albert Square of 1910, which belongs to Manchester Art Gallery and is in the public domain

Born at the end of the fifteenth century, Tiziano Vecellio came from Pieve di Cadore as a child to work as an apprentice in the studio of Giovanni Bellini alongside another artist who would soon become a master, Giorgione. Catapulted into a world where painting with oil on canvas was becoming the prominent art form, he became the first artist to truly be dominant. Michelangelo famously noted 'If only he had learned to draw, Titian would have become a Great.', but his style inspired subsequent painters, from Diego Velasquez, Rubens, Van Dyck and eventually, in the twentieth century, Gerhard Richter and Cecily Brown.

About the lecturer

A passionate arts educator, lecturer, and guide, based in London and Italy. Director of the highly regarded John Hall Venice Course, (est. 1965) Tour lecturer and leader for Kirker Holidays since 2013, and of independent tours in Italy. Designer and host of a series of art talks and events for the Soho House group of private member’s clubs. Designed and led courses for Christie’s Education and The Serpentine Gallery ‘Collector’s Circle’.

Image: Titian, Gypsy Madonna Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, Collection: Kunsthistorisches Museum 

Modern sculpture is mysterious to many people, notoriously difficult and inaccessible both to look at and in the endless critical expositions which complicate more than they clarify. The works of Epstein, Moore, Hepworth, Frink and their contemporaries stand at the heart of our time, yet too often we are intimidated where we should be enthralled. The story of sculpture through the 20th century shows form manipulated to explore emotion as well as appearance, materials dictating meaning as well as shape and a three-dimensional language used as expressively as any poet or novelist to reveal the rhythms and meanings of life itself.

About the lecturer:  

Justine studied History of Art at the Courtauld Institute. Has lectured regularly for Tate Britain, Tate Modern, V&A, National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, as well as to Oxbridge and Bristol Universities, Christie's Fine Art, the Art Fund, and groups such as the Bradford on Avon Arts Association, Friends of Covent Garden and U3A. Publications include, amongst others, The Art of John Martin (2001), Michael Ayrton: A Biography (1994) and articles for Apollo Magazine and Modern Painters. Has also broadcast on Flowers in Art for BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour.  

Image:  Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound 1914 (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC) 

Before the British arrived in India, the Indian subcontinent was ruled by the Mughal Emperors. The stunning buildings and gardens they constructed from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century have left an indelible stamp on India’s architectural and cultural landscape. Mughal architecture fused elements from Islamic, Persian, Turkish and Indian architectural traditions, and gave rise to some of the most beautiful and iconic buildings in the world.

About the lecturer

Dr John Stevens gained his PhD in History from UCL, before going on to teach British Imperial History, Indian History and Bengali Language at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, University of London). His biography of the Indian guru Keshab Chandra Sen – Keshab: Bengal’s Forgotten Prophet - was published by Hurst and Oxford University Press in 2018. He is a regular visitor to India and Bangladesh and has lectured at numerous Indian universities. He also works as a consultant on Indian affairs and teaches the Bengali language to private students. He has appeared many times in the Indian media, and was a guest on BBC Radio Four’s In Our Time, discussing the poet and artist Rabindranath Tagore.

Image: Wikimedia Commons Gangaram Chintaman Tambat - A Mongul Garden in Aurungabad - B1977.14.22353 - Yale Center for British Art.jpg

The British medicine for all - but the legacy of tea has strands that are woven deep into our culture. This lecture will explore the highlights of this fascinating history that spans the globe and impacts silver, ceramics, legends and houses. 

About the lecturer:

Dr. Emma Watts is an Art Historian with specialist interest in the economics of art, British art and material culture. Her career began in the fine art auction world and she has since had a successful academic career in the UK, Australia and Hong Kong. Dr. Watts is passionate about access to the fine arts and its education. She has developed National, tertiary and adult education curricula and been active in policy, planning, education and advisory boards for Heritage, Arts and Museums and curatorial and collection management in Australia and the UK. She is currently enjoying the diversity of consultancy, through lecturing with the Open University, and writing.

Image: Wikimedia CC Zero: Chinese_ceramics_in_the_Robert_Lehman_Collection_(Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art)

Marcel Duchamp is most famous for attempting to exhibit a urinal as a piece of sculpture but there is much more to this artist than sanitary ware. He is arguably the most influential artist of the second half of twentieth century being credited with paving the way for conceptual art and postmodernism. Because he is so influential on today’s art we tend to think of him as a much more recent artist than in fact he was. Duchamp was born in 1887 and started out as a member of the Cubist group. We’ll look at the whole of this fascinating and elusive artist’s career. If you think Grayson Perry was the first to use cross-dressing in their work think again.

LECTURER:  COLIN PINK

Colin Pink has a BA in Philosophy and Politics from the University of Southampton and a MA in the History of Art from Birkbeck, University of London. He specialises in twentieth century and contemporary art in Europe and North America.

Immerse yourself in a world of carnations, tulips, hyacinths and roses as you discover the history of the famous Turkish Iznik ceramics.  Iznik pottery represents one of the most technologically refined and aesthetically arresting traditions in the history of Islamic ceramics.  Though the Iznik tradition seems to have been intially inspired by imported Chinese blue-and-white porcelain, by the 1550s, Iznik pottery had been transformed. Working in collaboration with the imperial Ottoman atelier in Istanbul (nakkash-hane), Iznik potters helped to create a style that epitomized an empire and was eventually sought after far from Istanbul. The tulip and carnation motif was particularly popular and appears on book bindings, paper borders, and textiles made for the Ottoman court. The craze for tulips was not limited to ornament, however. The real flowers were cultivated in Istanbul’s gardens, and the bulbs were exported to Europe. 

Image: Tankard (Hanap) with Tulips, Hyacinths, Roses, and Carnations Art Institute of Chicago Mary Jane Gunsaulus Collection

This lecture will be hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all Dorset County members. Guests are welcome in person for £5 at DORFORD HALL. Guests wishing to book a zoom link (£6) should do so via Ticket Source, found on the Home Page tab of this website. If this is difficult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

This talk examines the complex and fascinating story of how Pantomime developed out of its Greek and Roman roots through to the religious plays of the Middle Ages and the Italian Commedia Dell’Arte. It looks at the characters of the Harlequinade, Grimaldi the 18C clown, Music Hall artistes like Dan Leno and Marie Lloyd and the soap stars of today. They have all contributed to the art of Pantomime and have helped to turn it into a peculiarly British institution associated with the festive season. 
Currently Special Events Organiser, Theatre Royal Bath. Interviews visiting actors, writers, directors. Lectures regularly to theatre going societies, NT and history and fine arts groups. West Country Tourist Board Registered Blue Badge Guide and Lecturer. Author and researcher of theatre programme notes on Hamlet, Sheridan's The Rivals and Jane Austen's Emma. Theatrical landlady! Home Economist. Consultant to various TV productions of Jane Austen adaptations on food in the 18th and 19th centuries. Hosts and cooks period meals in her Regency house in Bath for the Jane Austen Festival and other literary groups.

About the lecturer:

Currently Special Events Organiser, Theatre Royal Bath. Interviews visiting actors, writers, directors. Lectures regularly to theatre going societies, NT and history and fine arts groups. West Country Tourist Board Registered Blue Badge Guide and Lecturer. Author and researcher of theatre programme notes on Hamlet, Sheridan's The Rivals and Jane Austen's Emma. Theatrical landlady! Home Economist. Consultant to various TV productions of Jane Austen adaptations on food in the 18th and 19th centuries. Hosts and cooks period meals in her Regency house in Bath for the Jane Austen Festival and other literary groups.

This lecture will be hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all Dorset County members. Guests are welcome in person for £5 at DORFORD HALL. Guests wishing to book a zoom link (£6) should do so via Ticket Source, found on the Home Page tab of this website. If this is difficult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

Join professional Rome tourist guide Stuart Harvey for a virtual stroll through the heart of Rome to discover some of the most iconic monuments of the Eternal City. Twenty eight centuries of history can be divided into three periods - Rome of the Ancient Romans, Rome under the rule of the Popes, and Rome as the capital of a united Italy, and in an area less than a square mile we can admire monuments from all three periods. Ancient Roman temples and other archaeological remains rub shoulders with baroque churches. Splendid fountains adorn magnificent piazzas, and the 20th century monumentalism of united Italy adds a modern touch to this beautiful city.
Highlights of this lecture include in-depth looks at the Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Spanish Steps and Piazza Navona, with much more to see along the way.

About the lecturer:
Stuart is a 'History and Art Communicator' of 30 years’ experience. He is a London Blue Badge Tourist Guide (qualified in 1998 - awarded “New Guide of the Year”) and also a Guida Turistica Abilitata della Provincia di Roma (qualified in 2010). He has worked in educational tourism since 1992, leading study tours all over Europe. Living in Rome since 2003, Stuart has developed a great love for the Eternal City and its many treasures. In addition to his primary career as full-time Rome tourist guide, Stuart’s entertaining and lively lectures and virtual tours bring the rich artistic and historical wealth of Rome’s 28 centuries to life for people all over the world. 

DUE TO PERSONAL FAMILY REASONS THIS LECTURE WILL BE ON ZOOM ONLY

6.30 pm lecture start.     There is a carpark opposite which is free from 6 pm.  

Guests wishing to book a zoom link (£6) should do so via Ticket Source, found on the Home Page tab of this website. If this is difficult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

Cézanne is renowned as the great 19th-century painter of still lives and bathers, French peasants and the Mont Sainte-Victoire, working in the most traditional of genres, from landscape to portraiture. But in his work of the 1880s, ‘90s and early 1900s, he began a revolution in painting, creating what the art historian Ernst Gombrich called ‘a landslide in art’. His ever-more courageous, ‘modern’ mode of painting – which insisted on conveying the essence of a subject rather than its mere ‘impression’ – showed a radical disregard for the realism dominant since the Renaissance and pointed the way to the increasingly abstract experiments of the 20th century. But how was it that a reclusive, deeply devout anti-modernist came to be the founder of modern art, a towering figure described by Matisse as ‘the father of us all’? And where is his influence still in evidence today?

About the lecturer:
Jacky Klein is an art historian, publisher, writer and broadcaster, specialising in modern and contemporary art. After studying at Oxford University and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, she worked as a curator at some leading galleries: Tate, the Barbican, the Courtauld and the Hayward. In 2008, she moved sideways into the world of art publishing, first as Commissioning Editor at Thames & Hudson, then as Executive Editor at Tate Publishing and subsequently as Director of HENI Publishing, a small independent arts publisher. She is the author herself of a bestselling book on British artist Grayson Perry (Thames & Hudson, 3rd edition 2020) and co-author of several other titles including Alfred Cohen: An American Artist in Europe (Ben Uri Gallery / Alfred Cohen Art Foundation, 2020), Body of Art (Phaidon, 2015) and What is Contemporary Art?  (Thames & Hudson, 2012), a children's guide to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which has been translated into 11 languages. 
Jacky has presented and contributed to a range of television programmes for the BBC, and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4's arts review programme, 'Front Row'. She has appeared on Channel 5, the Travel Channel and Bloomberg TV, and has written and presented several online films and livestreams for Tate, Christie's and the Art Fund. She regularly delivers digital talks including Zoom lectures, ‘Instagram Live’ events and Crowdcast broadcasts which have reached live audiences of many thousands of people across the world. An experienced lecturer in museums, galleries and at literary festivals, she has taught at various arts institutions including University College London, Christie’s Education, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts. A public and passionate advocate for the arts, she is a Trustee of the UK Association for Art History, and is currently Associate Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute on their Masters programme, 'Curating the Art Museum'.

Image: Montagne Sainte-Victoire,Paul Cézanne, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons, Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art

CHANGE OF VENUE AND TIME:

DORFORD CENTRE at Top 0'Town Roundabout, Bridport Road.  

6.30 pm lecture start.     There is a carpark opposite which is free from 6 pm.  

This lecture will be hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all Dorset County members. Guests are welcome in person for £5 at DORFORD HALL. Guests wishing to book a zoom link (£6) should do so via Ticket Source, found on the Home Page tab of this website. If this is difficult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

Founded in 1824, the National Gallery in London's Trafalgar Square houses one of the world's finest collections of European paintings, including such favourites as Jan Van Eyck's Arnolfini Marriage, Sandro Botticelli's Venus and Mars, John Constable's Cornfield and Vincent Van Gogh's Sunflowers. In contrast to its peers, however, this institution did not begin its life as a royal collection: the Gallery was founded by parliament and remains reliant on public funding. This lecture uses highlights from the NG's collection to show how our vision of the "ideal" art collection has evolved over time, along with ideas of the kinds of people the Gallery was supposed to serve.

About the lecturer

Dr Jonathan Conlin is a cultural historian of modern Britain and Professor of Modern History at the University of Southampton. His books include Tales of Two Cities (2014), a comparative history of Paris and London, and biographies of Adam Smith and the Anglo-Armenian oil baron Calouste Gulbenkian.

Born in New York, he studied History and Modern Languages at Oxford, subsequently moving to the Courtauld Institute and Cambridge for his MA and PhD. In 2023 he was commissioned by the National Gallery to write its bicentenary history. All his talks draw on his own archival research, allowing him to give audiences insights into how historians approach different kinds of evidence, the gaps and dead-ends as well as the surprise discoveries.

THE AGM will proceed this lecture.

In this talk, Anna will discuss the recent proliferation of contemporary art on display in Britain’s stately homes and parklands. Focussing on works which have been collected or exhibited in different ways at notable estates such as Blenheim Palace, Chatsworth House and Houghton Hall during the 21st century,  she will explore the fascinating dialogue between landscape, architecture and the vibrant art of today.

Anna Moszynska is a London-based lecturer and writer specialising in contemporary art. During the 1990s, she oversaw the development of the subject as the first Master’s Degree at Sotheby’s Institute. She has also taught at other institutions in London including The City Lit, the Royal Academy and Tate.

Image: Sue Walker

This lecture will be hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all Dorset County members. Guests are welcome in person for £5 at DORFORD HALL. Guests wishing to book a zoom link (£6) should do so via Ticket Source, found on the Home Page tab of this website. If this is difficult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

In 1924 an exhibition in London of Canadian landscapes moved the critic C. Lewis Hind to celebrate them as ‘the most vital group of paintings produced since the war - indeed, this century’. These landscapes of Canada’s northern lakes and rugged backwoods, painted in a boldly Post-Impressionist style, had been produced over the previous decade by a collective of Toronto-based painters known as the ‘Group of Seven’, whose aim was to forge a national school of landscape painting. This illustrated lecture introduces the painters - including their talismanic colleague Tom Thomson, who died in 1917 - and examines how they stormed the conservative bastions of Canadian art to establish themselves on the international stage as practitioners of a distinctive avant-garde. 

About the lecturer:

Ross King is the author of eight books on Italian, French and Canadian art and history. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and he has won both the Governor General’s Award in Canada and the Book Sense Non-Fiction Book of the Year in the United States. Born and raised in Canada, he has lived in England since 1992. He has lectured widely in both North America and Europe, and given lectures and guided tours in Florence, Rome, Milan, Paris and Giverny. 

Image: Public domainPublic domain: Tom Thomson Snow Shadows.jpg  (McMichael Canadian Art Collection)

CHANGE OF VENUE AND TIME: PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A TUESDAY NOT OUR USUAL THURSDAY

DORFORD CENTRE at Top 0'Town Roundabout, Bridport Road.  

6.30 pm lecture start.     There is a carpark opposite which is free from 6 pm.  

This lecture will be hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all Dorset County members. Guests are welcome in person for £5 at DORFORD HALL. Guests wishing to book a zoom link (£6) should do so via Ticket Source, found on the Home Page tab of this website. If this is difficult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

From St. Ives to Coleshill to Winchcombe, many of the early studio potteries were in the South West, and were inspired by the vernacular potteries of the area. This talk explores the history and characters of the ceramics scene in the region since Bernard Leach set up his pottery in Cornwall in 1920, and looks closely at the work of Leach’s first pupils Michael Cardew in Gloucestershire and Cornwall, and Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie in Oxfordshire, as well as examining the many potters and potteries that followed, from Ray Finch to William Worrell, from Ivan and Kay Martin to Toff Milway and many more. 

The Lecturer: Kirsty Hartsiotis has been the curator of the decorative and fine art at The Wilson Art Gallery and Museum, Cheltenham since 2008, and prior to that was the curator and manager of Swindon Museum and Art Gallery. At Cheltenham she looks after the Designated Arts and Crafts Movement collection, which includes the important private press archive, the Emery Walker Library. She’s curated many exhibitions on the Arts and Crafts and Private Press Movements.

Image:  Creative Commons Attribution2.0 Generic  Bernard Leach Pottery Studio License https://www.flickr.com/photos/geishaboy500/3983807863/

CHANGE OF VENUE AND TIME:

DORFORD CENTRE at Top 0'Town Roundabout, Bridport Road.  

6.30 pm lecture start.     There is a carpark opposite which is free from 6 pm.  

This lecture will be hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all Dorset County members. Guests are welcome in person for £5 at DORFORD HALL. Guests wishing to book a zoom link (£6) should do so via Ticket Source, found on the Home Page tab of this website. If this is difficult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

Tom Roberts was the eldest son of Richard Roberts, a Dorset journalist and his wife
Matilda. He was educated at Dorchester Grammar School. On the death of his
father in 1869 the family moved to Melbourne, Australia, where he studied at the
National Gallery of Victoria schools in Melbourne from 1874. Returning to England
in 1881, he studied in the Royal Academy. He toured Spain in 1883 with a fellow
artist, where he met Spanish artists Lorreano Barrau and Ramon Casas who
introduced him to the principles of impressionism and plein air painting. In London
and Paris, he absorbed the progressive influence of painters Jules Bastien-Lepage
and James Abbott McNeil Whistler.
Returning to Australia in 1885, he was considered the leader of the ‘Heidelberg
School’ (also known as the Australian Impressionists), the first distinctively Australian
school of painting. Painting in the open air, they worked to represent Australia’s light,
heat, space and distance. He was commissioned to paint the opening of the first
Federal Parliament was completed in London in 1903 and now displayed in
Parliament House, Canberra.
A ‘lost’ painting entitled ‘Rejected’ featured in an episode of the BBC programme,
Fake or Fortune. Experts decided it was a genuine Roberts, dating from his early
years in London.
As a leading proponent of painting ‘en plein air’ he captured the national life of Australia, and he is best known today for his 'national narratives' a series of paintings created at a time when Australia was in the process of becoming a ‘Federation’ and would cease to be a European Colony. His paintings evoke a sense of national identity, they were celebrated for being distinctly Australian in character and created at a time of strong nationalist sentiment in Australia.
Roberts paintings still resonate strongly today. Alongside the idea of nationhood there are many other wonderful stories to be told by his extraordinary depictions of human endeavour.

About the lecturer:

Paul is an Art Historian and a National Gallery trained guide with many years of experience working in education. As a freelance Paul delivers courses and lectures for a wide range of educational organisations. Paul has also given talks and tours for art associations/societies in Museums and Galleries in the UK and Europe. As a writer, Paul has published a book, which examines the subject of cultural crossovers and appropriations in 20th century painting. Paul has a long-standing commitment, in conjunction with the National Gallery as a tour guide at the Longford Castle art collection and he is also a visiting tutor at Marlborough College and a tutor at MCSS.

Image: Tom Roberts - Shearing the Rams. Image is in the Public Domain. National Gallery of Victoria

CHANGE OF VENUE AND TIME:

DORFORD CENTRE at Top 0'Town Roundabout, Bridport Road.  

6.30 pm lecture start.     There is a carpark opposite which is free from 6 pm.  

This lecture will be hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all Dorset County members. Guests are welcome in person for £5 at DORFORD HALL. Guests wishing to book a zoom link (£6) should do so via Ticket Source, found on the Home Page tab of this website. If this is difficult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

Throughout the history of Dior there is one fashion artist who above all others held carte blanche to illustrate, promote and define the essence of Dior through a flowing striking brushstroke that was to become a trademark of Dior’s elegant philosophy. In this fascinating talk, discover the life and art of René Gruau (1909-2004) and why his imaginative and beautifully crafted art for Dior is considered amongst the most iconic fashion images of the 20th century.

About the lecturer
With a background in fashion and broadcasting, Connie Gray is a specialist in the history of 20th century fashion illustration and its powerful legacy with both the most influential fashion publications internationally and the great couture houses of Paris, London and New York. She is regularly invited to lecture both in the UK and the US and sits on advisory boards at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London and Special Collections at FIT, New York. As a curator and archivist, she works closely with institutions and foundations on acquisitions, conservation and exhibition projects. She has been invited to curate specialist exhibitions including most recently Legends Only at Claridge’s Hotel, London in 2022 and 100 Years of Fashion Illustration at The Society of Illustrators, New York. Other specialist exhibitions have included Cunard’s Transatlantic Fashion Cruise on their flagship ship Queen Mary 2 to celebrate London and New York fashion weeks. As the lead curator for the art gallery Gray M.C.A, she curates the acclaimed exhibition Drawing on Style each year that celebrates the masters of fashion illustration alongside running comprehensive lecture programmes that accompany the exhibitions in London and New York. During the Covid19 pandemic period she wrote and presented a series of on-line masterclasses, talks and short films on the subject of fashion illustration that regularly attracted audiences of over 800 people during each live event.

Image:  Christian Dior Evening Gown illustrated by René Gruau (1909 - 2004) for L'Officiel de la Mode 1948 © René Gruau / Christian Dior Archives

CHANGE OF VENUE AND TIME:

DORFORD CENTRE at Top 0'Town Roundabout, Bridport Road.  

6.30 pm lecture start.     There is a carpark opposite which is free from 6 pm.  

This lecture will be hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all Dorset County members. Guests are welcome in person for £5 at DORFORD HALL. Guests wishing to book a zoom link (£6) should do so via Ticket Source, found on the Home Page tab of this website. If this is difficult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

Art history is replete with myths. Among them is the idea that outdoor painting – or painting en plein air – was invented by the young Impressionists during the 1860s and 1870s. This lecture considers artists who were painting outside from the motif well before that point. John Constable, Camille Corot, Charles Daubigny and Frederic Edwin Church are just some of the artists who led the way during the early and middle years of the 19th century, laying the groundwork for the later achievements of Impressionist painters like Renoir and Monet. This lecture considers the motivations for artists to paint en plein air, the emergence of an international vogue for naturalist landscape, as well as the techniques and materials used in outdoor painting. 

About the lecturer:

Kathy McLauchlan is a lecturer specialising in 19th-century art history, who is currently a course director at the Victoria & Albert Museum. She organises courses and study days on the history of art and design. Kathy teaches at several institutions, including Art Pursuits. She is a graduate of Oxford University and the Courtauld Institute, with a PhD on French 19th-century painters in Rome.

Image: Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Ville-d'Avray c. 1865 Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington

This lecture will be hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all Dorset County members. Guests are welcome in person for £5 at the Corn Exchange. Guests wishing to book a zoom link (£6) should do so via Ticket Source, found on the Home Page tab of this website. If this is diffucult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

How did the remains of Nicholas, a fourth-century bishop from Myra, Turkey, reach Bari, Italy in 1087? And how did this rather obscure churchman become the patron saint of sailors, merchants, prisoners and children in the Byzantine Empire and Western Europe? This lecture explores the development of St Nicholas’ medieval cult through the artefacts associated with it: icons, wall paintings and illuminated manuscripts, and charts his eventual transformation into the well-loved Santa Claus. 

About the lecturer: 

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

Image: The dowry for the three virgins (Gentile da Fabriano, c. 1425, Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome) Copyright: Wikipedia

This lecture will be hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all Dorset County members. Guests are welcome in person for £5 at the Corn Exchange. Guests wishing to book a zoom link (£6) should do so via Ticket Source, found on the Home Page tab of this website. If this is diffucult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

In this talk we look at one of the most beautiful cities of the ancient world, the fabled city of Palmyra, in the Syrian desert. Palmyra arose on a trade route that brought silk, spices and other luxuries across the desert from the east. Her wealth and power are displayed in gorgeous monuments, while her people, wealthy, sophisticated and cosmopolitan, are preserved in their hauntingly beautiful funeral portraits.

Palmyra became so powerful during the Roman empire that its warrior queen Zenobia challenged Rome itself. We’ll see Palmyra’s meteoric rise and its dramatic fall, its rediscovery by English lords, its influence on art and architecture, and then its desecration by Isis. But we finish with the hope that beautiful Palmyra will rise again…

About the lecturer:

Dr Paul Roberts is Head of the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford University. 

Paul has been a lecturer with the Arts Society/NADFAS for over twenty years, has travelled extensively to societies across the UK, and has also lectured on numerous cruises in and around the Mediterranean. Like all of us, he enjoys the immediate contact of face to face meetings, but is happy to provide online lectures if desired. 

He studied Classics at the University of Cambridge, and Classical Archaeology at the Universities of Sheffield and Oxford.  He then lived in Italy for several years, teaching and researching.  He has travelled throughout the former lands of the Roman Empire, from Britain to Syria, and has excavated in Britain, Greece, Libya, Turkey and in particular Italy, where he is currently working on a Roman Villa in the Molise region of the Central Apennines. His research focuses on the daily life of ordinary people in the Greek and Roman worlds, and he has written books and articles on Greek and Roman daily life, Pompeii and Herculaneum, Sicily, Roman Emperors, mummy portraits, and Greek and Roman ceramics and glass. He is now writing a guide to the monuments and Emperors of ancient Rome.  

From 1994 to 2015 he was Senior Roman Curator in the Greek and Roman Department at the British Museum, where he curated the exhibition Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum (2013). Arriving in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford in 2015, he co-curated Storms, War and Shipwrecks: Sicily and the Sea (2016) telling the history of Sicily through shipwreck finds. Most recently (2019/20) at the Ashmolean he curated Last Supper in Pompeii, a tribute to the Roman love affair with food and wine.

Image:  Temple of Bel-Shamin Palmyra - Erik Albers, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

This lecture will be hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all Dorset County members. Guests are welcome in person for £5 at the Corn Exchange. Guests wishing to book a zoom link (£6) should do so via Ticket Source, found on the Home Page tab of this website. If this is diffucult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

Darling’s daring rescue of steamship passengers off the Northumberland coast in 1838 brought her international fame and celebrity, and she became the ‘poster girl’ of the RNLI. Discover more about her bravery and short life (died aged 26) and other dramatic rescues and life-saving inventions by Captain Manby and John Dennett pictured by diverse artists. For the first time this talk reveals the full extent of the artistic contribution in keeping Darling in the public eye. It is part of the national events marking the RNLI’s bicentenary across the years 2023-2024.

About the lecturer:

James Taylor studied at the Universities of St Andrews and Manchester, and is a former curator of paintings, drawings and prints, and co-ordinator of various exhibitions and galleries, at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, also lecturer and ships' historian on board cruise ships. Publications include illustrated histories of Marine Painting (1995) and yachting art Yachts on Canvas (1998), The Voyage of the Beagle: Darwin’s extraordinary adventure aboard FitzRoy’s famous survey ship (2008), Careless Talk Costs Lives: Fougasse and the Art of Public Information (2010) and Your Country Needs You: the Secret History of the Propaganda Poster (2013), Dazzle: Disguise and Disruption in War and Art (2016) and Picturing the Pacific: Sir Joseph Banks and the Shipboard Artists of Cook and Flinders (2018). Completed his PhD at the University of Sussex in 2015 on the voyager artist William Westall (1781-1850) who sailed with Commander Matthew Flinders aboard HMS 'Investigator' (1801-1803) the first ship to circumnavigate Australia.

Image: Grace Darling at the Forfarshire by Thomas Musgrave Joy  Copyright: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

This lecture will be hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all Dorset County members. Guests are welcome in person for £5 at the Corn Exchange. Guests wishing to book a zoom link (£6) should do so via Ticket Source, found on the Home Page tab of this website. If this is diffucult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

This lecture covers the mapping of the earliest lines (Liverpool & Manchester in 1830s etc), right through to the passenger networks of the present day.

About the lecturer: 

Mark Ovenden is a broadcaster and author who specialises in the subjects of graphic design, cartography and architecture in public transport, with an emphasis on underground rapid transit.

His first book Metro Maps of the World published in 2003 is a guide to the diagrams, plans and maps of underground rapid transit system including images ranging from photos of the systems to rare and historical maps. Paris Metro Style in map and station design was published November 2008. Railway Maps of the World was published in May 2011 in the USA, a British edition was produced in September 2011. London Underground by Design was published by Penguin Books in January 2013. A celebration of the Johnston typeface centenary and 90th Anniversary of Gill Sans was published in 2016, and in July 2017 Mark fronted a television documentary for BBC Four on the subject of Johnston and Gill and in November 2018 he presented a documentary for BBC Radio 4 on skyscrapers. Others works on graphic design and transport systems are in preparation.

Image: 'Gill's Imperial Geography ... Illustrated with ... maps and ... woodcuts ... Revised edition' . Wikimedia public domain

This lecture will take place immediately after the AGM.  The AGM will not be on zoom.

The lecture will be hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all Dorset County members. Guests are welcome in person for £5 at the Corn Exchange. Guests wishing to book a zoom link should do so via Ticket Source, found on the Home Page tab of this website. If this is diffucult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

Fortuny was one of the most inspirational designers of the late 19th century. From theatrical lighting to textiles, he experimented with a range of techniques producing decorative objects that are still made and sold today. Drawing on his love of Venice and classical art his designs are timeless but his name has faded into obscurity.

While painting he also became interested in photography and theatre set design. Influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, he learned to control all aspects of his designs; for the theatre he created innovative lighting techniques, and he invented his own fabric dyes and fabrics, as well as machinery for printing cloth.  About 1907 Fortuny’s dress designs, many of them inspired by ancient Greek garments such as the tunic and the peplos, became extremely popular among the wealthy. The silk dresses that he designed were perhaps most remarkable for their subtle colouring and for the freedom of movement that they allowed. Some of these dresses were simple in execution, while others of similar design had hundreds of tiny pleats that ran from neck to foot.

Dr Kate Strasdin has worked as a curator of textiles and dress for over 20 years and is now the Deputy Curator at the Totnes Fashion and Textile Museum. Is a Senior Lecturer in History and Theory at Falmouth University and a Special Visiting Lecturer for the DeTao Masters Academy in Shanghai. Publications include An Easy Day for a Lady (Costume Journal, 2008) and Empire Dressing - the Design and Realisation of Queen Alexandra's Coronation Gown (Journal of Design History, 2012). Kate's book on Queen Alexandra's wardrobe was published in 2017 and she is working on her next book, The Secrets of a 19th Century Dress Diary. She is one of the youngest practitioners of the dying art of Honiton lace.

 All lectures will be Hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all members. Guests are welcome for £5 and may now come to the Corn Exchange. Guests should book via Ticket Source, found on the Home Page. If this is diffucult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

This lecture will be hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all Dorset County members. Guests are welcome in person for £5 at the Corn Exchange. Guests wishing to book a zoom link (£6) should do so via BOOK EVENT, found on the Home Page tab of this website. If this is difficult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

Throughout the 20th century, the violent and tumultuous social events that occurred in Latin America generated a political turn within the artistic community. Artists started to wonder how art should react to those events (as a form of reflection or complaint), and most importantly, how it could serve as a tool for political or social transformation. Many, persecuted by their military and authoritarian governments, opted for new ways of expression and aesthetic manifestation that would allow them to resist without being apprehended or convicted. This lecture will explore the new gestures that allowed artists to leave behind the limits of art, and intervene in pressing social concerns such as racism, inequality, censorship and sexual abuse.

About the lecturer:

Daniela Galan is a Colombian artist and art historian from Goldsmiths University. She is also a former lawyer and philosopher of Los Andes University, with an extensive background in education and Latin American art history. 

Daniela is the founding Director of AMALGAMA, the first cultural programme and digital platform in the UK devoted to exhibiting, promoting, and publishing female artists' work with Spanish, Portuguese, Central and South American heritage: Ibero-American. With the project, she has curated several exhibitions in London, displaying over 20 Latin American artists in the UK, and published the book AMALGAMA, Women, Identity and Diaspora. Her work and articles have been featured in Revista Diners, Revista Alternativa, El Ojo de La Cultura and LAR Magazine. She has an ongoing collaboration with the Instituto Cervantes London to promote Latin American artists in the UK.  

Image:  Daniela Galan  Copyright Daniela Galan

THIS LECTURE WILL NOT BE SHOWN ON ZOOM. Guests are welcome for £5 at the Corn Exchange. 

As part of the Habsburg Empire, Prague was beloved of kings and princes. During the 19th century, however, the Czechs sought to reclaim the city for their own. Looking back at their roots and mythology, the Czech people imagined a new future through art, entirely reshaping cultural movements including Romanticism and symbolism in specifically patriotic ways. Looking at painters such as Alfons Mucha, Otakar Lebeda and Jakub Schikaneder and composers like Bedrich Smetana and Antonín Dvorák, as well as their forward-thinking literary and architectural contemporaries, this contextual talk shows how the Czechs reclaimed both country and capital by cultural means. 

About the Lecturer:

Gavin Plumley is a writer and broadcaster, appearing on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and contributing to newspapers, magazines and opera and concert programmes worldwide. He lectures widely about the culture of Central Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries. Recent talks include the Royal Opera House, the National Gallery, the National Trust, the National Theatre, the British Museum, the V&A, the Southbank Centre, the Tate and the Neue Galerie, New York. His first book, A Home for All Seasons, is published in June 2022. 

Image: 'Evening in the Garden' painted by Jakub Schikaneder (1907 - 09)  Copyright: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

This lecture will be Hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all Dorset County members. Guests are welcome at the Corn Exchange for £5 and Zoom Guests (£6) should book via Ticket Source, found on the Home Page tab. If this is diffucult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

The mid 1930s were desperate times in the Midwest of the USA. The effects of the Depression were exacerbated by the Dust Bowl years and there was mass migration as over three million people moved out of the farming regions. Many became migrant workers in California and the great American photographer Dorothea Lange captured some iconic images of this period. This talk looks at the conditions that contributed to Dust Bowl, the implication for the communities involves and human consequences as captured by a number of photographers working for the USA Government. It includes the story behind one of the most famous images of the 20th century, Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange. 

About the Lecturer:

A keen and accomplished photographer Roger has gained Distinctions from the Royal Photographic Society  and is currently the President of the Surrey Photographic Association. A scientist by background, his interest in art was sparked by his wife’s academic studies into the History of Art and he has a particular interest in 20th century art.  With his focus on the visual aspects of art he has studied the evolution of photography from its earliest days in the early 1800s to becoming a major art form in the late 20th and now 21st centuries. An experienced public speaker, his talks are all richly illustrated with both his own and images from some of the leading photographers in history. 

Image: "Migrant Mother" photographed by Dorothea Lange 1936.  Copyright: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

All lectures will be Hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all members. Guests are welcome for £5 and may now come to the Corn Exchange. Guests should book via Ticket Source, found on the Home Page. If this is diffucult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

Patrick will explore the rich musical traditions of Venice. Claudio Monteverdi not only transformed the music at the Basilica of San Marco but also led the way in the creation of a new art form - opera. We shall look at and listen to works from the other musical geniuses who developed the musical life of San Marco such as Gabrieli and Lotti, as well as tracing Monteverdi’s successors in the creation of Venetian opera, including Cavalli and Albinoni. We shall also examine and hear music from Antonio Vivaldi, the other towering figure of Venetian music, who created music both for the opera stage and the female musicians of the Ospidale della Pietà.

About the lecturer:

Patrick Craig is a Vicar Choral at St Paul’s Cathedral. For twenty years he combined this with an international career singing over a thousand concerts with the world-renowned early music consort The Tallis Scholars. He also sings with the award-winning group The Cardinall’s Musick. He founded and conducts this country’s leading all-female professional choir, Aurora Nova. He has conducted concerts for the BBC Proms, the Brighton, Lichfield and Aldeburgh Festivals, and with the City of London Sinfonia.

As a Cambridge history graduate with a lifelong interest in the arts, he has gone on to lead choral workshops for amateur singers across the world, where he places music in its historical and cultural context. He regularly lectures for the St Paul’s Adult Education programme and for John Hall’s Venice Courses, which have allowed him to incorporate his interests in theology, art and poetry. 

In 2020, when his singing and conducting work disappeared overnight as a result of the Covid pandemic, Patrick poured all his experience into online presentations which have raised vital funds for the Help Musicians Charity.

Image: Claudio Monteverdi painted by Bernardo Strozzi (c. 1630)  Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

All lectures will be Hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all members. Guests are welcome for £5 and may now come to the Corn Exchange. Guests should book via Ticket Source, found on the Home Page. If this is diffucult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

Paintings conservator and technical art historian, Sarah Cove ACR, is well known for her re-discovery of ‘lost’ paintings by John Constable on BBC1’s Fake or Fortune?. In this lecture she considers the materials and techniques used in oil sketches and exhibited works by Stanhope Forbes and his contemporaries in the light of technical examination undertaken during the recent cleaning and conservation. Featuring details of notable and little seen works from private collections as well as more familiar works scrutinised in gallery collections both near and far.

Ignoring the Fishing and the Folk that are often the preserve of discussions around the late 19th century Newlyn painting colony, from a technical perspective the surfaces of paintings by these artists pose as many questions as they answer. Many of the works are riddled with drying cracks that suggest complex paint layers, multiple changes of mind during the evolution of a composition and possibly the hasty use of incompatible or untested materials. However, very little technical examination or scientific analysis of Newlyn School works has been formally carried out in collections worldwide to try and address the questions that arise from such technical problems. Are they linked to the 19th century era of great change in artists’ materials, the rise and rise of the modern artists’ colourman, the invention of tube paints (with their pros and cons) and developments in pigment technology as a result of the industrial revolution? Are they simply the result of faulty technique? What can they tell us about the underlayers of a painting and the working up of a composition? In recent years, Sarah Cove has worked on and examined a number of these works. This lecture draws together recent discoveries about the working processes of this close artistic community. Sarah will reveal the secrets of the painters’ methods as viewed under the microscope, working solely from her own research and conservation records, and will ask as many questions as she answers. Problems with deterioration in the original materials will be discussed as well as comments on the cleaning, conservation and varnishing of these works. The lecture is illustrated with unique close-up macro-photos and the use of scientific methods such as x-radiography and infra-red reflectography. 

About the lecturer:

Sarah Cove is an accredited paintings conservator-restorer, technical art historian and lecturer with more than 35 years’ experience working on paintings for the heritage and private sectors. She is based in London and Falmouth and is a specialist in British portraits, 19th-20th century British landscapes and oil sketches on paper and board. In 1986 she founded the Constable Research Project and she is now the leading authority on Constable’s materials and techniques. She has appeared in several TV programmes for the BBC notably Constable in Love with Andrew Graham-Dixon and twice on Fake or Fortune? where she was instrumental in the discovery of 3 ‘lost’ Constables. Other research interests include Tudor and Jacobean Portraiture, the 19th century Newlyn and St Ives schools and early-to-mid 20th century British painting generally. She has been a lecturer for The Arts Society since 2003 and is an experienced international speaker having lectured independently at major public and gallery venues across the UK, USA, Australia and New Zealand. Her presentations are lively and enthusiastic as she speaks without notes with an inimitable passion that comes from presenting her own work and research with wonderful images.

A CHRISTMAS DRINKS PARTY WILL BE HELD ON A DIFFERENT DAY TO THE LECTURE - DETAILS TO FOLLOW.

This lecture will be in the Corn Exchange.

By popular demand there is now a Bar, which opens at 5.45 pm.

All lectures will be Hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all members.  Guests are welcome for £5 and may now come to the hall.  Guests should book via Ticket Source.  If this is difficult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

Are you captivated but confused with colour? This lecture explains how colour has been used by artists throughout history-descriptively, symbolically and expressively.

About the lecturer:

Richard, as well as being an art historian, is a practising artist. He draws and paints in watercolours, oils, acrylics and creates curious pictures in fabric and thread. He has been teaching art for over 50 years to young and old alike including those with special needs. He has written seven books and is most proud of one entitled Drawing for the Terrified.

This lecture will be in the Corn Exchange.

By popular demand there is now a Bar, which opens at 5.45 pm.

All lectures will be Hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all members.  Guests are welcome for £5 and may now come to the hall.  Guests should book via Ticket Source.  If this is difficult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, is the most isolated piece of permanently inhabited land on the planet, and yet it produced a most extraordinary Stone Age culture: hundreds of sophisticated coastal stone platforms, more than a thousand enormous stone statues, the richest rock art in the Pacific, and a unique writing system. This talk will provide an introduction to the history of the discovery of this culture; to its principal features; and to what archaeology, oral traditions and, more recently, palaeobotanical evidence have combined to teach us about the island’s cultural rise and decline, its environmental crisis, and the lessons all this can teach us about how we look after the Earth as a whole. 

About the lecturer:

Dr Paul Bahn studied archaeology at the University of Cambridge, and completed PhD thesis (1979) on the prehistory of the French Pyrenees. Has held post-doctoral fellowships, at Liverpool and London, plus a J. Paul Getty postdoctoral fellowship in the History of Art and the Humanities. Devotes time to writing, editing and translating books on archaeology, plus occasional journalism and as much travel as possible. Main research interest is prehistoric art, especially rock art of the world, and most notably Palaeolithic art, as well as Easter Island. He led the team which, at his instigation, searched for and discovered the first Ice Age cave art in Britain (at Creswell Crags) in 2003.

This lecture will be in the Corn Exchange.

By popular demand there is now a Bar, which opens at 5.45 pm.

All lectures will be Hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all members.  Guests are welcome for £5 and may now come to the hall.  Guests should book via Ticket Source.  If this is difficult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

From an Indian river bed thousands of years ago to the Tower of London – the fascinating story of the ‘Mountain of Light’. The story of this celebrated diamond is not only intriguing but also full of surprises; it has been the subject of desire, jealousy, intrigue, passion and political chicanery. This lecture follows the journey of this fabulous diamond from the depths of early Indian history through the bloody history of the Mughals to the power and politics of the British Empire, illustrated by extraordinary artists who were committed to describing the events and emotions of their time. 

About the lecturer:

Georgina is an art historian specialising in South Asian art who has lived and worked in the UK, USA and Singapore. Her practice includes lecturing, writing, consulting and collecting and she has developed a network of gallery and artist connections in Europe, the USA and India, which she visits regularly.  

Consultant Art Historian at the Oriental Club in London and an official tour guide at Tate Modern, Georgina is also a guest speaker on luxury cruise ships for whom she has developed a series of art talks relating to Asian and Pacific destinations. She has been a visiting lecturer at UK universities, presents talks at leading art institutions including Christie’s Education New York and the Museum of Modern Art, Moscow and speaks at international art conferences, most recently in New York, Paris, London and Lisbon.

Georgina holds a BA in Art History from Southampton University, an MA in Arts Management and Policy from City, University of London and an MA in Art History from SOAS, University of London. Georgina is a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Arts Scholars and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Asiatic Society

Image: Replica of Koh-I-Noor Copyright: Wikipedia

DUE TO THE THE UNCERTAINTIES OF THE RAILWAY SYSTEM HAVING TO DEAL WITH UNPRECEDENTED NUMBER OF TRAVELLERS OUR GUEST LECTURER IS UNABLE TO TRAVEL TO DORCHESTER.  THEREFORE THIS LECTURE WILL BE ON ZOOM ONLY.

Guests are welcome for £5 Guests should book via Ticket Source.  If this is difficult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

Many museums in Spain’s capital city provide a visual feast for the visitor. In this lecture we will concentrate on the collections of the Prado, the Reina Sofia and the Thyssen- Bornemisza, all within easy walking distance of each other in the heart of the city. These museums house many of the most significant paintings in the history of European art. 

About the lecturer:

Val Woodgate is a lecturer at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, also at many other London galleries. Former member of the teaching team at Dulwich Picture Gallery. She is a lecturer and runs courses at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester.

This lecture will be in the Corn Exchange.

By popular demand there is now a Bar, which opens at 5.45 pm.

All lectures will be Hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all members.  Guests are welcome for £5 and may now come to the hall.  Both members and guests should book via Ticket Source.  If this is difficult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

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

In contrast, we will marvel at the expanding city through the eyes and imagery of the Ashcan painters - John Sloan, George Bellows, William Glackens and Everitt Shinn. Exploring the natural beauty of the Manhattan open skyline and sunsets before the high rise skyscrapers, we will travel to work on the elevated railways, watch the raw energy of the night-lit building sites and the bustling ships being unloaded on the waterfront, visit a vaudeville show, wander in Central Park, and be shocked by the eviction of poor immigrant tenants on the lower east side. Our summer holiday will be a day train ride to Coney Island. 

This lecture coincides with Julian Fellowes' new TV drama series Gilded Age New York,  planned for launch in late January 2022 on SKY Atlantic.

About the lecturer:

Mary Alexander has had thirty 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 also worked in 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, her background combines an unusual blend of academic and visual communications skills. She has lectured for ADFAS Australia and New Zealand in 2011, 2013 and 2016. Mary is an enthusiastic member and President of The Arts Society Glaven Valley.

This lecture will be in the Corn Exchange.

By popular demand there is now a Bar, which opens at 5.45 pm.

All lectures will be Hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all members.  Guests are welcome for £5 and may now come to the hall.  Both members and guests should book via Ticket Source on the HOME page. .  If this is difficult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

Some Wood Engravings by Eric Ravilious will be in the exhibition 'Scene Through Wood' at the Dorset Museum from 10 February to early May.

Eric Ravilious was only 39 when he died on active service as a war artist in 1942, yet he had already achieved amazing things. A brilliant wood engraver and designer, he is best known today for his haunting watercolours in which lighthouses, white horses, empty rooms and downland paths become marvels. Over the past decade I’ve explored many of these paintings in depth, teasing out stories and characters hidden in the wings. This entertaining illustrated talk illuminates the life and work of a playful, enigmatic artist, with plentiful examples of his work in watercolour, wood engraving, lithography and ceramics. The paintings are a delight, the Ravilious story funny, sad and full of surprises. 

About the lecturer:

Having studied History at Pembroke College, Cambridge, James Russell enjoyed a lengthy stint selling contemporary paintings and sculpture in Santa Fe, New Mexico, an experience that inspired him to begin writing and lecturing on 20th century art. Of his dozen or so books, one was a Sunday Times book of the year, while his writing has been described by critics as 'insightful', 'informative' and 'enjoyably readable'. James has curated major exhibitions at Dulwich Picture Gallery and for museums around the country. He bases his lectures on wide-ranging original research into the subjects that fascinate him.

This lecture will be in the Corn Exchange.

By popular demand there is now a Bar, which opens at 5.45 pm.

All lectures will be Hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all members.  Guests are welcome for £5 and may now come to the hall.  Both members and guests should book via Ticket Source - on the HOME page.  If this is difficult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

This talk provides an overview of the Church of England's magnificent 42 cathedrals, jewels in the crown of England's built heritage, some recognised as World Heritage Sites. Beautifully illustrated by Country Life photographer, Paul Barker, in addition to looking at their history and stories, evolving architecture and treasures, the talk considers the role of cathedrals over the centuries and specifically their role today.

About the lecturer:

Janet Gough was for eight years the Church of England’s Director of Church Buildings and Secretary of the Church Buildings Council and Cathedrals Fabric Commission, Janet has written two illustrated paperbacks to encourage greater enjoyment of these amazing buildings, Director's Choice, Churches of the Church of England and Director's Choice, Cathedrals of the Church of England and produced and presented on a TV series on cathedrals for PBS.

A Cambridge graduate in History and History of Art, Janet worked at Sotheby’s for nine years, was a trustee at the Churches Conservation Trust, the Museum of Fulham Palace and the Friends of the V&A and guided and lectured at the V&A. Janet set up and ran an architectural history course around visits to significant buildings. Janet has also given tours and lectured on secular architecture and fine and decorative arts.

Janet received an OBE for services to heritage in January 2017, and recently was made one of the first lay Canons of Bangor cathedral.

This lecture will be in the Corn Exchange.

By popular demand there is now a Bar, which opens at 5.45 pm.

All lectures will be Hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all members.  Guests are welcome for £5 and may now come to the hall.  Both members and guests should book via Ticket Source.  If this is difficult for you, use 'Contact Us' and someone will help.

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

About the lecturer:

Alice has lectured for Oxford University Department of Continuing Education since 1998. She lectures regularly at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and at the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock. Her busy freelance career includes organising History of Art study days with colleagues, and regular weekly classes in Oxfordshire and Worcestershire. In 2004 Alice joined The Arts Society and has lectured in Britain and in Europe. Since 2003 Alice has been a tutor on study holidays. In 2010 she was elected President of Banbury Fine Arts Society.

Painting: Samuel John Peploe Iona Landscape: Rocks About 1925 - 1927 Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art

This lecture will be back in the newly refurbished Corn Exchange. For those who are coming to the hall, we are not booking individual seat numbers at present.

All lectures will be Hybrid, so the Zoom link will be sent to all members.  Guests are welcome for £5.  Both members and guests should book via Ticket Source.  Should you find this difficult, please email via 'Contact Us' on this website.

American pioneers in glass technology from the late 19th century onwards provided much of the innovative tradition that was to bring about the birth of the Studio Glass Movement in the USA in the 1960s. Glass manufacturers such as Louis Comfort Tiffany developed new blown shapes and technologies to create new surface effects and an appearance of movement in glass that was to be continued in the work of studio glass makers such as Dale Chihuly.

The Studio Glass Movement dates from 1962, with its emphasis on the aesthetics of form and colour now influencing studio art glass makers everywhere. Dale Chihuly became one of the foremost American studio glass artists and has popularised the medium throughout the World. The movement soon reached Europe, attracting artists such as Sam Herman in London. As time has passed studio glass making has become more individualistic and more sculptural in its forms. The pioneering designs of the original studio glass artists can now often be seen loosely translated into mass-produced products from larger glass making factories. Dale Chihuly is still the name that comes to mind in the context of studio glass making and in this talk his work is considered in some detail in terms of individual works and large scale exhibitions such as that in Kew Gardens, England, in 2005. He deserves credit for establishing the blown-glass form as an accepted vehicle for installation and environmental art, beginning in the late twentieth century and continuing today.

About the lecturer:

Scott Anderson trained as an archaeologist at Leicester University and was a professional archaeologist for ten years before his interests shifted to the world of art, antiques and auctioneering. In 1994 he joined the team at Southampton Solent University lecturing on the only BA(Hons) degree course of its kind to look at the commercial art world. Now, as a Senior Lecturer, he teaches courses on the history and theory of interior design and visual culture. He has lectured to many adult audiences for a variety of University Extra-mural departments and the WEA. For the last few years he has also worked as a consultant valuer for the BBC television programme Flog It.

Picture: Glassware in the Indianapolis Museum of Art

We feel confident that this lecture will be back in the newly refurbished Corn Exchange. All lectures will be Hybrid, so the Zoom link will also be sent to all members who chose to watch from home. Guests are welcome for £5.  Both members coming to the Corn Exchange and guests should book via Ticket Source.  IF GUESTS HAVE A PROBLEM BOOKING VIA TICKET SOURCE THE ALTERNATIVE IS TO BOOK USING THIS FORM - HERE

If you have difficulties booking via Ticket Source or the form above please email via 'Contact Us' for assistance.

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

About the lecturer: 

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

PLEASE NOTE DATE CHANGE FOR THIS LECTURE TO WEDNESDAY 15 DECEMBER

THIS LECTURE WILL BE HELD AT THE DORFORD CENTRE, BRIDPORT ROAD, TOP 0'TOWN ROUNDABOUT WITH THE LECTURER PRESENT

IT WILL ALSO BE LIVE STREAMED VIA ZOOM TO MEMBERS AT HOME

Guests are welcome for a fee of £5 and can be booked via Ticket Source on the Home Page of this website.  If you have a problem with doing this, please use 'Contact Us' for assistance.  Because of problems with numbers restriction for Covid we would prefer guests to watch from home, unless accompanying a member.

The term Magi refers to Zoroastrian priest-sages, anonymous wise men who were specialists in medicine, religion and astronomy, who travelled from ‘the East’. Tradition has placed the number of Magi at three, relating to gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but earlier versions has the number between two and thirty. The Adoration of the Magi is one of the most popular religious subjects but how accurate are the depictions of Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar? Empress Helena’s attempts to find traces of the Magi led her envoys around the Middle East, taking us from Constantinople, to Milan and finally Cologne.

Aout the lecturer:

Christopher Bradley is an expert in the history and culture of the Middle East and North Africa. As a professional tour guide and lecturer he has led groups throughout the Middle East and Asia. Has written extensively on Arabia and is the author of The Discovery Guide to Yemen, Insight Guide to the Silk Road and Berlitz Guides to Libya; The Red Sea; Oman; Cairo; Abu Dhabi and Nile Cruising. As a photographer has pictures represented by four photographic libraries. A broad range of lecturing experience, including to the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Institute of British Architects. As a film producer and cameraman he has made documentaries for the BBC, National Geographic TV and Channel 4.

THIS LECTURE WILL BE HELD AT THE DORFORD CENTRE, BRIDPORT ROAD, TOP 0'TOWN ROUNDABOUT WITH THE LECTURER PRESENT

IT WILL ALSO BE LIVE STREAMED TO MEMBERS AT HOME

This lecture was originally planned for May, 2020 but needed to be postponed due to Covid-19.

A fascinating look at the courtly ceremonial splendour and function of furniture of the post-Restoration period, with reference not just to its design, construction and decoration but also to its upholstery –frequently more expensive than the furniture itself. At its best, the decoration of furniture in this period - inspired by advanced French taste in particular and the Baroque generally - is successfully integrated with the exciting form it assumed under the ever-developing skill of remarkable craftsmen; at its worst, its “intolerable luxury and huge expense” led to vulgarity and bad taste! Unique close-ups of the upholstered State furniture from Knole and elsewhere – a visual ‘wow’ factor- are included in this lecture.

About the lecturer:

Janusz Karozewski-Slowikowski is a freelance lecturer and researcher in English furniture history and also an antique dealer.

THIS LECTURE WILL BE HELD AT THE DORFORD CENTRE, BRIDPORT ROAD, TOP 0'TOWN ROUNDABOUT WITH THE LECTURER PRESENT

MEMBERS MAY BOOK A FREE TICKET VIA TICKET SOURCE

IT WILL ALSO BE LIVE STREAMED TO MEMBERS AT HOME

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

About the lecturer:

Cambridge Fine Arts. Writer, Artist, TV Presenter. Lecturer to many London art courses. Director of the New Academy of Arts. Author of 6 Novels.

THIS LECTURE WILL BE HELD AT THE DORFORD CENTRE, BRIDPORT ROAD, TOP 0'TOWN ROUNDABOUT WITH THE LECTURER PRESENT

IT WILL ALSO BE LIVE STREAMED TO MEMBERS AT HOME

This lecture examines a series of iconic photographs that are embedded in our collective memory. They range from records of historic events, to fabulous portraits and scenes of emotional release and joy. The talk analyses the power of these images, traces the fascinating stories of how they came to be produced, and places them in the context of our appreciation of art.

About our lecturer:

Brian Stater 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.

GUESTS ARE WELCOME AT OUR ON-LINE LECTURES FOR A FEE OF £5

If you would like to view one of our on-line lectures please send an email to:
info@theartssocietydorsetcounty.org.uk with your Name, E-mail address,
telephone number and lecture you want to view.
Payment by BACS to:
The Arts Society Dorset County
30-90-89 (Lloyds)
35350668
As a reference please put Guest and Month of Lecture eg. “GuestSept” to
identify the payment.
Links to the lecture will be sent out a few days before the event.
We look forward to welcoming you to our Society lecture programme
GUESTS ARE WELCOME AT OUR ON-LINE ZOOM
LECTURES - £5.00

All lectures will continue to be by Zoom Webinar at 18:45 and this will probably continue until at least October.  There is work planned for the Corn Exchange in September

The Arts Society Dorset County AGM will be by a Zoom Meeting and the date and time will be advised to members by email.

We will use the evidence of town planning, architecture, sculpture, mosaic, and fresco, supported by contemporary literature, to reconstruct something of the fabric of everyday life in ancient Pompeii, Herculaneum, and other Vesuvian sites. The lecture will contrast the world of public affairs, business, and aristocratic display (what Romans called negotium) with the more private world of relaxation in elite town-houses and villas (otium).

About the lecturer:

Neil Faulkner was educated at King's College Cambridge and Institute of Archaeology UCL. He works as a lecturer, writer, archaeologist and occasional broadcaster.  He is also a Research Fellow, University of Bristol. Editor, Military History Monthly. Director, Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project. Director, Great Arab Revolt Project. Author of The Decline and Fall of Roman Britain, Apocalypse, Hidden Treasure, Rome: Empire of the Eagles, and The Ancient Greek Olympics: a visitor's guide. Author of forthcoming Lawrence of Arabia's War. Major TV appearances include Channel 4's Time Team, BBC2's Timewatch, Channel Five's Boudica Revealed and Sky Atlantic's The British.

GUESTS ARE WELCOME AT OUR ON-LINE LECTURES FOR A FEE OF £5

If you would like to view one of our on-line lectures please send an email to:
info@theartssocietydorsetcounty.org.uk with your Name, E-mail address,
telephone number and lecture you want to view.
Payment by BACS to:
The Arts Society Dorset County
30-90-89 (Lloyds)
35350668
As a reference please put Guest and Month of Lecture eg. “GuestSept” to
identify the payment.
Links to the lecture will be sent out a few days before the event.
We look forward to welcoming you to our Society lecture programme
GUESTS ARE WELCOME AT OUR ON-LINE ZOOM
LECTURES - £5.00

All lectures will continue to be by Zoom Webinar at 18:45 and this will probably continue until at least October.  There is work planned for the Corn Exchange in September.

This lecture was originally planned for March 2020, but had to be postponed due to the pandemic. It is most fortunate we were able to re-book this lecture.

Years of working as an artist within the Criminal Justice System in England and Germany have given Angela unique insights into the destructive and costly cycle of crime, prisons and re-offending. In this thought-provoking talk she offers a deeper understanding of the minds, lives and challenges of offenders. With extraordinary slides of art projects and prisoner’s art, she demonstrates how within the process of creating art of any discipline, there are vital opportunities for offenders to confront their crimes and develop the key life skills so essential in leading a positive and productive life. A frequent response to this talk has been “I had no idea!” and indeed it casts light onto areas of our society where the Arts not only are visual, decorative or commercial, but absolutely vital, hugely relevant and potentially life-changing.

This talk is moving, informative and very original. Interspersed with personal accounts of humorous or slightly horrifying situations, these talks have kept audiences across the country engrossed. 

About the lecturer:

Angela Findlay is a professional artist, writer and freelance lecturer with a long career of teaching art in prisons in Germany and England. Her time ‘behind bars’ and later as Arts Coordinator of the London-based Koestler Trust, gave her many insights into the huge impact the arts can have in terms of rehabilitation. Her ideas were novel but effective and in 2016 she was invited to the Ministry of Justice to present the case for the arts to be included in their new rehabilitation and education policies. Since Brexit, the direction of prison policy has reversed. In the past decade Angela’s Anglo-German roots led her to research Germany’s largely unknown post-WWII process of remembrance. So completely different to the British one, the arts once again play a huge and vital role, this time in expressing the apology that underlies the country’s unique culture of counter memorials.  Angela has a BA(Hons) in Fine Art, a Diploma in Artistic Therapy (specialising in colour) and her paintings are widely exhibited both nationally and internationally. 

GUESTS ARE WELCOME AT OUR ON-LINE LECTURES FOR A FEE OF £5

If you would like to view one of our on-line lectures please send an email to:
info@theartssocietydorsetcounty.org.uk with your Name, E-mail address,
telephone number and lecture you want to view.
Payment by BACS to:
The Arts Society Dorset County
30-90-89 (Lloyds)
35350668
As a reference please put Guest and Month of Lecture eg. “GuestMay” to
identify the payment.
Links to the lecture will be sent out a few days before the event.
We look forward to welcoming you to our Society lecture programme
GUESTS ARE WELCOME AT OUR ON-LINE ZOOM
LECTURES - £5.00

MARINA RENEE-CEMMICK – A Talk on her Experiences and Art

Thursday 13 May at 6 pm about 40 minutes via Zoom Webinar

Marina has agreed to give a talk about her experiences as an Art Student.

She is an exceptionally talented former student from Thomas Hardye School, who our society, TAS Dorset County have supported through Young Arts.  She will tell us about her student experience and how the help from us benefited this. Our society granted her two Young Arts Bursaries, in 2013 and again in 2019.  The first was for her Foundation Course at Bournemouth School of Arts and the second her Masters at the Royal School of Drawing in London.  She also spent three years at Glasgow School of Art. 

Marina Renee-Cemmick (b. 1994) grew up in Dorset, moving to Glasgow to study Painting at Glasgow school of Art (2018). During this time she was awarded an exchange program to Kyoto Seika, Japan. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, with her first solo show ‘Underlying Structures’ at The New Glasgow Society (2018). In 2018 she was awarded the Aon Community Arts Award and shortlisted for Most Promising Artist, later receiving the RSA John Kinross award to travel to Florence. Currently, she lives and works in London as is finishing an MA in drawing at The Royal Drawing School, London (2021). 

Marina works across multi disciplines, which all fundamentally stem from a strong drawing practice. Drawing is a process of understanding the world around her. She works from observation to explore the form and light of objects, people and environments; discovering how something works, it’s structure and it's relationship to the space around it. She makes figurative drawings, oil paintings as well as installations and performance. All explore the human body, as a vessel for experience. Her interests lie in how we inhabit our bodies, physically and emotionally, and their capacity to hold the memory of our lives and past generations. There is an emotional depth to the work which is often described as a darkness, grappling with a more challenging aspects of the psyche. Her background in dance, Butoh and physical theatre allows for a sensitivity and innate interest towards the expression of the body and it’s movement. In the process of creation, there is a constant dialog between materials and ideas; an expansion and contraction that is playful and fluid, and evolves during the making.

www.marinareneecemmick.com

@marinareneecemmick

All lectures will continue to be by Zoom Webinar at 18.45 and this will probably continue until at least October.  There is work planned for the Corn Exchange in September

When Velázquez moved to Madrid from Seville with his young family, his life changed and so did his art. Working for an often-troubled Philip IV, we can see changes in the King through the numerous portraits Velazquez did of him. We will read the King’s letters and unravel the relationship between King and artist. We will meet the courtiers, dwarves, children, ladies in waiting and bodyguards who surrounded him as well as the royal family. This lecture will consider his time at court, his subjects and his development as a great artist. It will end with a discussion of his work Las Meninas. This painting with its extraordinary understanding of perspective and  fabulous use of paint, will be unravelled in terms of the artist’s own life and ambitions and his relationship with the Habsburg Monarchy at the time.

About the lecturer:

Jacqueline is Managing Director of an art tours company, running residential courses in Andalucía, Southern Spain in the art and culture of the region. Jacqueline is a course director and lecturer at the V&A and also lectures at The Royal Academy, Christies Education, The Art Fund, The London Art History Society and has recently toured New Zealand for The Arts Society and Australia fror ADFAS, where she will return next year. Her specialist field is Spanish Art, but she also lectures on European Art 1790-1950. She has recently published A Taste of Art, London (Unicorn Press 2019). Jacqueline films her lectures and is currently delivering lectures, study days and courses online.

GUESTS ARE WELCOME AT OUR ON-LINE LECTURES FOR A FEE OF £5

If you would like to view one of our on-line lectures please send an email to:
info@theartssocietydorsetcounty.org.uk with your Name, E-mail address,
telephone number and lecture you want to view.
Payment by BACS to:
The Arts Society Dorset County
30-90-89 (Lloyds)
35350668
As a reference please put Guest and Month of Lecture eg. “Guest/Dec” to
identify the payment.
Links to the lecture will be sent out a few days before the event.
We look forward to welcoming you to our Society lecture programme

Guests are very welcome for a contribution of £5. 

FORM FOR DETAILS 

LECTURE WILL BE GIVEN BY ZOOM WEBINAR

When Matisse, Cezanne and co. were first shown in London in 1910, critics and public reacted with horror, setting the trend for the next hundred years. In an entertaining survey this lecture returns to the scene of some memorable scandals, from Salvador Dali's appearance in a diving suit in 1936 to Alfred Munnings' infamous attack on Picasso and, of course, That Bed. Enlivened with archive photos and satirical newspaper cartoons, this lecture explores a history of resistance to modern art - while at the same time introducing the work of modern artists in an unusual and approachable way. 

About the lecturer:

Having studied History at Pembroke College, Cambridge, James Russell enjoyed a lengthy stint selling contemporary paintings and sculpture in Santa Fe, New Mexico, an experience that inspired him to begin writing and lecturing on 20th century art. Of his dozen or so books, one was a Sunday Times book of the year, while his writing has been described by critics as 'insightful', 'informative' and 'enjoyably readable'. James has curated major exhibitions at Dulwich Picture Gallery and for museums around the country. He bases his lectures on wide-ranging original research into the subjects that fascinate him.

Guests are very welcome for a contribution of £5. 

FORM FOR DETAILS 

While we hope to be back in the Corn Exchange, all the 2021 lecturers can give the lecture online via Zoom if necessary.

Despite his German birth and his Italian musical training, Handel remains one of the most important composers that England ever nurtured. Not only did his music have direct influence on his musical contemporaries, but his largerthan-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. By exploring the works of the French sculptor Roubiliac, the paintings of Hudson and Denner, the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, the novels of Samuel Butler, the Crystal Palace, the chimes of Westminster, as well as compositions by Sullivan and Tippett, the lecture assesses the cultural influences Handel had on a nation, as he once wrote, “from whom I have receiv’d so Generous a protection”.

Music performed may include: Handel in the Strand – P Grainger, Tune Your Harps from Esther – GF Handel, My Voice Shalt Thou Hear Betimes, O Lord – J Corfe, This Helmet I Suppose was Meant to Ward off Blows from Princess Ida – AS Sullivan. 

About the lecturer:

Peter 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.

THIS LECTURE WILL BE ON-LINE.  THE ZOOM WEBINAR WILL OPEN SHORTLY BEFORE THE 18.45 LECTURE.  Prior to that the lecturer and some committee members will be doing technical checks.

Guests are very welcome for a contribution of £5. 

FORM FOR DETAILS 

YOU WILL BE SENT A LINK A FEW DAYS BEFORE AND THEN THE DAY PRIOR TO THE LECTURE.

From the early Kosovan silver mines which are mentioned in Dante, through the twentieth century politics over Kosovo’s mines which resulted in both a war and a golf course, a silver thread winds through Kosovo’s history. Its most intricate tanglings are in the country’s cultural capital, Prizren, where a seventh generation of filigree artisans use ‘filum’ and ‘granum’, zigzags, ‘mouse-tooth’ designs and other twists and turns to magic lacy creations from dull sticks of raw material. The results – in boxes, buttons, jewellery, religious ornamentation and the talismans of superstitition – are a fine narrative of Kosovo’s history and traditions.

About the lecturer:

Studied at Magdalen College Oxford before training as a teacher and working in Lambeth, Hackney and Islington. 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. Speaks fluent Albanian and has translated two books (the unauthorized biography of Yugoslavia’s longest-held political prisoner, Adem Demaci, and the memoirs of one of the leaders of the 1912 uprising). Also the author of four books about Kosovo – Travels in Blood and Honey; becoming a beekeeper in Kosovo (2011), Edith and I; on the trail of an Edwardian traveller in Kosovo (2013); The Rubbish-Picker’s Wife; an unlikely friendship in Kosovo (2015) and The Silver Thread; a journey through Balkan craftmanship (2017). Regular contributor to Radio 4 (Saturday Live, Excess Baggage, From Our Own Correspondent) and the BBC World Service.

THIS LECTURE WILL BE ON-LINE.  THE ZOOM WEBINAR WILL OPEN SHORTLY BEFORE THE 18.45 LECTURE.  Prior to that the lecturer and some committee members will be doing technical checks.

Guests are very welcome for a contribution of £5. 

FORM FOR DETAILS 

YOU WILL BE SENT A LINK A FEW DAYS BEFORE AND THEN THE DAY PRIOR TO THE LECTURE.

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, René Magritte, it encompasses Trompe L’eoil, Banksy, Bridget Riley, Arcimboldo and Escher to name a few. Hold on to your seats and get ready to be visually fried.

About the Lecturer:

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

THIS LECTURE WILL BE ON-LINE.  THE ZOOM WEBINAR WILL OPEN SHORTLY BEFORE THE 18.45 LECTURE.  Prior to that the lecturer and some committee members will be doing technical checks.

Guests are very welcome for a contribution of £5. 

FORM FOR DETAILS 

YOU WILL BE SENT A LINK A FEW DAYS BEFORE AND THEN THE DAY PRIOR TO THE LECTURE.

What more suitable lecture for our current situation!

It is possible to see a shift in artistic tastes following the plague years which began in the mid 14th Century. This is understandable considering that we now know that at least 60% of the population of Europe and beyond perished in the first wave and that the disease recurred over the next 130 years. There is a distinct increase in interest in the macabre, but also in explorations of what will happen in the next life; some of it surprisingly optimistic and amusing. We see more interest in ex-pagan images and specific demands for spiritual protection and so what might be seen as a dust-to-dust mentality also becomes one of no tragedy, no triumph. 

About the Lecturer:

After nearly 20 years in the British army, Imogen went to the University of Kent to study Anglo-Saxon and Medieval History and Art, graduating with a 1st Class honours.  She works as a freelance lecturer across Britain and Europe as well as lecturing on small cruise ships and running study tours on land.

The Arts Society Wessex Area have organised a series of Zoom events and this is the first.

THE CITY OF LONDON VIRTUAL TOUR

led by PEPE MARTINEZ Blue Badge Guide

Friday 30 October at 2pm via Zoom at a cost of £5 per household payable to NADFAS (Wessex Area)

The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and primary central business of London.

For more information click

HERE

After payment and for more information contact Maggie Watts on maggiewatts136@gmail.com to confirm payment

YouTube recording link http://youtu.be/4OjsBVgclsM available for 7 days from 19/10/20

In conjunction with the Richmond Upon Thames Arts Society we are offering our members an extra zoom event.  Venice tour guide, Luisella Romeo, will be taking us on a live walking tour of the Dorsoduro district of Venice taking in Santa Maria della Salute, the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, the Accademia, gondola maintenance yards and much more.  

We had wonderful weather and a very good guide and tour

NON-MEMBERS ARE WELCOME TO JOIN US FOR A DONATION OF £5  PLEASE CLICK FOR DETAILS ON HOW TO PAY 

The district of Dorsoduro covers the southern part of Venice including the island of Giudecca and its Chiesa del Redentore.  The name Dorsoduro refers to the quality of the terrain as it is believed that this district rose up on land which was compact and less marshy.   Venice’s horizon changed radically with the construction of the Basilica of Santa Maria della Salute and the Fondamenta delle Zattere.   The last gondola boatyard still in operation in Venice, known as “lo squero”, is to be found here.  The Accademia , the Guggenheim Museum the Punta della Dogana are all located here.

THIS LECTURE WILL BE ON-LINE.  THE ZOOM WEBINAR WILL OPEN SHORTLY BEFORE THE 18.45 LECTURE.  Prior to that the lecturer and some committee members will be doing technical checks.

Guests are very welcome for a contribution of £5. 

FORM FOR DETAILS

YOU WILL BE SENT A LINK A FEW DAYS BEFORE AND THEN THE DAY PRIOR TO THE LECTURE.

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

About the lecturer:

Dr Caroline Shenton is an archivist and historian. She was formerly Director of the Parliamentary Archives in London, and before that was a senior archivist at the National Archives. Her book The Day Parliament Burned Down won the Political Book of the Year Award in 2013 and Mary Beard called it ‘microhistory at its absolute best’. Its acclaimed sequel, Mr Barry’s War, about the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster, was a Book of the Year in 2016 for The Daily Telegraph and BBC History Magazine and was described by Lucy Worsley as ‘a real jewel, finely wrought and beautiful’. Caroline was Political Writer in Residence at Gladstone’s Library in 2017, has appeared at the Cheltenham, Hay and Henley literary festivals and on BBC radio and TV.

Signed books of this lecture 'THE DAY PARLIAMENT BURNED DOWN' are available at the discounted price of £10 plus postage.  Please contact Caroline Shenton direct via https://www.carolineshenton.co.uk/welcome/

THIS LECTURE WILL BE ON-LINE.  THE ZOOM WEBINAR WILL OPEN SHORTLY BEFORE THE 18.45 LECTURE.  Prior to that the lecturer and some committee members will be doing technical checks.

Guests are very welcome for a contribution of £5. 

FORM FOR DETAILS 

YOU WILL BE SENT A LINK A FEW DAYS BEFORE AND THEN THE DAY PRIOR TO THE LECTURE.

This lecture replaces the one advertised on the Programme Card on George Chinnery

which is postponed to November 2021.

Western Art from ‘Down Under’ is often overlooked and neglected, but there is a large amount of talented and inventive painters who rose to prominence in the post-World War II era. Painters like Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd from the ‘Heide School’ working in a naïve and expressive style, John Brack’s figurative paintings give a social critic of Australian post-war culture, John Olsen’s celebratory abstract expressions of the landscape, Brett Whiteley’s personal vision of his life in Sydney, Fred Williams' landscapes and Jeffery Smart’s surreal depictions of urban life are all essential in our understanding and appreciating the modern art of Australia and its place in the history of Western Art.

About the lecturer:

Paul is an Art Historian and a National Gallery trained guide with many years of experience working in education. As a freelance Paul delivers courses and lectures for a wide range of educational organisations. Paul has also given talks and tours for art associations/societies in Museums and Galleries in the UK and Europe. As a writer, Paul has published a book, which examines the subject of cultural crossovers and appropriations in 20th century painting. Paul has a long-standing commitment, in conjunction with the National Gallery as a tour guide at the Longford Castle art collection and he is also a visiting tutor at Marlborough College and a tutor at MCSS.

THIS IS AN EXTRA LECTURE FOR OUR MEMBERS.  IT WILL BE ON-LINE VIA ZOOM AT 18.15 HOURS FOR AN 18.45 LECTURE.  A LINK WILL BE SENT TO MEMBERS ABOUT 4 DAYS BEFORE.

If you think of St Pancras International or New York Grand Central you imagine long romantic journeys. You know they are special places promising excitement and adventure. But there are dozens of other glorious stations in the UK and abroad. We will take a journey around some of the most evocative and splendid stations in the world. We will look not only at the magnificence of the architecture and the brilliant
engineering but will discover numerous artworks within the stations and examine many depictions of stations in art – like Claude Monet’s Gare St Lazare or William Powell Frith’s Paddington. It may sound a bit anoraky, but it’s definitely not. It’s lavish, colourful and fun.

About the lecturer:

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 tours at each venue. He is also a qualified and active freelance London guide and leads regular tours for various corporations and organisations. Six years ago, he established a weekly independent art lecture group in his home town of Richmond in West London, and he gives talks on a variety of subjects. He is an accredited lecturer for The Arts Society, and a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars. 

This lecture will be an On-line lecture at 1815 for 18.45 hours on Thursday 18 June.  An email will be sent to all members with the Zoom link  4 days before the lecture.

Fake News has been around since the time of the Egyptian pharaohs and art has always been one of its favourite media.

In this talk I will be uncovering the subtle art of spin and propaganda in art from the glories of Ancient Mesopotamia to the Norman Conquest and then onto Elizabethan England and the dark days of Nazi Germany.

Every picture tells a story—whether it is true or not is an entirely different matter.

About the Lecturer:

Geri is a former Fleet Street journalist and film PR. She has a first-class honours degree in History and Theology, a Masters in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute and a Theology doctorate from Roehampton University in London. She has been lecturing for the past 14 years both in the UK and internationally. She is also principal lecturer on the Arts Society South West Area’s History of Art course and is an Honorary Research Fellow at Roehampton University.

This lecture will be On-line via Zoom.  All members will be send a link at least the day before the lecture.

In 1888 Gertrude Jekyll wrote a short but seminal article in The Garden in which she urged the readers to “remember that in a garden we are painting a picture”. As an accomplished watercolour artist, Miss Jekyll was familiar with the principles of using colours, but she felt that in gardens these principles “had been greatly neglected”. This talk looks at how to apply these principles in designing a border, but it also looks at the ways in which a border is different from a painting. However, it goes further than this and looks at how contemporary work of the likes of Turner, Monet, Rothko, Jackson Pollack, and Hockney evolved in parallel with ideas about what a garden or border should look like.

About the Lecturer:

Since 1986 Timothy Walker has given 1,500 public lectures. This was originally part of his work as director of the Oxford University Botanic Garden from 1988 to 2014. Botanic gardens are often described as living museums, and garden curators lecture about them in the same way as museum curators talk about their collections. Since 2014 he has been a college lecturer and tutor at Somerville College Oxford. Gardens are often thought of a place where science and art meet on equal terms. Timothy Walker's lecture investigate this relationship.

Years of working as an artist within the Criminal Justice System in England and Germany have given Angela unique insights into the destructive and costly cycle of crime, prisons and re-offending. In this thought-provoking talk she offers a deeper understanding of the minds, lives and challenges of offenders. And, with extraordinary slides of art projects and prisoner’s art, she demonstrates how within the process of creating art of any discipline, there are vital opportunities for offenders to confront their crimes and develop the key life skills so essential in leading a positive and productive life.

A frequent response to this talk has been “I had no idea!” and indeed it casts light onto areas of our society where the Arts are not only visual, decorative, or commercial, but absolutely vital, hugely relevant and potentially life-changing.

This talk is moving, informative and very original. Interspersed with personal accounts of humorous or slightly horrifying situations, Angela talks have kept audiences across the country engrossed.

About the Lecturer:

Angela Findlay is a professional artist, wwriter and freelance lecturer with a long standing interest in the role the arts and the creative process can play in bringing about changes, on a personal level or within societies. Her long career of teaching art in prisons and Young Offender Institutions in Germany and England, followed by her role as the former Arts Coordinator of the Koestler Trust in London, gave her many insights into the huge impact the arts can have in terms of rehabilitation. She is currently advising the Ministry of Justice and presenting the case for the arts to be included in their new rehabilitation and education policies.

In the past decade Angela’s Anglo-German roots led her to discover and research Germany’s largely unknown but fascinating post-WWII process of remembrance. So completely different to the British one, the arts once again play a huge and vital role in expressing the apology and atonement that underlies the country’s unique culture of memorials and counter memorials.

Angela has a BA(Hons) in Fine Art, a Diploma in Artistic Therapy (specialising in colour) and her paintings are widely exhibited both nationally and internationally.

2020 is an important year marking the 500th anniversary of Raphael’s death on 6 April 1520, which will be commemorated by a number of important exhibitions and events worldwide.

Raphael is often referred to as one of the three giants of the High Renaissance in Italy alongside Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.  During his short life (he died aged 37) Raphael progressed from a series of modest initial commissions in and around his home town of Urbino to the covetous position as one of the leading artists at the court of Pope Julius II.  The Pope was one of the most important patrons of the arts in Italy and commissioned some of the most sublime and influential woks of the early 16th century from this young and gifted painter.

This lecture explores how Raphael achieved this extraordinary rise in status, tracing the development of early works under the influence of Perugino and Pinturicchio to encounters with Michelangelo and Leonardo in Florence, and finally an examination of the later masterpieces of painting and drawing created in Rome.

About the lecturer:

Sian Walters is an art historian and lectures for the National Gallery, The Arts Society, The Wallace Collection and many other art societies in the UK and Europe.  She was also a lecturer at Surrey University for many years.

Her specialist areas are 15th and 16th Century Italian Art, Spanish Art and Architecture, and the relationship between Dance and Art (she is an honorary advisor to the Nonsuch Historical Dance Society).  Sian studied at Cambridge University where she was awarded a choral exhibition and a 1st for her dissertation on the painting of Arnold Schoenberg.  She has lived in France and Italy where she worked for the eminent Haydn scholar H.C. Robbins Landon and for the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice.

Rodin is one of the heroic figures of 19th century art history and was internationally celebrated during his lifetime. But after his death his reputation slipped and there were questions about his use of the female image. Now that is very much being reassessed and he is seen as having in one career taken sculpture on a revolutionary path equivalent to what the Realists, Impressionists and Post Impressionists did with many careers.

This lecture surveys his work showing why he is one of the greatest sculptors ever, looking at his work in relationship to 19th century sculpture as well assessing his continuing relevance.

About the Lecturer:

David Worthington has been drawn to abstract sculpture since seeing a Barbara Hepworth in a school history book aged 10. He graduated from Oxford University in 1984 with a degree in Philosophy and Theology, then studied fine art in London, Barcelona and New York. A maker he also curates and writes about art. He was shortlisted for the Jerwood Sculpture Prize in 2009.

David is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Sculptors, and was Vice President in 2010-13.

He has carried out public commissions in the UK, America and Japan. His work is in the museum the Creative Cities Collection Beijing China. He has had solo shows at the Lefevre Gallery, Sladers Yard, Horatio’s Garden, the William Bennington Gallery, the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, and in October 2017 at the Lightbox Gallery Museum, Woking. He recently took part in exhibitions at Colyer Bristow Gallery and Contemporary Sculpture at Fulmer 2018.

This is a ticketed event. Tickets will be on sale from the Hon. Secretary, Mrs Valentine Simson at the October and November lectures.  A notice will also be sent out by MailChimp for postal applications and also on the website from October.

Lecture and Christmas Dinner

The Nutcracker has delighted audiences at Christmas for many decades, yet it was deemed a failure at its first performances.  We take a close look at how this well-loved ballet now takes its rightful place on stage and how the music of Tchaikovsky along with story-telling, design and dance all come together to make the most magical escape for young and old alike.  Includes several performance video clips.

About the lecturer:

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.

Musical instruments are found throughout the paintings of the Dutch Golden Age. Despite this, knowledge of their symbolic meaning, and how they sounded to their original participants, is often lost on modern audiences. The associations of music with love and intimacy, enlivened by the sound quality and tone of the instruments of the period, help unravel their meaning. From Jan Steen’s brothel scenes to the solemn interiors of Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch, this lecture charts the vast meaning and rich significance of music in Dutch art.

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

About the lecturer:

Adam Busiakiewicz is an Independent Art Historian and Guide Lecturer at the Wallace Collection. After completing his Bachelor’s Degree in History at UCL in 2010 he held the position of Head of Historical Interpretation (curator) at Warwick Castle. He left the castle in 2013 after winning a full AHRC studentship to pursue a Master’s Degree in Fine and Decorative Art at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London. In December 2014 he became the youngest Guide Lecturer at the Wallace Collection, where he regularly gives talks, tours and lectures to both public and professional audiences. Adam is currently planning a publication on the Grevilles of Warwick Castle, and has had articles published by the British Art Journal and Hispanic Lyra (Spain’s leading Guitar History publication).

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.

About the lecturer:

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. He also is 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.

From the elaborate carvings on ancient wooden Stave churches to the ultra-modern design of Oslo-based practice Snøhetta ('Snow Hat'), the Norwegian arts have always had a close relationship with nature.  This lecture will explore how Norways' dramatic, rugged and beautiful landscape has inspired and shaped its music, painting and architecture from the medieval period to the present day.  Subjects to be discussed include the 'animal art' of the Viking-era Urnes Stave Church, the music of Edvard Grieg, the paintings of Munch and Astrup, and the cutting-edge landscape architectural projects commissioned for Norway's National Tourist Routes. 

About the lecturer:

Rosamund Bartlett is a writer, scholar and translator with expertise in Russian and European art, literature and music.  She completed her doctorate at Oxford, and has held a number of senior university appointments, most recently at the European University Institute in Florence.

            She is the author and editor of several books, including Wagner and Russia and Shostakovich in Context, as well as biographies of Chekhov and Tolstoy.  Her introduction to The Russian Soul: Selections from A Writer's Diary by Fyodor Dostoevsky, was published in 2017. She has also been commissioned to write articles and reviews for a wide range of publications, both scholarly and popular, such as The Daily Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal, the international art magazine Apollo, and the programmes of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.  As a translator she has published two volumes of Chekhov’s stories and the first uncensored edition of his letters. Her new translation of Anna Karenina for Oxford World’s Classics was published to acclaim in 2014. 

            She has lectured at public institutions around the world, ranging from the British Library in London to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, collaborated with the organisations such as the National Theatre and the Salzburg Festival, and contributed to Proms events and radio broadcasts on the BBC.  She led the campaign to save Chekhov’s house in Yalta and was awarded the Chekhov 150th Anniversary Medal by the Russian government in recognition of her educational and charitable work.  

The AGM will be held at 6.30 pm before the lecture at 6.45 pm.

On Ernest Shackleton’s third Antarctic expedition in 1914, his ship, the Endurance, was trapped and eventually crushed in the pack ice. After camping for five months on the ice, Shackleton’s men rowed to the remote Elephant Island. From there, Shackleton sailed for help to South Georgia over 800 miles away.  Over three months later he returned to rescue the crew of the Endurance.  

Frank Hurley, one of the great photographers of the 20th century, was the expedition’s official photographer.  His photographs are a visual narrative of an epic journey which capture with great artistry new and amazing landscapes within which a remarkable human drama is played out.  The aim of the lecture is to capture Hurley’s achievements as a photographer of the Antarctic in the first flush of human contact when it was still essentially terra incognita.

About our lecturer: 

Mark was born on the Isles of Scilly and educated at Truro School and Birmingham University.  He graduated with a B.A. (Hons) in English Language and Literature and an M.A. in Late Medieval Society and Culture.  He spent his career in teaching and lecturing.  For the last ten years he has worked independently, running two small companies, Exploring History and Romarc Training and Development. He is a registered lecturer with The Arts Society, giving lectures throughout the country.

Art UK was set up to catalogue every oil painting in public ownership in the UK. This unique and ambitious project involved visiting 3,000 collections across the country and photographing over 212,000 paintings. These paintings are reproduced in an acclaimed series of hardback catalogues entitled Oil Paintings in Public Ownership.

The paintings are freely available to view on the Art UK website (www.artuk.org). The lecture offers an insider’s view of the project and describes some unusual collections visited, intriguing paintings uncovered, detective work involved and assistance given by members of The Arts Society (NADFAS) members. Each lecture is tailored to reflect the locality of the venue.

About the lecturer:

Mary Rose gained an MA in Victorian Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. Several of her arts-related essays and articles have been published, and she is a guide at Turner’s House in Twickenham and Dorich House Museum in Kingston. She was a founder member of Richmond upon Thames DFAS. Since 2007 she has worked part-time on the unique arts project that is the subject of her lectures.

Image:

The Church at Vétheuil (1880)

Claude Monet (1840–1926)

Southampton City Art Gallery

Link to the Art UK website:

www.artuk.org

No highway in the world is as laden with romance and adventure as the Silk Road (from 2nd Century BC to 10th Century AD). It was the worlds longest trade route, linking China with the Mediterranean, 8,000 km or 5,000 miles long, crossing the spectacular and inaccessible regions in Asia. Merchants, travellers and monks crossed burning deserts and snow-capped mountains, while carrying trade goods: silk, jade, carpets, spices, glass and lapis lazuli as well as other luxury goods. Oasis towns edged the Taklamakan Desert and the foothill of mountains – here Buddhist monks created hundreds of stunning colourful fresco/painted cave temples. The lecture looks at the recent archaeology of the Silk Route: The cave temples of Dunhaung and Bezeklik, the Silk Road Mummies, Gandara and ancient Bactria (Afghanistan) and the Tillya Tepe Gold Hoard. Finally, the old and exotic trade cities of Bam, Baghdad and Palmyra. Here in the markets the Chinese silk became more valuable than gold.

About the lecturer:

Hanne Sutcliffe has lectured extensively to museums, art and historical societies and the Art Fund. She has been a guide, lecturer and researcher on sixteen tours to China. Lecture tours: twice to Australia (AADFAS), South Africa, and the USA. She has also lectured in Europe and on cruise liners in the Far East. She is an extra-mural lecturer at Leeds University and Harrogate College. She has published Chinese Ceramics at Lotherton Hall and is a Council Member of Oriental Ceramics Society.

The variety of new buildings designed by British architects at home and abroad, as well as foreign architects practising in the UK, is putting the UK at the forefront of architectural innovation.

Many of the buildings we shall look at are those which have either won or been shortlisted for the annual RIBA Stirling Prize since it was inaugurated in 1996.    Among the projects which have caught the public’s attention recently are Mecanoo’s Library of Birmingham, shortlisted in 2014, and the Newport Street Gallery in south London, winner in 2016.

In examining these buildings, the lecture addresses such terms as Neo-Modernism, Deconstruction and Biomorphic architecture, the latter shown off to striking effect in Thomas Heatherwick’s unusual design for The Hive building in Singapore.   At the other end of the scale we look at the new but little-known classical country houses being produced by Quinlan Terry and other leaders in classical design.   Craft in architecture is making a come-back and the lecture explains how this is achieved through a combination of advanced technology and handcraftsmanship. 

Architecture Now! is designed to give members a framework to which they can refer when considering modern architecture.

Photo: THE HIVE, Singapore - Architect Thomas Heatherwick. Photo by Witrian How

About the lecturer:

Anthea Streeter studied the Fine and Decorative Arts in London and continued her studies at Harvard University. It was while at Harvard, where there was great enthusiasm for American design, that she became interested herself in 20th century architecture. Since returning from America she has taught on courses in Oxford and London, lectured on the Country House course in Sussex, and for several private groups around the country. Special interest in the architecture and design of 20th century.

In late 19th century Paris, two cousins, Jewish immigrants from Constantinople, amassed remarkable collections of art. One left his collection to the Louvre, including world - famous works like L' Absinthe by Degas, the other left his house and collection - one of the most important collections of 18th century French decorative art anywhere in the world - to the State, as a museum and as a lasting memorial to his son. This is an extraordinary story of a family dynasty, money, art, social behaviour, obsession and tragedy.

https://jewishstudies.washington.edu/arts-culture/ottoman-jew-in-paris-moise-de-camondo/

Image:  Still Life by Paul Cezanne

About the lecturer:

Deborah Lambert is a freelance art historian and lecturer. After reading for an MA in the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute, London University, she became an arts administrator.  In 1978 she joined Christie’s Education, part of Christie’s Auctioneers, as tutor, lecturer and academic director teaching fine and decorative art history. From 2006 until stepping down in September 2015, Deborah was Curator of the Schroder Collection, an important private art collection, and she now concentrates on her freelance lecturing and research.

Deborah has lectured to a variety of organisations in the United Kingdom and abroad, and for over 20 years appeared on BBC Television’s Antiques Roadshow as a furniture specialist.

The Spanish artist Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923) was a phenomenal international success in his own lifetime. His paintings of fishermen, his beach scenes, portraits and regional studies of Spain – all permeated by colour and light – were eagerly bought in his lifetime by European and American collectors. Today his work is less well known, though occasionally one of his paintings comes up for sale in a major auction house and hits the headlines, and it still delights.  He was grounded in Spanish traditions of realism, but was influenced by Impressionism and open to the ideas of the contemporary avant-garde.  His passion was painting sunlit scenes, so there is a wonderful optimism about his works.  His former home and studio is now one of Madrid’s most popular small museums, and his work in the Hispanic Society in New York is a major attraction there.

Brief Reading List:

The Painter Joaquín Sorolla – Edmund Peel, 1987       

Catalogue of Sorolla Exhibition, The Prado Museum, 2009

Joaquín Sorolla by Blanca Pons Sorolla, 2005

Biographical notes – GAIL TURNER   

Gail Turner read History at Oxford and History of Art at the Courtauld Institute. She lectures to NADFAS, The Art Fund, and many other arts organizations, and she currently teaches on courses at the V&A, She has taught on Cambridge University Summer Schools and at the Courtauld Institute. She has taken many tours to different parts of Spain for NADFAS, Inscape, Art Pursuits and Martin Randall Travel.  She is also a practising painter and etcher. In 2015 Gail was awarded the Encomienda de la Orden de Isabel la Catolica (Spanish equivalent of the CBE) by the King of Spain for promoting Spanish art and culture among the British.

CHRISTMAS LECTURE AND DINNER

Extra event by ticket only, available from Mrs Valentine Simson, Secretary by clicking HERE

Mexico has a vast range of festivals. Visually splendid, many feature lavish processions and masked dances with richly decorated costumes. Although some festivals commemorate national events, most are religious in inspiration. After the Spanish conquest of 1521, priests used theatrical representation as a method of instruction. Traditionally, people display elaborate nativity scenes in their homes.

The Christmas story is acted out in towns and villages: adults and children perform as shepherds and shepherdesses, hermits and devils. Other important celebrations include Saints' Days, All Souls' Day, and Carnival. Chloë Sayer's book 'Fiesta' was published in 2009 by The British Museum Press. 

About the lecturer

Chloë Sayer is a freelance specialist in the art and culture of Latin America. Her many books include MEXICAN TEXTILES (British Museum Press, 1990), THE ARTS AND CRAFTS OF MEXICO (Thames & Hudson, 1990), FOCUS ON AZTECS AND INCAS (Watts Books, 1995), THE INCAS (Wayland, 1998), and FIESTA: DAYS OF THE DEAD AND OTHER MEXICAN FESTIVALS (British Museum Press, 2009). She co-wrote OF GODS AND MEN: MEXICO AND THE MEXICAN INDIAN (BBC Publications, 1980) and TRADITIONAL MEXICAN ARCHITECTURE (Thames & Hudson, 1993).

Portmeirion is an extraordinary surprise; a colourful and delightful fantasy village on the coast of north Wales.   Created from the 1920s by the remarkable architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, Portmeirion was his personal defiance against the advance of modernism and what he saw as the despoilment of Britain. By the 1950s it had become the playground of artists, intellectuals, aristocrats and the merely rich. Regular visitors included H G Wells, Bertrand Russell and Noel Coward (who wrote Blithe Spirit at Portmeirion).

Sir Clough’s daughter Susan created Portmeirion Pottery, which during the 1960s and 70s, was synonymous with cutting-edge ceramic style. This lecture looks at the place, its architecture and associations.

Matthew also draws on some personal memories, as his uncle was Resident Director of Portmeirion for 30 years. 

About the lecturer: 

Matthew Williams lectures widely on the subject of design, and is especially interested in that of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A recognised expert in the work of the designer William Burges, he has been the Curator of Cardiff Castle since 1990 and has published widely in art and architectural journals. A long-standing member of The Arts Society, Matthew has been a Volunteers Representative, a Programme Secretary and a Chairman. He has been a Lecturer for The Arts Society since 2001.

A variety of Young Arts projects have been funded by our society since 2002 at schools around our area. This lecture has been chosen to illustrate a more unusual project. In 2007 we sponsored a Graffiti artist to help a group of boys aged between 18 and 21 at the Portland Young Offenders Institute to design and paint a arresting mural on the wall of an exercise yard.

There's more to the world of street art than Banksy. Hidden Canvasses is a beginner's guide to the biggest art movement since pop art.  From train writing in New York to interactive technology that brings murals to life, the concept of un-commissioned public art is a very different beast to that which it once was.  Hidden Canvases explores the key stages in street art's growth by examining the different elements and styles that comprise the scene with no rules.  From the international superstars to the local underground heroes you're guaranteed to leave knowing your Invader from your Aryz and who knows you might even start looking at the world a little differently. 

About the lecturer: 

Doug Gillen is heavily involved in documenting the street art scene in London and abroad through his project Fifth Wall TV, and can offer a genuine insight into this world. Previously he lectured for London Art and More, and when not filming he is an East End tour guide for Alternative London, specialising in culture and art.

In 1937 the western world was on the brink of major conflict. The Spanish Civil War was raging; and Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin were each asserting their regimes at every opportunity. Artistic culture was also an arena for a conflict waged between the supporters of a re-branded idea of tradition and those who saw resistance in the activities of the avant-garde. This lecture presents some of the key artistic moments of that year, such as the Paris International Exposition, and the concurrent Great German Art and the Degenerate Art exhibitions in Munich. The lecture then broadens the discussion of these cultural events to compare the aesthetics of Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin at home, and to look at some of the consequences of these for the post-war avant-garde. 

About the lecturer:

Jethro Lyne spent ten years in Australia, in the main as a Lecturer in Art History at the National Art School in Sydney, while also teaching specific courses for the University of Sydney and the Australian Catholic University,. In his last two years there he joined the staff of the Art Gallery of New South Wales as a Coordinator of Public Programs. In 2009 he returned to England to pursue research into Twelfth Century French sculpture. During 2010-11 he taught courses on Medieval European and Russian Art at the University of Oxford's Department for Continuing Education, and also gave lectures on Romanesque art at the V&A Museum. He is now Head of History of Art at Bryanston School in Dorset and continues to give public lectures for the OUDCE, the V&A and The Arts Society.

Artists have always used jokes to make serious statements – about themselves, about the world, about the nature of art. This lecture looks at artists’ jokes through the ages, from medieval monks doodling graffiti in the margins of manuscripts to Banksy turning supermarket walls into social satire. Caravaggio put his own face on Goliath's severed head as an apology for a racy lifestyle, Michelangelo hid a self-portrait on the hide of St Bartholomew on the Sistine ceiling to express the agony of creation. When Van Gogh attacked formal art education and Salvador Dali got at Picasso, they did it in paint. Trompe l'oeil, parody, visual puns, the moustache on the Mona Lisa - all in fun, all deadly serious: artists' jokes tell you a lot once you know.

About our lecturer: 

Susie Harries is a writer, editor and lecturer, specialising in 20th century culture and the arts. She has published eight books on subjects including official war art, opera and the composer Elisabeth Lutyens. The most recent is the biography of Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, published in August 2011. Susie has lectured to a range of audiences, from the Imperial War Museum and British Museum to the Twentieth Century Society and the RSA, most recently at the Cheltenham and Bridport Literary Festivals and the Victorian Society.

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

About the lecturer: 

Toby Faber has written two works of narrative history, Stradivarius and Fabergé's Eggs, published by Macmillan in the UK and Random House in the US, and given lectures associated with these two subjects at venues including The Victoria and Albert Museum, Bath Theatre, The Library of Congress and the Huntington Library, as well as a number of literary festivals. 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, a trustee of Yale University Press (UK) and a director of the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society.

As part of the NADFAS Golden Jubilee Year 2018, this lecture reflects the work of the volunteers from our society who meet in the library of Dorset County Museum restoring damaged books, guided by the bookbinder Frank Brown. 

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

About our lecturer: 

Dominic is a bookbinder, artist and teacher. He first learned bookbinding at 16 from Benedictine Monks at Douai Abbey in Berkshire and later at the London College of Printing. He has worked at the V&A, and for various binderies in London, New York and San Francisco, and spends part of the year teaching across the USA. He has his bindery in the Lake District, from where he travels across the UK teaching master classes and lecturing. He is Vice President of the Society of Bookbinders and was elected a Fellow of Designer Bookbinders in 2008. His binding work is mostly the restoration of antiquarian books and Design Bindings. He has won many prizes in the Designer Bookbinders competition, including both first prizes and the Mansfield Silver Medal in 2007. His bindings are in collections worldwide, including the British Library and the John Rylands Library in Manchester. In 2010 he bound a special copy of the winner of the Booker Prize which was presented to the author. In June 2013 he won first prize in the prestigious Sir Paul Getty International Bookbinding Competition. His winning binding was acquired by the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

This lecture uses the English cathedrals as "time machines" to the medieval period, tracing their story from the revolutionary birth of English Christianity in about 600AD, through the great rebuilding that followed the conquest of 1066, to the decades around a century later when Gothic was invented in an atmosphere of febrile change and political tension. It then follows the story through the cults and traumas of the fourteenth century, backdrop to England's most extraordinary architectural miracles, and into the dynastic struggles of the late medieval era; struggles which eventually tore apart the very world that created the cathedrals. Throughout, beautiful photography of the buildings themselves, as well as of contemporary manuscripts and paintings, helps to bring to life the remarkable events they witnessed and  which in turn shaped their architecture.

About our lecturer:

Jon Cannon wrote "Cathedral:the Great English Cathedrals and the World that Made Them" (2007), and presented BBC Television's "How to Build a Cathedral". "The Secret Language of Sacred Places: Decoding Temples, Mosques, Churches and other Places of Worship around the World" was published in 2013 and the "Shire Book of Medieval Architectural Style" in the following year. Jon is currently working on a major book on geology and place in the British landscape. Other publications include numerous works for  English Heritage and academic volumes on West Country churches.

Jon is a part-time lecturer in the History of Art at the University of Bristol; he holds a degree in the History of Art from the University of Sussex. He lectures, gives study days and leads tours on medieval church art, architecture and history. He is a lay canon (Keeper of the Fabric) at Bristol Cathedral.

Relevance to our Volunteering work

Members of our Society volunteer to create Childrens's Church Trails and Church Records. Currently a Children's Church Trail is being made for St. George's Church, Fordington. This lecture endorses the need to maintain and pass on to the next generation an appreciation of the legacy of the past.

Future Visit to Wells Cathedral

A visit to Wells Cathedral and The Bishop's Palace and Gardens is planned for 10 July 2018. Wells is rated by many as one of the most beautiful of  English Cathedrals and we shall have guided tours of  both buildings. Further details will be available by 31 August 2017.

The image shown above is of the West Front of Wells Cathedral.

This lecture was chosen because so many of our society members have lovely collections of water colour paintings by artists who were influenced by Edward Seago.

Like LS Lowry, oil painter and watercolourist Edward Seago (1910-74) was immensely popular but overlooked by critics; today the best of his landscapes look fantastic, while his life story is full of interest. A prolific author, he overcame childhood illness before running away with the circus. He also mixed in aristocratic circles, making friends among the Royal family; a colourful wartime career and a trip to Antarctica aboard the Royal Yacht add to this fascinating account. Seago is much loved by artists, and in this lecture we explore a number of his finest oil paintings and watercolours in detail, looking at his choice of subject, design and technique. James Russell is the author of Edward Seago, the definitive account of the artist’s life and work, which was published by Lund Humphries in 2014, with a Foreword by HRH the Prince of Wales.

About our lecturer:

James Russell studied History at Pembroke College, Cambridge, but was galvanized into writing about art by a lengthy stint selling contemporary paintings and sculpture in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A passionate advocate of 20th century painting and design, he writes and lectures widely. His books include the popular 4-volume series Ravilious in Pictures, about British watercolourist and designer Eric Ravilious (1903-42), and other titles devoted to Paul Nash, Peggy Angus, Edward Bawden and Edward Seago. He curated the 2015 exhibition Ravilious at Dulwich Picture Gallery and has lectured all over the country, from Rye to Glasgow and from the V&A to the Royal West of England Academy.

NADFAS celebrates its Golden Jubilee in 2018.  To commemorate this event, a number of the lectures to in 2018 will focus on the Heritage Volunteering or other forms of community outreach of our Society. 

For the past 4 years, as part of our Dorset County DFAS support of Young Arts, Linda Smith has lectured to the Sixth Form Art Students at The Thomas Hardye School in Dorchester on 20th Century Sculpture one year and then 20th Century Painting the next.

We thought you might like to see why the students enjoy her so much, although we have chosen a different topic.

This lecture looks at the idea of artistic genius, tracing the development of the stereotype from its emergence during the Renaissance, down through the carefully-managed Bohemianism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to the international celebrity status achieved by a few artists today. This evolution is discussed in the context of various factors, including the usual suspects of class and gender, but the key issue is how art and artists have been valued in society. When did artists stop being craftsmen paid by the yard and become superstars, and how did they get away with it? 

About the speaker:

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

This Dinner and Lecture will be a ticketed event. Tickets are now available from the Secretary and an application form can be obtained by clicking here.

The Society's Secretary, Mrs Valentine Simson, will be selling tickets at the two lectures preceding the event, on Thursdays 19 October and 2 November or they will be available by downloading and submitting the application form as above. Tickets are £25 to include dinner and lecture.
As usual, members are invited to simply buy their tickets or to make up tables if they so wish (maximum eight people per table).  If you are a new member or someone coming by yourself, you are more than welcome. For those arranging tables, or indeed wishing to sit with one or several friends, please give Valentine a list of the group. Valentine then will arrange a seating plan for those who have not arranged an entire table.  The committee hopes to join these different tables around the hall as much as possible, in order to get to know members.

Our Lecture: "Singe We Yule"

Using illustrations from illuminated manuscripts, readings from literature and contemporary accounts, and the haunting songs and lively dance tunes of medieval England, Sarah brings alive the spirit of a Medieval Christmas, a time of joy and celebration for some, but hardship and suffering for others. With extracts from literature and manorial household accounts, she pieces together life in a medieval manor house at Yuletide. In addition to her reproduction medieval harps, she adds the plucked psaltery, hurdy-gurdy, hammered dulcimer, and gemshorn to the musical mix, performing carols, music and readings for an atmospheric and musical seasonal celebration. 

About the lecturer:

Sarah performs, writes and lectures in the UK and abroad as a musician and scholar, having been a graduate and prize-winner from the Royal Academy of Music. She has appeared on national radio and television in UK and America, lectured for National Trust, English Heritage, U3A, schools and colleges and onboard the QE2. All lectures are presented digitally and include live music and songs on various harps, depending on the subject.

This lecture’s narrative revolves around my experience of having masterminded a British Government backed project to restore the magnificent George Gilbert Scott designed university buildings in Mumbai (Bombay), India. The chapters of this building’s story- its design (in England), construction, history and, of course, its restoration – provide useful startpoints from which to consider the broader historical, cultural and architectural context. For instance the lecture looks into Bombay’s economic boom of the 1860s. This coincided with the high point of the Gothic Revival: Nowhere else in the world can claim to have as magnificent an assemblage of Gothic Revival buildings. Whilst examining the city’s colonial architecture study is made of the carvings of Bombay’s Jeejeebhoy School of Art (see above), whose Architectural Sculpture Department (during this mid-Victorian heyday) was headed up by John Lockwood Kipling, father of Rudyard Kipling. The story of the award winning project to restore the University of Mumbai’s Gothic Revival buildings provides an opportunity to touch upon philosophical approaches to conservation as well as traditional repair techniques. Account is also given of the work undertaken by those who took time away from their respective Cathedral workshops in the UK to transfer knowledge and skills to their Indian counterparts. Venturing beyond Mumbai to consider key colonial buildings in Delhi, Kolkata (Calcutta) and Yangon (Rangoon), the scope of the lecture broadens to examine evolving attitudes in India and beyond (as well as in the UK) towards the British empire and also towards the buildings which survive as testament to its achievements. 

Our lecturer:

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

Footnote: The V&A had an exhibition "Lockwood Kipling: Arts & Crafts In the Punjab and London" running from 14 January to 2 April 2017. This told the story of a man who became a world expert in Indian arts and crafts and in the process saved traditional skills and techniques in risk of dying out. There is a link to the V&A in "Useful Links" on the Home Page. 

The band of brothers, as Nelson called his captains, was perhaps the most remarkable, dedicated and talented group of officers that the Royal Navy has ever seen. Troubridge, Hardy, Berry, Fremantle , Hood and the rest, for all their diversity of outlook and personality were united in their loyalty and devotion to Nelson. Peter’s lecture interweaves their individual stories in a gallery of contemporary paintings and portraits. From the artists’ brush emerges an intimate portrait of Nelson himself, his intrigue with Lady Hamilton and its repercussions on his relations with his fellow captains. 

Our  lecturer

Peter Warwick is an author, historian and major event organiser, and a recognised authority on Admiral Lord Nelson. Specialises in naval and polar history. Chairs the 1805 Club, which conserves the monuments of the Georgian sailing navy; the New Waterloo Dispatch/Waterloo 200, the official body arranging the bicentenary commemorations for Waterloo in 2015; and Thames Alive which in 2012 arranged the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant and the Thames Olympic Torch Relay. Was vice-chairman of the Official Nelson Commemorations Committee and played a key role in the planning of the Trafalgar 200 and Sea Britain 2005. Lectures at the Defence Academy, National Maritime Museum, and National Museum for the Royal Navy, Royal Institution and at schools and universities. Also lectures on cruises.

This lecture charts the rise of the precocious youth that was Albrecht Dürer was born in Nuremberg in the Holy Roman Empire on 21st May 1471. It will explore his early life and works, and also the long lasting influence that Dürer had on the Italian Renaissance, not mention the influence that the Italian Renaissance had on Dürer. The years following the early Renaissance in Europe opened up a world of cultural, artistic and intellectual exchange for the gifted and the curious. The map of Europe at that time was determined by the reach of the Holy Roman Empire and the countries that we know of today as Germany and Italy did not exist as such but were groups of city states which shared aspects of language and culture. Trade between all parts of the Empire was the norm, allowing for the spread of goods and ideas to flourish and. It was into this world that Albrecht Dürer was born. He left a vast body of autobiographical writings with the understanding that posterity would want to know about him, his art and his life. He was one of the very first artists to write about themselves, if not the first. He also wrote extensively on art practice including treatises on measurement and human proportion in order to educate future German artists, as he was determined to counter the Southern European view of Germans as being ‘a race of savage drunkards from a wild country with a poor climate, responsible for the destruction of ancient Rome’.

Short reading list: E. Panofsky: The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer (Princeton, 1955). J.C. Hutchison: Albrecht Dürer. A Biography (Princeton, 1990). G. Bartrum (ed.): Albrecht Dürer and his Legacy (British Museum Exhibition catalogue, London, 2002). H. Wölfflin: The Art of Albrecht Dürer (Phaidon, 1971). F. Anzelewsky: Dürer: His Art and Life (New York, 1980). J.L. Koerner: The Moment of Self-portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago, 1993). M. Evans: Dürer and Italy revisited: the German Connection (http://www.britishmuseum.org/pdf/1%20durer%20and%20italy%20revisited.pdf)

About the lecturer

Leslie Primo 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. Leslie also lectures at the City Literary Institute, and has presented a series of talks at the National Maritime Museum and the Courtauld Institute.

This lecture will look at the early experiments into porcelain making in England; concentrating on the Chelsea, Bow, Derby and Worcester factories. It will examine the different pastes developed in an attempt to achieve both whiteness and strength, consider the influence of both silver and continental porcelain on shapes and decoration; and will look back at Chinese and Japanese export wares as a source of inspiration. In addition, it will show the ways in which porcelain was both displayed and used and discuss the fashion for porcelain figures. 

About the lecturer

Jane has an MA History of Art, University of London. She trained at the V&A and continues to lecture there. Formerly a Senior Lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute of Art for 17 years, she became a Deputy Director of Sotheby's, UK. She has also lectured for the National Trust, the Art Fund, London University, Buckingham University, l'Institut d'Etudes Superieures des Arts in Paris, a private women's college in Saudi Arabia, on cruise ships and at antiques fairs and interior design conferences in America.

A century after these events....

Before the Bolsheviks brought down the Tsarist regime in 1917, Russian artists staged a daring revolution of their own.  This lecture shows how they became leaders of the European avant-garde for the first time, and changed the language of art.  Some, like Stravinsky, Goncharova and Roerich, chose to remain in emigration, in the hope of one day returning to Russia, while others, like Kandinsky, Chagall and Malevich, went on to play a leading role in early Soviet culture, amidst utopian hopes for a bright future.  But all their dreams were to be tragically extinguished under the harsh conditions of the Stalinist regime.

About the lecturer:

Rosamund Bartlett has a Doctorate from Oxford and has held senior university posts, most recently at the European University Institute in Florence. She specialises in comparative study of art, music and literature, and currently writing a book on the Russian Avant-Garde and European Modernism. An author of several books, including biographies of Tolstoy and Chekhov, whose works she has also translated for Oxford World's Classics. She has extensive experience lecturing in Russian cultural history at venues such as the V&A, the National Theatre and Covent Garden, and broadcasts regularly on the BBC. Rosamund is often invited to lecture on tours, and is founding Director of the Anton Chekhov Foundation, set up to preserve the writer's house in Yalta.

Image: Tverskoi Boulevard by Aristarkh Lentulov 1917

Adventures In Puppetry - A personal history

Have you ever wondered what a puppet is? Who makes them? Who is behind moving the puppet? Where they come from and what special meaning they carry? Or even if you haven’t…
Mark Down gave up a career in medicine and has spent twenty years running a puppet company, Blind Summit Theatre, to find ways to breathe new life into this ancient art form. Subverting expectations by making work mainly for adults, he directed the puppets in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics, Madam Butterfly’s little boy at the Metropolitan Opera, and their own show The Table has been performed in 25 countries. 
Here he takes you behind the scenes at the puppet theatre and gives you a glimpse of an invisible world.

Mark Down - biography

Mark is a Director, Writer, Performer and Designer who specializes in working with puppetry. He is an alumnus of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, having trained there as a performer after he left his former career as a doctor. In 1997 he co-founded Blind Summit Theatre with the aim of nurturing the best puppetry talent, and reaching new audiences by creating outstanding puppetry on the world stage. He has lead the company in creating a worldwide network of Blind Summit trained puppeteers and puppet makers, and introduced thousands of adults and children to puppetry for the first time in an unforgettable way. His work spans theatre, opera, dance and TV. With Blind Summit he has written and directed eighteen productions, including The Table (winner of nine international awards), 1984 (BAC), Low Life, and The Spaceman. He has also collaborated with some of the world’s most exciting directors and choreographers – he has brought to life a three year old boy puppet in Anthony Minghella's Olivier award winning Madam Butterfly (ENO, Met Opera, Lithuania National Opera), a singing dog in Simon McBurney's A Dog's Heart (DNO, ENO, Complicite), and an 18 metre high firework-firing “Voldemort” in Danny Boyle's London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony. With Mark as Artistic Director, Blind Summit has become known as one of the world’s leading puppet theatre companies. He most recently co-directed the USA premiere of Helmut Lachnemann’s The Little Match Girl at the Spoleto Festival. For more information see www.blindsummit.com

A chronological history of the outstanding and diverse Devonshire collection told through the interests, characters and tastes of its collectors over 16 generations, from Elizabethan beginnings to the current Duke and Duchess of Devonshire and their family. Each generation has left its mark on the collections, whether as connoisseurs, passionate and enthusiastic patrons and acquirers, fortuitous marriage, or the occasional benign indifference, and it is fascinating to see how these diverse personalities, linked only by family, have contributed to what is now considered one of the finest surviving family collections in Europe. This story features outstanding work by artists as varied as Rembrandt, Reynolds, Canova and Freud, and comes right up to date with the current Duke and Duchess's passion for modern British sculpture. The lecture includes Old Master drawings, fine books and archives, silver and rare jewels, portraits ancient and modern, sculpture spanning 2000 years of European culture, furniture by outstanding cabinet makers and other unique treasures.

Our Lecturer:

Simon Seligman studied art/architectural history at Warwick University, including a semester in Venice. He also is a Graduate of the Attingham Summer school. From 1991 until 2010, he worked at Chatsworth, in a variety of roles, latterly as Head of Communications. He has lectured about Chatsworth, the Devonshire Collection and associated topics, throughout the UK and on several US tours (including the Metropolitan Museum and the National Gallery of Art). He gave numerous public presentations and interviews with the late Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire. Publications include written or edited guidebooks and articles for and about Chatsworth.

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

Our lecturer:

Alexandra Epps gained a BA at Saint Martins School of Art, MA London College of Printing. By profession a graphic designer, she ran a design consultancy for many years for a wide range of sectors including the arts, financial, government and professional services. A guide and lecturer at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, she is also an Official Guide to the City of London, offering lectures and walks about many aspects of the arts for societies, corporations and private individuals. A Member of the City of London Guide Lecturers Association, she is co-author of the book Lord Mayor's Portraits 1983-2014 (2015).

MacDonald 'Max' Gill, a younger brother of sculptor Eric Gill, was an architect, letterer, and graphic artist of the first half of the twentieth century, best known for his entertaining pictorial poster maps for the London Underground.   Less known are the beautiful panel maps he created for arts-and-crafts style homes such as Lindisfarne Castle and painted decorations in churches including St Osmund's in Parkstone.  As an architect, Max worked for a number of years on the construction of cottages and a model farm in Briantspuddle but perhaps his most lasting legacy is the alphabet he designed for the standard military headstone so familiar to us today.   This richly illustrated talk will provide you with fascinating insights into the life and work of this remarkable yet neglected artist and may even inspire you to seek out the buildings, murals and memorials he created in Dorset a century ago.

About The Speaker

Caroline Walker, an English teacher by profession, began research into her great-uncle in 2006.  Since then she has co-curated several exhibitions including the major retrospective Out of the Shadows: MacDonald Gill shown at the University of Brighton (2011)and Pitzhanger Manor Gallery (2013), and Maps to Memorials: Discovering MacDonald Gill at the Lettering Arts Centre, Snape Maltings (2014).  She has contributed articles to many publications including Country Life, runs the MacDonald Gill website, and is currently writing his biography.

THIS DINNER AND LECTURE IS A TICKETED EVENT. 

25 Nov update: There are three tickets available. Contact Keith Simmons directly: 01305 262713.  Those on the Waiting List are welcome to apply.

The lecture will be at the usual time of 7 for 7:30pm followed by dinner.

Details of lecture:

Have you ever wondered why every Nativity scene and every school play has to have an Ox and an Ass?   Are they there just to add authenticity to Christ’s lowly birth in a stable?  Or could they have a long history of meaning? This lecture sets out to find out more. The lecture is illustrated with a wide range of images from the catacombs, from Greek vases and Roman coins, and early Christian mosaics, to the orthodox imagery that we all know so well.

Mrs Guise lectures in the main museums in London for American universities, and has toured widely in the USA and lectured for the Smithsonian Institution. She has also worked for the Art Fund, taught courses for Cambridge University and has been a guest speaker on cruises. She trained as a painter at Central St Martin’s. She exhibits abroad, most recently in Berlin and France. 

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS LECTURE IS ON THE FIRST THURSDAY OF NOVEMBER

The music, architecture and manuscript illumination of medieval England are among the greatest achievements of the period, indeed of any period of English cultural history. The aim of the lecture is to open a window onto this remarkable world to capture something of the essence of its religious and secular music, its Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals and its equally rich span of manuscript illumination, both sacred and profane. Essentially inspirational and aspirational, these are forms of artistic endeavour which at their most impressive, can touch the sublime. 

Mark Cottle has spent a career in education and training at home and abroad. He has lectured on Medieval and Tudor history and AngloSaxon and medieval England. He currently runs companies providing training and study beaks.

By the 1520s Venice had ‘lost its trousers’. The Venetians turned away from the East and their island colonies and instead looked to the terrafirma of the Veneto. The seafaring mercantile families of the fifteenth century re-established themselves as farmers in the sixteenth century and wanted the trappings of an elite rural existence; top of that list was property designed by Andrea Palladio. The lecture will look at a selection of villa types as well as explore the far-reaching impact of his architectural design in subsequent centuries.

Dan Evans is an educationalist with a passion for all things Italian. Formerly Head of History of Art at Wycombe Abbey School, he is now Deputy Head of Sixth Form, History and History of Art teacher at Cheltenham College. He has been lecturing since 2001, and spent nine years working as a senior lecturer, tutor and tour guide for Art History Abroad. He also organises educational study trips to a range of destinations in Italy. 

What do we mean by jewellery? What does it mean to different societies across time and across the world? This lecture takes a number of themes in order to expand the concept of jewellery and examine the different reasons why people wear it. Everyone decorates the body, but there are different notions of how to do so and which parts to decorate. In many societies jewellery serves as vital protection against evil spirits. It can be a powerful vehicle of communication, indicating the wearer’s preoccupations, their religion or ethnic group. It can be a keepsake of a loved one, or a memorial to the dead. And it can also be a work of art in its own right harnessing all the .skills of the goldsmith, gem-setter, or enameller. Based on the collections of the British Museum, where the speaker has worked for 40 years, this new thought-provoking lecture reveals how jewellery has been worn and used, and takes you from ancient burial ornaments by anonymous masters to the big names of the modern world.

(Image is of reconstructed Sumerian Headgear - British Museum. )

Judy Rudoe has been a curator at the British Museum since 1974, specialising in jewellery and in 19th-20th century decorative arts. She is author of Cartier 1900-1939 (BM 1997) and organiser of the Cartier exhibition at the British Museum, co-author of the Catalogue of the Hull Grundy Gift of Jewellery (BM 1984), contributor to the Catalogue of Micromosaics in the Gilbert Collection (2000). Her latest book, Jewellery in the Age of Victoria, co-authored with Charlotte Gere, was published in 2010 and won the 2011 William Berger Prize for British Art History. She is a Freeman of the Goldsmiths' Company and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

With 2015 marking the 70th Anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the subject of this talk is hugely relevant. Relatively little is known in this country about Germany’s complex post-war process of remembrance and the counter memorial movement that started there in the 1980s and continues to this day. Germany’s very specific situation rendered all traditional concepts of monuments and memorials irrelevant and inappropriate. So artists looked to create art forms that would respond to questions of apology and atonement instead. The idea behind counter memorials is to keep the memories and lessons of the past alive in the individual psyches of the people. The results are extraordinary, brave, and inspiring. With her Anglo-German roots, Angela is in an ideal position to give insights into Germany’s on-going efforts to find artistic forms for the remembrance of the victims of one of history’s darkest periods.

Angela Findlay has a Degree in Fine Arts and is a freelance lecturer with a long career of teaching art and murals in prisons and Young Offender Institutions in Germany and England. Former Arts Coordinator and founder of the Learning to Learn through the Arts Scheme at the Koestler Trust: arts by offenders in London.

Julian Halsby studied History of Art at Cambridge. He was formerly Senior Lecturer and Head of Department at Croydon College of Art. Publications include Venice - the Artist's Vision (1990, 1995), The Art of Diana Armfield RA (1995), Dictionary of Scottish Painters (1990, 1998, 2001, 4th edition 2010), A Hand to Obey the Demon's Eye (2000), Scottish Watercolours 1740-1940 (1986, 1991), A Private View - David Wolfers and the New Grafton Gallery (2002). 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.

Although very influential in English painting, Walter Sickert’s art is sometimes difficult to appreciate. I look at his background as pupil of Whistler, his friendship with Degas and the development of his unique style. I present his superb paintings of the Victorian music halls, of Venice and his Camden Town nudes. A truly international figure, Sickert moved between London, Paris, Dieppe and Venice. However in 1905 he settled in London and collected around him a group of young artists called the Camden Town Group – Spencer Gore, Harold Gilman, Charles Ginner, Malcolm Drummond, Robert Bevan and William Ratcliffe. Their colourful paintings of London life before 1914 including street scenes, theatres, restaurants, nudes in interiors and even the railways form the basis of this lecture.

'Brighton Pierrots' by Walter Sickert

This lecture summarises recent research and tries to shed light on an old problem; what is, and what is not, actually by Grinling Gibbons. Colour illustrations reveal details of technique in close up showing wonderful rendering in lime wood of fruit, flowers and much more. Many auctioneers describe woodcarvings as ‘by Grinling Gibbons’. But are they? Gibbons was discovered by the diarist John Evelyn, but there are other artists, now less well known, whose work rivals his for excellence. For the sake of comparison some are shown here. Launce Gribbin offers some of the answers.

Mr Launce Gribbin had early success as a professional painter, exhibiting at the Royal Academy and the New English Art Club, the Paris Salon. He had two London one man shows. He studied Art History at Courtauld Institute. He worked at the V&A then London College of Printing. He retired early to work full time as tutor to Sotheby's Educational Studies

Anne Sebba is a biographer, historian and author of nine books who lectures to a variety of audiences in the US and UK, including the English Speaking Union, Royal Overseas League, National Trust, British Library and Imperial War Museum. A broadcaster - she presented a Radio 3 documentary about the pianist Harriet Cohen and for Radio 4 the documentary 'Who was Joyce Hatto?' - she regularly appears on television talking about her books, mostly biographies including Jennie Churchill, William Bankes, Laura Ashley and Wallis Simpson. The latter, published as That Woman, was an international bestseller and she is currently working on a history of Paris between 1939-49 through women's eyes, to be published in 2016. Anne is currently chair of Britain's 9,000 strong Society of Authors.

The lecture on Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor is based on at least three years of research into why this Baltimore woman, born in 1896 into relative obscurity, was so demonised by the British establishment and wider commonwealth, accused of being a spy, prostitute or Nazi sympathiser, yet how, after she married the ex-King and became Duchess of Windsor, she turned her exile and hatred into a platform from which to launch herself as one of the world’s best dressed woman who entertained in the most elegant homes fit for a King – or an ex-King.

Was she simply a clothes horse for dress designers and jewellery makers or did she have a heart that has never been fairly understood? Included in the lecture are many pictures of Wallis and the clothes and jewellery she had made especially for her as well, as the homes she lived in. The lecture will also tell how, in the context of the 1930s, this woman with three husbands was unacceptable as Queen of England and of the Empire. It will explore who this woman was and what was the power she had over King Edward Vlll. Seventy five years since the Abdication in 1936, it is now time to reassess ‘That Woman’.

'Duchess of Windsor' by Toni Frissell 

Sarah Kelly graduated in Art History and Italian from Bristol University and holds the Museums Diploma. She lectures on Western European art in France, Belgium and the UK. She worked at the National Gallery and, as a museum curator, at the Victoria Art Gallery, Bath (1992-2001). Sarah lived for eight years in France and Belgium: working as a lecturer (French and English) in Toulouse and at the Fine Arts and Magritte Museum in Brussels. Since returning to the UK in 2009, she combines museum work with lecturing and teaching art history. Sarah also works with visually impaired people in art galleries.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s subject matter was the country people and landscapes near Brussels. Ranging from riotous dancing and drinking to a solitary hunter in a still, snowy scene, these pictures are still very popular today. But for the 16th century viewer they held different and fascinating meanings which will be explored in this lecture. Bruegel’s work is set in context of the turbulent history of the period when Spain ruled the South Netherlands. Contemporary attitudes to peasants, the perspectives offered by Erasmus’ writings and the scientific advances of the day are all reflected in Bruegel’s countryside scenes.

Alexandra Drysdale and a professional artist specialising in painting, sculpture and performance. Her lectures combine art historical knowledge with personal expertise in aesthetics and artistic techniques. Art from all periods, including examples of her own work, is examined from an artist's point of view. This entails a perceptive analysis of a painting's structure, its meaning, and its relationship to the history of art. She puts a particular emphasis on studying the symbolic language of the imagination.

BA (Hons) Fine Art from Chelsea School of Art and an MFA from Cambridge School of Art

Have you ever wondered where the blue in medieval illuminated manuscripts  came from, or how the glaziers of our Gothic cathedrals made their blueglass? The Ancient Britons tattooed their bodies in a blue dye, and, two thousand years later in a Parisian art gallery Yves Kline in a public performance painted his nude models blue and dragged them across his canvasses. Why doesn’t the Virgin Mary wear green, and why is Krishna painted blue? These are some of the questions that I will be addressing. The story of blue takes us from the lapis lazuli mines in Afghanistan to the studios of Titian, Vermeer, Hokusai, Picasso and Matisse, to name but a few. The spirituality of Blue led Kandinsky and Franz Marc to name their art movement ‘The Blue Rider’. As a professional artist myself, I pay special attention to contemporary artists who use blue, such as Louise Bourgeois’ sculptures, Ann Hamilton’s Blue Jeans installation, and John Wonnacott’s paintings.

Dinner and lecture: this is a ticketed event. Application forms will be found on the website nearer the date.

The Christmas tree is vital to the imagery of both the pagan world and Christianity, and is wrapped in legend, from the Icelandic sagas to St Boniface, from the Mystery Plays to Martin Luther. In art, the forest fir has made the transition from Viking rock carvings to German Romanticism and Scandinavian naturalism, on its way to finding its place as an icon of our modern festival. Decorated and shimmering with light, it has brought Christmas from outside the home into the heart of the family, and has even drawn soldiers together across No-Man’s Land.

Dr Claire Walsh holds MAs from the V&A and Royal College of Art and a doctorate from the European University Institute, Florence. She previously worked at the V&A and lectured there and for the University of Warwick. She has lectured widely in Britain; at the Courtauld Institute of Art and Museum of London, and to specialist groups.

As silk weavers, goldsmiths, clockmakers, gunsmiths, ironworkers and horticulturists, amongst many other skills, the Huguenots made an extraordinary contribution to English craftsmanship. Names such as Paul de Lamerie, Courtauld, Roubilliac and Dollond spring to mind. In virtually all areas, the Huguenots were innovative, with the English craftsmen having to play catch-up! They were at the heart of of all those elements which adorned the 18th century age of elegance, inspiring the tea party, conversation pieces, and indeed a new role for women.

Sue Jackson originally worked in art and design publishing (Phaidon and Yale University Press) and now lectures for the National Trust, U3A, City Literary Institute. A qualified Blue Badge Guide, she gives guided walks on various themes and has published work on the lost world of the River Fleet.

In partnership with the Tate and National Maritime Museum, Gwen is working with the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery to bring a new exhibition to Dorset, which will demonstrate Dorset’s significant role in the work of a group of 20th century British artists, mainly trained at the Slade. The exhibition will reveal how Dorset effectively played host to an informal artists’ ‘colony’ as inspirational as St Ives up to WW1. The exhibition will run from 1 April to 2 October 2016.

Gwen has a masters degree in British art from the Courtauld Institute. She has been curator of art at the National Maritime Museum and the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum and is now an independent art historian specialising in British art, and writes, lectures and guest curates museum exhibitions. Elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and the Royal Historical Society, Gwen is an experienced broadcaster. She has lectured at the National Portrait Gallery, National Maritime Museum and Institute of Historical Research as well as the Art Fund and NADFAS societies.

Dr Justine Hopkins studied History of Art at the Courtauld Institute. She lectures regularly for Tate Britain, Tate Modern, V&A, National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, as well as to Oxbridge and Bristol Universities and other art associations.

Anthony Russell has travelled much of the world combining painting with tour lecturing. He has advised on the furniture needs of prestigious buildings including museums, palaces, schools and cathedrals. He assists at the British Museum with outreach events.

John Ericson was formerly a lecturer at the University of Bath where he was Director of Studies in the School of Education with responsibility for the professional development of teachers. His principal areas of research were course design and the role of pictures in both teaching and learning.

Jane Gardiner has an MA in History of Art, University of London. Trained at the V&A and continues to lecture there, she was senior lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute for 17 years. She also lectures for the Art Fund, National Trust, London University, Michigan State University and on cruises. Jane has contributed four chapters to ‘The Elements of Style – The Development of Design and Stylistic Elements from the Renaissance to the Postmodern Era’ (Mitchell Beazley, 2003).

London’s stations have always been powerful and iconic structures used each day by many more people than pass through our airports. This lecture will explore their history and architecture from Charing Cross to Waterloo via Victoria and Liverpool Street and in particular the splendours of St Pancras, both inside and out. It will also look at the architecture of London’s underground from Metroland to Canary Wharf and Canada Water. Other stations at home and abroad will also feature.

Andrew Davies is Extra-Mural Tutor for London, Essex and The Open University; Author of 9 books, including "The East End Nobody Knows"; frequent contributor to radio and television; has lectured all over the world; organises walks to complement his lectures.

This lecture gives an overview of art in Cornwall that was created in and around the remote village of Newlyn. It begins with the Social Realism of artists such as Walter Langley and Frank Bramley who captured the harshness of life for families in the fishing community of Newlyn and then looks at the fame that artists such as Stanhope Forbes achieved both at home and abroad in the 1880s and 90s with his depictions of village life and his fascination with capturing low light levels. It also surveys the maritime art of Henry Scott Tuke and Charles Napier Hemy who were based in Falmouth. The work of Laura and Harold Knight and AJ Munnings who visited the colony established at Lamorna Valley is also analysed. The image is W.Langley's painting 'But O for the Touch of a Vanished Hand' (1888)

Catherine Wallace studied fine art at Leeds and Canterbury before completing a master’s degree in art history and museum studies at St Andrews University. Moving to Cornwall in 1993, she was responsible for Falmouth Art Gallery for eight years, curating both contemporary and historic art exhibitions as well as overseeing the redevelopment of the gallery. Thereafter she ran her own arts agency promoting Cornish contemporary art for four years and is now a freelance art writer, curator and fundraiser, working with arts charities, commercial and public galleries. As well as organizing exhibitions and writing several books on Cornish Art she has catalogued and fundraised to restore a major collection of Henry Scott Tuke’s work in Falmouth.

Islamic art encompasses the great wealth of artistic treasures inspired by Islam. From its Arabian heartland comes a range of decorated ceramics, carved wood, inlaid metalwork, glass, tiles, textiles, carpets, buildings and gardens.

Christopher Bradley is an expert in the history and culture of the Middle East and North Africa. As a professional tour guide and lecturer he has led groups throughout the Middle East and Asia. Has written extensively on Arabia and is the author of many books on the region.

Yasha Beresiner qualified as a lawyer from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem before settling in England in 1968. He is a Past Master of the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards. He is a City Guide and Editor of Cityguide Magazine.

Kevin Karney holds a Master’s Degree in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge. He worked for 33 years, mostly overseas, in the oil industry. With a great-grandfather and uncle who were both notable gnomonists (interested in sundials) he has had a life-long interest in the subject, from both a technical and historical perspective. A member of both the British and North American Sundial Societies, he has lectured extensively on the subject. He is a long-term member of NADFAS and Treasurer of Monmouthshire NADFAS.

Louise Schofield was Curator of Greek Bronze Age and Geometric Antiquities at the British Museum from 1987-2000. She now writes, lectures and runs international archaeological projects, mostly in south-eastern Turkey, Greece, Albania and Ethiopia. Her latest book, ‘The Mycenaeans’, was co-published by the Getty Museum and the British Museum in March 2007.

Linda Collins holds a BA in Art and Social History and an MA in History of Art – Representation of the Image. She has been employed by the Historic Royal Palaces for the past 22 years as a Guide amd Lecturer for VIP visits and Special interest groups. She also lectures for the National Trust, U3A and various UK universities as well as working as a freelance lecturer at Tate Modern and the National Gallery. She has a special interest in French art.

Charles Harris was Creative Director of international advertising agencies and created posters for many major brands, for which he won global awards. He has also written and produced several hundred TV and Radio commercials and corporate video programmes. Focusing on the role of posters and poster artists in the history of advertising, he has lectured extensively on design, illustration and photographic styles as they have influenced the building of brands. A member of Newbury DFAS.

Ms Janet Canetty Clarke is a Lecturer in Music for the Centre for Community Engagement at Sussex University, with individual lectures for Cambridge University, for London University , and for U3A and the WEA. Conductor Emeritus of The Sussex Chorus for 37 years. Guest conductor of Frauen-Kammerorchester von Österreich in Vienna for 16 years.

Ms Imogen Corrigan holds a first class honours degree in Medieval History from Kent University and is currently studying for a PhD at Birmingham University. She is a freelance lecturer in Anglo-Saxon and Medieval History and Art for Kent Federation of History, the National Trust and specialist travel companies.

Ms Vivian Heffernan is an art history tutor for continuing education departments of Essex and Cambridge Universities, colleges and adult education organisations. She is a long-standing lecturer with the Open University on art history courses ranging from the early Renaissance to the 20th century. She is also a practising artist.

Ms Linda Smith holds two first class degrees in Art History. She has a broad range of knowledge, and a special interest in British art and the art of the twentieth century. She is an experienced guide and lecturer at Tate Britain, Tate Modern and the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Mr Bertie Pearce BA(Hons) has a Diploma from the Ecole Internationale du Théatre Jacques Lecoq, and is also a member of the Inner Magic Circle with Gold Star. He lectures widely throughout Europe.

Mrs Caroline MacDonald-Haig is a design and decorative arts journalist and author. She is a freelance lecturer for Adult Education Groups.

Mr Nicholas Collier BA is a practising painter and lecturer. He has taught for many years in schools and colleges and now runs his own painting courses.