Discover the core of Charles Dickens character in this enlightening and entertaining lecture.  Making his debut reciting a poem as a 7 year old sitting on a pub table, little Charles Dickens developed a lifelong passion for the theatre.

As a young man he attended the theatre every night for 3 years, he created over 2000 intensely theatrical characters, and produced, directed, and starred in lavish productions staged in purpose- built theatre spaces in the family home. First night audiences included Queen Victoria and The Duke of Wellington!

Simon is a (recovering) actor, lecturer, presenter, and award winning London Blue Badge guide. He has worked as a guide lecturer in house at Shakespeare’s Globe, the Royal Opera House, the BBC and the National Gallery guiding both public and private tours. He is on the faculty of Ithaca College and also lectures for the Blue Badge Guide training course on the performing arts and English literature. Simon’s specialisms and passions are theatre, literature, fashion and art history.

Charles Dickens, Jeremiah Gurney 
Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

In the two centuries since they were removed from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin, the meaning and significance of the ‘Elgin marbles’ has changed dramatically.

From architectural decoration to disputed cultural objects this lecture looks at the response to them over their time in Britain, from the original controversy over their purchase to the current debate surrounding the restitution of the marbles to the new Acropolis Museum in Athens.

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

Elgin Parthenon Marbles, The British Museum, London

© Dominic's pics, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525-1569) was an undisputed master; his small body of surviving paintings demonstrating his supreme ability to depict the daily life of the peasants with both humour and humility.

This lecture will introduce Bruegel as a distinctive artistic voice in the sixteenth century, and consider the ways in which his revolutionary images were transformed, reproduced and popularised after his death by his two sons and greatest followers, Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564/5-1638) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625).

Dr Amy Orrock is a Curator and Art Historian. She has published and lectured widely on Northern European art and has curated many exhibitions, including 'Rubens & Women' (Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2023), 'Cranach: Artist & Innovator' (Compton Verney, 2020) and 'Bruegel: Defining a Dynasty' (The Holburne Museum, 2017). She is currently a National Curator for the National Trust.

The Wedding Dance, Pieter Bruegel the Elder     Detroit Institute of Arts

Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

In this lecture, Gaudi’s work will be explored in detail. It will be shown how he engaged with nature in the most innovative and extraordinary ways.

Inspired by natural objects and animals, he worked with extraordinary ceramicists, iron workers, tilers and decorative artists.

We will look at his public and private buildings and his relationship with a wealthy and demanding patron. Private shy and retiring he was also humorous and witty in his extravagant style.

Jacqueline Cockburn is Managing Director of Art and Culture Travel, running residential courses in Andalucía, Southern Spain on the art and culture of the region, as well as curated tours to Madrid, Tangiers, Barcelona, Paris and Venice. Jacqueline is a course director and lecturer at the V&A and also lectures at The Royal Academy.

Saint George and the Dragon at Casa Amatller, Barcelona 
sculptor: Eusebi Arnau © Jacqueline Cockburn

Please note that this is a change to the original programme published in our brochure

The commission to produce jewellery for the series and film, Downton Abbey, inspired Andrew to create a talk based on this unique period. Jewellery and fashion are often seen as two entirely separate and distinct fields of design, but this is very far from the case.

In his talk, Andrew guides you through the extraordinary decades and events between 1890 and 1929, where the great couturiers collaborated with the finest of jewellers to produce jewels and clothes of outstanding quality and glittering opulence. Along with this, he illustrates the clients and patrons who commissioned the jewels and shows how they were worn with their sumptuous gowns.

Andrew has been working with jewellery since he was 16.. His taste for fine 'costume jewellery' can be traced back to antique markets, where he realised that beautiful jewellery didn't require expensive stones, and that it was the elegance of the design and the quality of the workmanship that truly mattered. Private commissions included Michael Jackson (a large crystal and pearl shoulder jewel) and Shirley Bassey (necklaces). In 2002, the V&A commissioned a collection of jewels from him to accompany the resplendent Tiaras, Past and Present exhibition.  Andrew's jewellery also appears in film including Mrs Henderson Presents starring Judy Dench and The Young Victoria starring Emily Blunt and Miranda Richardson. In Downton Abbey the characters played by Maggie Smith, Shirley Maclaine, Elizabeth McGovern and Michelle Dockery were all adorned with elegant tiaras, combs, earrings and necklaces designed and created by Andrew Prince.

Andrew is now a popular speaker on both jewellery history and fashion.

Bathers at Asnières (1884, National Gallery, London) is one of the best-loved pictures in any British collection. It was painted by the Post-Impressionist artist Georges Seurat, then only twenty-four and brimming with ambition.

It is an impressive, light-filled canvas showing Parisians at leisure by the river Seine. During the two years it took to complete, Seurat developed new colour theories and a novel technique - Pointillism - to capture the shimmering effects of sunlight on water, grass and in the air itself.

This lecture looks at the painting in detail, explores Seurat's vision and ambition, his bold new ideas and contribution to the history of modern art.

Steven Barrett has a BA in Fine Art, Liverpool School of Art and an MA in History of Art, Birkbeck College, London. A lecturer at the National Gallery since 2004 and at Somerset House, he also taught at London colleges. He is a regular museum guide for U3A. Steven is also a painter.

Bathers at Asnières (detail), Georges Seurat

© Creative Commons via The National Gallery, London

Venice: the Serenissma, but also the Luxurissima. Venice was the port for Europe through which all the glamorous and luxurious products of India, the Middle East and the Far East passed, and she certainly made sure that the best pieces remained in Venice.

Indian jewellery, silks and porcelains were given a starring role in the paintings produced by Venetian artists in the 15th and 16th centuries - Bellini and Cima through to Titian Tintoretto and Veronese. But of all of these, it is Veronese who delighted most in depicting the textures and colour effects of luxury goods.

With 40 years' experience as a lecturer, Chantal has taught at Sotheby's Institute of Art on the MA in Fine and Decorative Arts since 1989, and lectures for societies and institutions, including the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection. Having trained as a conservator, she brings an understanding of making and painting to her lectures.

Mars and Venus united by love (detail), Paolo Veronese 

Public Domain via Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is one of the quirkiest lectures you will ever hear. There is a universal delight in being deceived. This lecture takes us 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’oeil, Banksy, Bridget Riley, Arcimboldo and Escher to name but a few. Hold on to your seats and get ready to be visually fried!

Bertie Pearce has a BA (Hons) in Drama from Manchester University, and a Diploma Internationale from the École Internationale du Théâtre. He is a member of the Inner Magic Circle, with Gold Star. He has lectured and performed on cruise ships, and to historical societies, festivals and colleges. In addition, he has toured the world with a magic cabaret show and a one man show entitled ‘All Aboard’.

Vertumunus, Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

The Maya lived in Central America between 1000 B.C. and 1528 at which time they were conquered by the Spaniards.

The peak of their civilization was between 300 and 900 AD. During that time, they built enormous monuments, produced jade and ceramic items of great beauty and developed a calendar that was far more advanced than anything in Europe at the time.

They had an advanced understanding of mathematics and astronomy and developed a hieroglyphic script which scholars are beginning to decipher, allowing us to understand their achievements much more fully.

Dr Duncan Pring was educated at Oxford (BA, MA) and London (MA, Ph.D). His PhD thesis was on “The Preclassic Ceramics of Northern Belize”. He has published many subsequent articles, mainly on Mayan ceramics. He is currently involved with other North American archaeologists, pulling together different ceramic sequences in Belize.

Maya relief panel from Toniná, Chiapas

Image © Robin Cops

An exploration of the life and work of this highly individual painter, whose paintings and theatre designs combined modernity with the great British landscape tradition.

Born in 1922, John Craxton discovered the visionary works of 19th century artists William Blake and Samuel Palmer and their poetic imagining of Britain and her landscape fired his own creativity.

As a young artist he shared studio space with Lucien Freud and was mentored by artists such as Graham Sutherland, before living and working in Greece and creating a personal, colourful and poetic artistic world.

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

Landscape with Poet and Bird Catcher (detail)

© estate of John Craxton. All rights reserved.

Free lecture

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. This lecture follows his career during which his wit and imagination never faltered.

Douglas read Fine Art at Magdalene College Cambridge. He lectures widely and has written and presented various TV documentaries. Three one-man exhibitions of his paintings have been held in England and Switzerland. He has published five novels. His book ‘Monet, River of Light’, has sold 30,000 copies. 

1995 BMW 850 CSi by David Hockney - door closeup

Tim Wang from Beijing, China, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

In 1882 Gertrude Jekyll urged the readers of ‘The Garden’ to “remember that in a garden we are painting a picture”. We will learn how to apply her principles in designing a border, but also look at the ways in which a border is different from a painting. Contemporary work of the likes of Turner, Monet, Rothko, Jackson Pollock evolved in parallel with ideas about what a garden should look like.

Timothy was awarded a Master of Horticulture by the Royal Horticultural Society of London. He directed the Oxford Botanic Garden which was awarded a Queen’s Anniversary Prize in 2009 for providing imaginative educational programmes for adults, students and children. He has presented a 3-part series of films on the history of botany on BBC4 and since 2014 has been a tutor in Plant Biology at Somerville College, Oxford.

Photograph of garden at Great Dixter, Sussex

Image © Sue Whitehead

This lecture is for anyone who feels baffled or simply fascinated by the fact that a work of art that doesn’t exist in any tangible way can make mega-bucks on the art market. The history of high-risk speculation on the art market is a recent phenomenon, driven by the potential profits to be made from investment in contemporary art.

Viv is an art historian, curator, author and journalist. She teaches at the University of the Arts London, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, the City & Guilds of London Art School, SOAS (University of London) and Imperial College. Since 2011 she has been the Senior UK Consultant to Singapore gallery One East Asia.

Examples of Nouns artwork

 A single noun is composed of five different components (background, body, head, glasses and accessory), each of which is picked from a group of available assets based on Ethereum block hashes.

Nouns, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

This lecture focuses on the design impact of the Great Exhibition and the need for a ‘legacy institution’ in the form of the South Kensington Museum. We look at the building as a work of art and explore the work of William Morris, Fredrick Lord Leighton and other influential designers of the Victorian Age. 

Anna’s background and passion is Art & History. She worked as a curator in the Sculpture Department at the Victoria & Albert Museum as well as in smaller collections such as the Henry Moore Family Trust.

The southern entrance of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC BY-SA 3.0

The art of watercolour painting during the Renaissance is fascinating, with exquisite examples by European and British painters such as Dürer and Van Dyck. Many of the examples are so delicate and rare that they have had very little exposure. The lecture will be an opportunity to view these precious paintings.

Clare Ford-Wille is an independent art historian, well known for her courses at Birkbeck and Morley College, as well as a lecturer at the National Gallery and the V&A Society. She has led many tours abroad. Clare is a Vice President of The London Art History Society. 

Young Hare, Albrecht Dürer

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Please note the date in the brochure is incorrect this is the correct date

Without the tireless efforts of Sir Henry J. Wood, British musical life would be very different indeed. Aware of the inegalitarian nature of concert life during the late nineteenth century, he set about making music available to the man in the street by founding the Promenade Concerts at Queen’s Hall in 1895, which continue to this day, now at the Royal Albert Hall.

Professor Raymond Holden AM is both a critically acclaimed and a multi-award winning writer, conductor, broadcaster and lecturer. He has conducted many orchestras worldwide. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2019 Queen’s Birthday Honours List and is currently Emeritus Professor of Music at the Royal Academy of Music.

Caricature of Sir Henry Joseph Wood (1869-1944) ‘Queen’s Hall’ by Leslie Ward

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Jan van der Heyden’s reputation pales in comparison with the Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci, but his career was no less extraordinary. He was a brilliant painter and draughtsman. He was also an inventor, entrepreneur, administrator and marketing genius. We will take a close look at his career from his meticulous cityscapes, through the detailed drawings of his inventions. 

Rupert Dickens is an art historian with a special interest in Dutch and Flemish 16th and 17th century painting. He works at the Wallace Collection as a guide and lecturer. Rupert is also a tour director for a Cambridgebased company and has lectured to large audiences on many diverse subjects.

Room Corner with Curiosities, Jan van der Heyden © Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest 

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

This talk, with never previously published drafts and drawings of Winnie-the-Pooh and friends in the Hundred Acre Wood, examines the collaboration between A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard which created the iconic images for one of the all-time favourite children’s books. This was the first time that author and illustrator worked together, feeding off each other’s creative input and reaction to words and pictures.

James has an MA in the History of Art and a particular interest in the work of the artist, illustrator and cartoonist E.H. Shepard (1879-1976). He has been lecturing for over twenty years across the UK and overseas, to community groups, Literary Festivals, Art Societies and military museums.

© by permission of The Shepard Trust - not for reproduction

The arrival of photography from 1839 was to change the course of painting forever. Cindy explores the relationship between painting and photography from the late 19th century to present day, looking at works from the ‘pictorialist’ photographers, to the contemporary photorealist works of Gerhard Richter.

Cindy Polemis is an art historian, independent lecturer and art guide. Cindy has worked as an official art guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern. She has also been an official guide for both Frieze Masters and Frieze Art Fairs in London. She is keen to draw parallels with art and social history and her lectures are accessible and engaging.

Cantley: Wherries Waiting for the Turn of the Tide Peter Henry Emerson, Metropolitan Museum of Art

© CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Caravaggio was a man of proverbial rebelliousness, painting in a style which he knew would drop a bomb on the art world. But he was also fortunate to be painting at a time when the Church wanted to harness the power of his art to enforce its message.

This lecture considers the unlikely alliance of artist and patrons, and why the establishment was prepared to accept him, outrageous lifestyle and all. We also examine why his art is so powerful for us today.

With 40 years’ experience as a lecturer, Chantal has taught at Sotheby’s Institute of Art on the MA in Fine and Decorative Arts since 1989, and as a freelance lecturer for a number of societies and institutions, including the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection.

She trained as a paintings conservator and brings an understanding of the making and the physical painting to her lecture. 

Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi)  The Musicians

Public domain, via The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rome’s art and architecture were some of the finest of man’s creations and have had a lasting effect on our own art and culture. In this talk we look at beautiful buildings and works of art - sculpture, mosaic, wall-paintings, silver and jewellery - to trace the history of this mighty city.  We follow Rome’s rise from its semi-legendary mud-hut origins to the dazzling splendour of the capital city of the Emperors, focussing on Rome’s golden age – from 30 BC to AD 200.

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

Colossus of Constantine

Image © Dr Paul Roberts

When Augustus John died in 1961 he was described in The New York Times as ‘the grand old man of British painting and one of the greatest in British history.’ He was widely acknowledged as one of the most talented and promising of young British artists – a rival, perhaps, to Gauguin or Picasso. This lecture explores John’s extraordinary life, his position as one of the most exciting and outrageous young British artists before the Great War and his troubled status as ‘the last Bohemian’.

Dr. David Haycock is an established freelance art historian and curator. He is best known for his 2009 book, A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War, and the subsequent exhibition he curated at Dulwich Picture Gallery. Educated at the University of Oxford, and a former curator at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, he is a specialist in British art and culture in the period 1860 to 1940. His latest book is a new biography of the young Augustus John.

William Orpen (1878–1931)

National Portrait Gallery, London

In this lecture Anna traces the exciting trajectory of British sculpture during the first half of the 20th century.  Across a diversity of practice - from controversial commissions for architectural embellishments (Jacob Epstein); the embrace of direct carving (Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth) to the construction of form through welded metal (Reg Butler and Lyn Chadwick). British sculptors of this period played a pioneering role, affecting sculpture throughout the world. 

Anna is a London-based lecturer and writer specialising in contemporary art. During the 1990s, she oversaw the development of the first British Master’s Degree in the subject at Sotheby’s Institute. She also taught at London institutions including Tate Modern, as well as lecturing in cities ranging from Dubai to New York. Her books include 'Abstract Art and Sculpture Now'.

Artwork by Henry Moore at Perry Green: Sheep Piece (1971-72), bronze

Photo: Sue Whitehead

Ealing Studios is often hailed as the most quintessentially English of all film studios, reaching its zenith in 1949, with 'Passport to Pimlico', 'Whisky Galore!', and 'Kind Hearts and Coronets'. Ealing's films have a reputation for cosiness, whimsicality, and an ever-so gentle subversiveness. This talk revisits these films and reads them again. They are films set amongst the ruins, documenting the lives of citizens in bombed cities. Viewed as comedies of rubble, they take on a far more serious set of meanings than their whimsical reputation suggests.

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

'Passport to Pimlico' original UK film poster

© is believed to belong to the distributor of the film, General Film Distributors, the publisher, Ealing Studios, or the poster artist. Sydney John Woods

This is the story of the epic rivalry between the two giants of British art, J.M.W. Turner and John Constable. As unlike in background and temperament as their paintings were in style, these two creative geniuses transformed the art of landscape. This lecture sets them head-to-head and examines their differences, their similarities, their battles and their shared triumphs. But who will ultimately be crowned star painter? As well as giving an overview of Turner and Constable, the subject provides an enjoyable overview of the British art world during the nineteenth century.

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

      J.M.W. Turner                                                                                      John Constable      

      self-portrait,  c.1799                                                                            self-portrait, c.1804

      © Tate                                                                                               © National Portrait Gallery

An epic tale of two extraordinary figures, Tom Heron and Alec Walker, from the same valley in Yorkshire who were destined to change the world of fashion and design for all time. A story that takes us from the mills of Yorkshire in the 1920s to the coast of Cornwall. From Welwyn Garden City to the corridors of power at Westminster. Art, design, textiles, fashion, politics, publishing, philosophy, and the very genesis of modern art in Britain. This lecture tells the story of creativity, determination, passion, and resilience of two true textile maveriks.

Ashley is a leading specialist and curator in the key art discipline of Modern Textiles and their history. He is regularly invited to lecture on the subject both in the UK and the US and sits on the advisory board of The Frances Neady Collection at FIT, New York. As a curator and archivist, he works with institutions and foundations on conservation and exhibition project. He also curated the acclaimed exhibition 'Styled by Design' that celebrated the innovation of Modernist textile design.

Hand block printed silk dress fabric printed, 1930, British; Crysede Ltd

© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

In this talk we wind the clock back to the seventeenth century and enjoy an armchair tour of some of Wren’s magnificent structures including City Churches, the Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich and, of course, his greatest masterpiece St Paul’s Cathedral. We will look at the origins of the classical orders of architecture and discover how Wren’s love of this ancient system is everywhere to be seen in his legacy.

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

Image © Ian Swankie

Please note that this is a change to the lecture advertised in our brochure

Norman Rockwell’s folksy images of middle America were dismissed for decades by art critics as over-sentimental.  But his reputation has soared in recent years as a new generation comes to appreciate his humanity and inventiveness and he is revered by film directors George Lucas and Steven Spielberg for his brilliant storytelling.

At their best, his paintings reconcile midwestern values with progressive ideals and artistic traditionalism. This lecture traces the roots of Rockwell’s art back to the 19th century.

Rupert Dickens is an art historian with a special interest in Dutch and Flemish 16th and 17th century painting. He works at the Wallace Collection as a guide, lecturing on aspects of the collection. Rupert is also a tour director for a Cambridge-based company and has lectured to large audiences on many diverse subjects. He studied art history at Birkbeck College before undertaking a Masters in Dutch Golden Age Studies at University College London. Before that Rupert had a 26-year career as a BBC journalist ending as an editor in radio news. 

Change of venue

This lecture will be held in the Primary School Hall

King's Academy Binfield

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) rose to an almost mythical status as the pre-eminent modernist artist in early 20th century America. She did so at a time when painting was still considered not a suitable occupation for women and despite spending decades in the isolation of Northern New Mexico and away from the artistic hub of New York. We will look at her iconic landscapes, cityscapes and notorious outsized flower paintings and address the question of the role of Alfred Stieglitz, photographer and O'Keeffe's husband, in the shaping of her career.

Born in Poland Lydia studied for her MA in History of Art from Courtauld Institute of Art, London. She has since divided her time between painting and exhibiting as well as lecturing. She has taught at London's National Gallery for more than 35 years, and intermittently at Tate Gallery and National Portrait Gallery as well as collections such as Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Hermitage and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Since the pandemic began in March 2020 Lydia had devised and delivered a programme of online lectures to her own group 'Art For The Uninitiated'.

Georgia O’Keeffe with “Pelvis Series, Red with Yellow"

Photo : Tony Vaccaro, 1960

© Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Whistler was a vain and waspish personality to the many people he fell out with, including John Ruskin who triggered the most famous art trial in history when he accused Whistler, in one of his ‘nocturnes’, of ‘flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face’. While controversy and combat dominated his colourful private life, his paintings were ahead of their time, both revolutionary and poetic. This talk looks at both the man and his art.

John is a lecturer and guide at both Tate Britain and Tate Modern. Ran an MA course in Heritage Interpretation at St Mary's University College. Has lectured freelance to numerous art societies, to the National Trust and the Peggy Guggenheim Gallery in Venice. Lectures on art for cruises. In 2012, he wrote the new guidebook to the newly opened Strawberry Hill.

Image: James McNeill Whistler

Symphony in White, No. 2 The Little White Girl

[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Please note the change of date

Our annual free lecture

In June 2016 Tate Modern opened its doors to the stunning new Blavatnik Building, setting the new gold standard for museum design. This talk looks at the sleek new architecture and then follows the highlights of the collection, from Monet to Bacon and on to recent international works. Tate Modern is the most visited modern art museum in the world and this selected tour is a chance to explore some of the artworks without the crowds.

A Londoner with a passion for art and architecture, Ian is an official guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Guildhall Art Gallery and St Paul’s Cathedral. He is also a qualified and active freelance London guide and is a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars.

Image: © Ian Swankie

Drawing on his own experiences as both a child and adult actor, Tyler reveals the pains and the pleasures of a career in the theatre, and takes us through the various intricate processes of putting on a play from the actor’s perspective.. On the way, he reveals how props can let you down at crucial moments, how actors survive when out of work, and even how to deal with stage nudity.

Tyler grew up in a theatrical family, the son of Peter Butterworth and Janet Brown. He spent twenty-five years as an actor and then as a development producer in television documentaries. Now, he works as a voice actor, recording audiobooks, documentaries and voiceovers, and he produces walking audio guides to cities across Europe.

Image: © Tyler Butterworth

For centuries Venice had been an inspiration to artists and writers.  This lecture is a purely personal tour of 19th century Venice in search of these painters, poets and authors, the strange and often bizarre lives they led in the city, the customs and rituals they found when they arrived and the rich and varied succession of images they created that ultimately transformed the hard city of the Venetian Republic into the romantic legend it is today.

Douglas read Fine Art at Magdalene College Cambridge and has been a lecturer on paintings since 1980. He has written and presented various TV documentaries, three one-man exhibitions of his paintings have been held in England and Switzerland. He has published five novels, which have been translated into 8 foreign languages, and his book on Monet, River of Light, has sold 30,000 copies in England, America and France.

Image: Edward Pritchett. Piazza San Marco, Venice

Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum

Painted as a reaction to the bombing of the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War, the painting contains a lot more than a depiction of war. Picasso explores many themes, love, death, nationhood, motherhood and his own life at that point in time. The painting is also full of cross references to the history of art, Picasso gives a nod to Rubens, Goya and Poussin and others.  A painting worth spending some time to get to know a little better.

Paul is an Art Historian and a National Gallery trained guide with many years of experience working in education. As a writer, Paul has published on cultural crossovers and appropriations in 20th century painting. He is also a tour guide at the Longford Castle art collection and a visiting tutor at Marlborough College.

Image: Picasso’s Guernica

Licensed under creative commons  

This lecture will take place at our new venue King's Academy, Binfield

NB Please use postcode RG42 4EX if using a Sat Nav

One of the most extraordinary Spanish artists from Valencia; Joaquin Sorolla has become better known more recently. He lived from 1863 to 1923 and created a world full of light and colour. Sometimes a social painter he was more concerned with capturing light falling on bodies and sea-scapes and his wonderful technique will be considered in this colourful lecture.

Jacqueline is Managing Director of an art tours company and a course director and lecturer at the V&A. She also lectures at The Royal Academy. Her specialist field is Spanish Art and recently gave us an on-line lecture from her home in Spain.

Image: ‘Strolling along the Seashore’, 1909

© Fundación Museo Sorolla, Madrid

This lecture will take place at our new venue King's Academy, Binfield

NB Please use postcode RG42 4EX if using a Sat Nav

In his heyday, the animal artist Edwin Landseer was hugely celebrated and loved for his highland stags, dogs and particularly for his lions in Trafalgar Square. He was a child prodigy and was known for his vivid textures of animal skin, hair and fur. When Sir Edwin died they buried him in St Paul’s Cathedral, crowds lined the streets and black wreaths were wrapped around the necks of those lions in Trafalgar Square. 

Karin is a theatre and TV actor and also known for her entertaining lectures on writers and diarists connected with the arts from the mid-18th to 19th century. Her extensive research into their diaries and letters bring her lectures vividly to life, illustrated with contemporary pictures and portraits.

Image: Doubtful Crumbs - The Wallace Collection

Please note that this lecture will take place at our new venue 

King's Academy, Binfield

NB Please use postcode RG42 4EX if using a Sat Nav

This talk describes one of the most beautiful cities of the ancient world, Palmyra, her wealth and power displayed in gorgeous monuments, and her people preserved in their hauntingly beautiful funeral portraits. Palmyra’s meteoric rise and dramatic fall, are illustrated in 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, in the Syrian desert, will rise again…

Dr Paul Roberts is Head of the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum. After he studied classics at Cambridge, he travelled and excavated throughout the former lands of the Roman Empire, from Britain to Syria. He was Senior Roman Curator at the British Museum and more recently at the Ashmolean, he curated Last Supper in Pompeii, a tribute to the Roman love affair with food and wine. He is currently working on a Roman Villa in the Molise region of the Central Apennines.

Image: The Arch of Triumph, Palmyra, Syria

© Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

© Vyacheslav Argenberg

www.vascoplanet.com

Please note that this lecture will be held at Moor Close, Newbold College

With three decades under his belt Marc has gathered a wealth of experience and fascinating tales based on his work in the auction business. This unusual talk will both amaze and amuse as he recounts incredible stories of great discoveries and emotive situations.

Perhaps best known for appearing for 22 years on the BBC Antiques Roadshow, Marc Allum is a freelance art and antiques journalist, writer and broadcaster. He runs a fine art valuation and consultancy service and has lectured widely for years to a number of different organisations and literary festivals including Cheltenham, Bath, Wells and Petworth. Marc is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

Image: © Mark Allum

Please note that this lecture will be held at Moor Close, Newbold College

Dukes, Popes, Doges and Medici were patrons of the greatest art of the Renaissance - BUT how much do we know of the women who commissioned and collected art, often in a pattern quite distinct from that of men? Lucrezia Borgia, Alfonsina Orsini, Isabella d’Este, who were these women hungry for art and how did they overcome social constraints and restricted means to contribute to the glory of the age?

Nicole studied Art History at the Universities of Sussex, York and Paris. She was Senior Lecturer at Queen’s University, Belfast, where she established the Department of Art History, the first in the north of Ireland. Nicole is now a freelance lecturer and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. A member of the  Higher Education Academy, her publications focus on adult education and the arts.

Image: Titian  Portrait of Isabella d’Este  Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Please note that this lecture will be held at Moor Close, Newbold College

Completed in 1432, the Ghent Altarpiece is a milestone in the history of art. This lecture looks at Van Eyck’s dazzlingly naturalistic depiction of people, plants and objects, enabled by the novel use of the oil medium, and unravels the meaning of the altarpiece’s complex imagery. It also explores its later history, including its finding by the Monuments Men in 1945 as well as some of the discoveries to have emerged during its recent restoration.

Welcome back Paula to Wokingham. She is Director of the V&A Medieval and Renaissance Year Course and a specialist in Renaissance art, on which she has published widely. She has collaborated on major exhibitions including Jan van Eyck: an Optical Revolution (Ghent, 2020) and has lectured at the Courtauld Institute and the British Institute of Florence.

Image: © closertovaneyck.kikirpa.be

Our free annual lecture

Only available as a YouTube live stream

Non-members please click here to request the link

Antony Gormley’s career spans nearly 40 years, during which time he has become internationally famous by making sculpture that explores the relationship of the human body to space, often using his own body as his starting point.  His work has become known and loved by the public and shown in galleries including the Tate in London and the Hermitage in St Petersburg. It is also often on open display as public art, such as Another Place at Crosby Beach and of course the iconic Angel of the North. What makes his art so appealing and meaningful to people?

Rosalind Whyte has a BA and MA from Goldsmith’s College, and an MA (distinction) from Birkbeck College. She is an experienced guide at Tate Britain, Tate Modern, the Royal Academy and Greenwich. She also lectures at The Tate.

Image: Antony Gormley, Lost Horizon I, 2008. Detail © the Artist

This will be a live lecture at  Newbold Church and also available as a YouTube live stream for members and non-members

Harry will be tracing the history of his profession with examples from early practitioners like Cruickshank and Hogarth, to more contemporary artists such as Giles and Schulz, bringing events right up to date with cartoons produced fresh on the page that day! Yes, Harry will be drawing live.

Harry Venning has been a professional cartoonist for thirty years, during which time he has provided cartoons for several high-profile UK publications (The Guardian, Radio Times) as well as for countless more obscure titles (British Journal of Wound Care). He was awarded UK Strip Cartoonist of The Year for his Guardian strip Clare In The Community, which he also adapted into a Radio 4 sitcom.

Image: image: © Harry Venning

Change to advertised programme

This will be a live lecture at  Newbold Church and also available as a YouTube live stream for members and non-members

Like the imperial emblem of the double-headed eagle, Russia’s two capital cities always looked in different directions before 1917 - Moscow towards Asia, and St. Petersburg towards Europe. This lecture explores the art and architecture of both of these great cities, and how and why they increased and decreased in importance before and after the 1917 Revolution. 

Dr Rosamund Bartlett is a writer, lecturer and translator whose work as a cultural historian ranges across the arts. She has written on music, art and literature for The Daily Telegraph and received commissions from institutions including the Royal Opera House, Tate UK, and the Salzburg Festival. The author of several books, she is currently writing a history of the Russian avant-garde and her new translation of Anna Karenina was published to acclaim in 2014. She contributes regularly to Proms events and opera broadcasts on the BBC.

There will be some references to Ukrainian Art in this talk and there will be a collection bucket available for any contributions to Ukrainian Relief on the night.

Please note that this lecture will only be available as a YouTube live stream

Between 1885 and 1916, Carl Fabergé made fifty jewelled eggs – Easter presents from Russia’s last two emperors to their wives. They have become the most famous surviving symbols of the Romanov Empire: both supreme examples of the jeweller’s art and the vulgar playthings of a decadent court. ‘A fascinating story which combines unique decorative art, contemporary culture, history and the murder of the Romanovs with the excitement of a crime novel’.

Toby Faber is an experienced lecturer and public speaker who has already appeared at TASW. His career began 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.

Image: The Forbes Collection, New York. Photographed by Joseph Cosica, Jr. Copyright © All rights reserved

This will be a live lecture at  Newbold Church and also available as a YouTube live stream for members and non-members

The architecture of the Royal National Theatre divides opinion so much that it once appeared twice in a poll of the buildings of London – in the top ten best and the top ten worst. Famously, Prince Charles once described it as a nuclear bunker. Was he right? The lecture looks at the life and work of Denys Lasdun, including other buildings he designed, but focuses on the National Theatre and pleads for an appreciation of the austere beauty of this architectural masterpiece.

Alan Read holds a Master’s Honours degree in The History of Art from Birkbeck College, London. He is a gallery guide at Tate Britain, Tate Modern and the National Portrait Gallery and has lectured at many galleries including the Dulwich Picture Gallery, Plymouth City Art Gallery and the NPG.

This will be an on-line lecture due to the weather conditions

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

Chris Aslan was born in Turkey (hence the name Aslan) and spent his childhood there and in war-torn Beirut. He then moved to Khiva, a desert oasis in Uzbekistan, establishing a UNESCO workshop reviving fifteenth century carpet designs and embroideries, and becoming the largest non-government employer in town.

Image: © Chris Aslan

This lecture will only be available online via a YouTube live stream

This is the story of how the socialite and muse Peggy Guggenheim became one of the greatest collectors in the history of modern art. She moved with ease between the social elites of New York and the bohemia of Paris. This talk asks why, seemingly out of the blue, Guggenheim started to collect contemporary art in the 1930s? What impact did her subsequent galleries in London and New York have on artists and the wider art world? And how did a New York heiress play such a pivotal role in the making of mid-century Modernism? 

Jacky Klein is an art historian, publisher, writer and broadcaster, specialising in modern and contemporary art. 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'.

This will be a live lecture at  Newbold Church and also available as a YouTube live stream for members and non-members

The origins of our English Christmas stretch far back into European history, combining the pagan traditions of the Roman and Scandinavian winter festivals. It wasn’t until the 4th century AD that the Christian Church started to celebrate the birth of Christ. Since then these different cultures have co-existed, adapting and morphing as the social and political landscape changed.  Music, art and folk customs associated with the Christmas season have evolved to produce a rich tapestry of imagery and events with wide ranging appeal. This lecture explores in words, images and music the various strands - pagan and religious - that have created a festival which, for many, is the most significant celebration of the year.

A former chorister at Wells Cathedral School, Roger went on to become a choral scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford from where he graduated with an honours degree in English. Armed with both academic and performance skills Roger combined a teaching career with professional singing in London. After obtaining a further degree in Music he became Director of Music at Daniel Stewart’s and Melville College in Edinburgh. Roger retired in 2003 and returned to the south of England. He is not only a much sought after lecturer but also holds the post of Joint Chairman of the Arts Society Windsor.

This will be a live lecture at  Newbold Church

We are trialing a YouTube live stream for members who are concerned about attending in person

Stonehenge is the most celebrated and sophisticated prehistoric stone circle in the British Isles. Having established why Stonehenge must be regarded as architectural in its layout and construction, this lecture will go on to reveal how, over the last two centuries, this iconic structure has inspired painters, potters and poets. Blake, Turner, Constable and Moore are amongst those who have all been drawn to this magnificent ruin, resulting in a diverse catalogue of images and impressions. Finally, we will look at Stonehenge as a global icon and how it’s instantly recognisable stones now grace tea towels in Wiltshire, phone cards in Japan and stamps from Bhutan.

A proud possessor of his own collection of ‘Stonehengiana’, Julian Richards studied archaeology at Reading University and has since worked as a professional archaeologist - in commercial archaeology, for English Heritage, for the BBC and as an independent. Julian’s career in broadcasting has involved him in researching and presenting Meet the Ancestors and Blood of the Vikings for BBC 2 and Mapping the Town for Radio 4. He is the author of a number of English Heritage publications on Stonehenge, including the previous and current guide books to the monument and its landscape.

This will be an on-line lecture

Members and guests will receive an email with a link to the on-line lecture the day before

Gustav Klimt’s primary subject was the female body and his works are marked by a frank eroticism. Klimt and his colleagues broke away from the imperially endorsed art institutions in Vienna in 1897 and founded the Secession – a movement hoping to create a new style that owed nothing to historical influence. 1897 was also the same year that Gustav Mahler arrived to take charge of the Opera House in the city. Comparing these two totemic fin de siècle talents, this lecture places Klimt and Mahler in context, asking what fundamentally links and, indeed, divides them.

Described by The Times as a ‘leading cultural historian’, Gavin Plumley is well known for his work on Central European music and culture during the 19th and 20th centuries. In addition, he writes widely for newspapers, magazines and opera and concert programmes around the world. He appears frequently as a guest and as a presenter on BBC Radio 3 and on BBC Radio 4 and has given lectures for the National Gallery, the British Museum, the Royal Opera House and Wigmore Hall.

This will be an on-line lecture

Members will receive an email with a link to the lecture the day before

The year is 1901. Toulouse-Lautrec has just died. A young Italian picks up his pencil and makes an Arabesque with his mind. An orange zebra sips Campari, a tiger tears at a tyre, a clown leaps out of a lemon and a woman on horseback heralds a new era of chocolate. Paris was shocked and advertising posters have never been the same since. Wit-lashed with their imagery, tongue-foo-ed by their visions, we ask, “Who were the first Mad Men?”
It’s a surprise.

Charles Harris has created posters for major brands including British Airways, Nestlé, Sony, General Motors and Shell. His travel writing and photography has appeared in Time Magazine. He has also written and produced several hundred TV and Radio commercials and corporate video programmes.

Why not invite a friend to watch our annual free lecure?

Members and guests will receive an email with a link to the on-line lecture the day before

Stanley Spencer’s art was dominated by his personal life and his profound religious faith. Cookham, his birthplace, was for him an earthly paradise whose people and surroundings possessed a mystical quality. Despite the failure of his two marriages, he continued to believe in the power of love and some of his most important works were inspired by his feelings for the two women whom he married. The paintings flowing from his military service in World War I, concentrating on hope and redemption rather than on suffering, reveal a similar basic optimism. This lecture will examine the eccentric and visionary world of one of the most creative and imaginative British painters of the 20th century.

Val Woodgate is a lecturer and guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern. She is a former member of the teaching team at Dulwich Picture Gallery and also lectures and runs courses at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester. Val’s erudition and expertise has made her one of The Arts Society’s most sought after speakers, lecturing throughout Britain and to related organisations in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

Guests are welcome to view this on-line lecture just email 

memsectheartssocietywham@gmail.com 

Charlie Waite’s credentials as a photographer have received worldwide acclaim. Don’t miss this opportunity to enjoy some of his work and hear first-hand just how he evaluates potential images before the shutter is clicked. This fully illustrated talk features in excess of 60 photographs, exploring the relationship between the making of an image and the way in which it is perceived by the viewer. Charlie will also highlight the extraordinary double act between eye and brain; the marriage of visual imagery and intellectual interpretation.

Charlie is one of the world's leading landscape photographers. He has lectured for 25 years throughout the UK, Europe and the US. His work has featured in many one-man exhibitions and he has been awarded the prestigious honorary Fellowship of the British Institute of Professional Photographers, as well as a Direct Fellowship by the Royal Photographic Society. In 2007, he launched LPOTY - UK Landscape Photographer of the Year. Amongst His many publications are Landscape; the Story of 50 Photographs and Arc & Line. In 2015, he was invited to exhibit in 2015's Royal Academy summer exhibition.

This will be an on-line lecture

Members will receive an email with a link to the lecture the day before

Following this revealing insight, a journey on the Tube may never be the same again. The world’s first underground railway has a unique heritage of architecture, ingenious design, powerful advertising posters and iconic calligraphy. Ian Swankie’s lecture examines the legacy of Frank Pick and Charles Holden, looks at some of the iconic posters and celebrates the award-winning architecture of the modern Tube in the Jubilee Line Extension. Ian will also take a peek at a few of the new Crossrail stations, designed by some of the world’s top architects.

Ian Swankie declares himself as a Londoner with a passion for art and architecture. As an official guide, he gives tours of some of London’s most significant cultural and artistic landmarks: Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Guildhall Art Gallery and St Paul’s Cathedral. Since 2012 he has led a popular weekly independent art lecture group in his home town of Richmond in West London. He is a Freeman of the City livery company, ‘The Worshipful Company of Art Scholars’.

This will be an on-line lecture

Members will receive an email with a link to the lecture the day before

In the 16th century, key developments in early English painting were being made largely by foreign painters like Holbein, Eworth and Gheeraerts whose works were hallmarked by symbolism - both personal and political. Although there were religious subjects and the beginnings of landscape painting, it was portraiture that dominated this period and Linda Smith will also be considering the impact and function of some of the portrayals of the great monarchs and personalities of the age.

Linda Smith holds two first-class degrees in Art History. Whilst having a broad knowledge of art historical subjects, she specialises in British Art and twentieth century art. Linda is an experienced lecturer and guide, working regularly at both Tate Britain and Tate Modern. She lectures to a wide variety of audiences both here in the UK and overseas.

This will be an on-line lecture

Members will receive an email with a link to the lecture the day before

This lecture offers a fascinating insight into the backdrop to those treading the boards.  It’s the story of stage scenery from Sophocles to Spiderman.  Ian Gledhill’s talk will illustrate the way in which theatre has developed over the past two and a half thousand years; in particular how stage scenery design has evolved and advanced in that time. Ian has worked, among other things, as a professional stage designer, and the talk will include a unique look at some of his own work in this area.

There are few lecturers who can lay claim to having appeared in pantomime with Julian Clary. But this is just one part of Ian Gledhill’s varied career which ranges from designing underground railways as an engineer for London Transport to work in travel and tourism, music publishing and television. However, it’s work in the theatre that has dominated with  Ian able to call upon his experience from roles as an actor, director, set designer, stage manager and opera translator.

This will be an on-line lecture

Members will receive an email with a link to the lecture the day before

Ravilious was serving as an official war artist with the RAF when he went missing, presumed killed, in September 1942. Despite his short career he is one of the best-known of Britain’s 20th century artists –  not just a painter but also a book illustrator, wood engraver and designer. His friendship with Edward Bawden began when both were studying at the Royal College of Art – both were inspired by the work of Paul Nash - which led the beginning of an artists’ colony at Great Bardfield in Essex. This lecture will explore whether the art of Eric Ravilious could have existed without the friendships and social networks which inspired and employed him.

Armed with a degree in Chemical Engineering and a high profile role in IT, in 2008 Julia Musgrave decided that life was too short for just one career and decided to become an art historian. She now has a Graduate Diploma in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art and an MLitt in ‘Art, Style and Design: Renaissance to Modernism, c.1450 – c.1930’ from the University of Glasgow. Julia is currently working towards her Ph.D. at the University of York but what she really relishes is sharing her expertise with a wide range of audiences.

This will be an on-line lecture if Covid restrictions continue to prevent us meeting at Newbold

Surprisingly, Gaudi was shy and retiring; a sharp contrast with his witty, bold and extravagant style which involved skilful engagement with ceramicists, iron workers, tilers and decorative artists. Alongside a consideration of Gaudi’s public and private buildings, Jacqueline Cockburn’s lecture will also embrace some of the other architects who were working in Barcelona at the turn of the twentieth century. Prepare to enjoy not only noted significant and ravishing structures but also a few of the less well-known buildings in the city.

Jacqueline Cockburn boasts a blue chip academic pedigree. She is a linguist and art historian with first degrees in French and Spanish and Art History, an MA in Applied Linguistics and a PhD in Art History and Spanish. Whilst being Managing Director of an art tour company, she has still managed to find time to publish a book in 2019 highlighting ten significant artworks in ten of London’s galleries with an engaging narrative look at each work. The book is called, A Taste of Art- London.

This will be delivered by Zoom and members will be sent a link to the Zoom meeting the day before

Pepe Martinez and Simon Whitehouse will be entertaining us with a special “Christmas Extravaganza”.

This event will start at 3pm and will be in two 45 minute parts with a short interval between them

Part One will explore the origins of our Christmas traditions

Part Two will be a virtual version of “A Christmas Carol” with a Dickensian theme

Pepe and Simon are both well-known Blue Badge guides with theatrical connections so this promises to be most entertaining.

As this is a Zoom meeting and you will be able to see each other on screen feel free to enter into the Christmas spirit and dress up in your Christmas finery. Perhaps have a glass of mulled wine and some mince pies to hand! Please do pass on the invitation to any family and friends who might like to join in the fun (from their own homes, of course!)

This will be an on-line lecture

Members will receive an email with a link to the lecture the day before

What was life like in a Medieval manor house at Yuletide? Prepare to be enchanted by reproduction medieval harps, plucked psaltery, hurdy-gurdy, hammered dulcimer and gemshorn as Sarah brings alive the spirit of a Medieval Christmas. Supported by illustrations from illuminated manuscripts, contemporary accounts and haunting songs, this promises to be a truly atmospheric and musical seasonal celebration.

Sarah Deere-Jones performs, writes and lectures in the UK and abroad, both as a scholar and a musician. As a distinguished prize winner and graduate from The Royal Academy of Music, she has regularly appeared on radio and television, both here in the UK and in America. Her presentations are hallmarked by the inclusion of live music. Sarah’s mastery of the harp and a wide range of other instruments is widely regarded as bringing a very special and memorable dimension to her lectures.

This will be an on-line lecture

Members will receive an email with a link to the lecture the day before

Many of us will be aware that this year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), the musical giant who described himself as a ‘poet in sound’. By way of a tribute, Sandy Burnett guides us through the life and work of this brilliant, cantankerous and astonishingly original composer; an awkward outsider who came to Vienna, mastered the elegant Classical style and then took it in unimagined directions.

Sandy is a musician, broadcaster, conductor and double bass player who may be familiar to many of you as one of the core team of presenters on BBC Radio 3. He travels the world performing and enthusing about music alongside cultural holidays that he devises and leads himself. His last visit to Wokingham saw him extolling the age of jazz. Tonight’s lecture promises to be every bit as revealing.

This will be an on-line lecture

Members will receive an email with a link to the lecture the day before

From the scandal of the painting of ‘Madame X’ to the trials, tribulations and triumph of ‘Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose’, John Singer Sargent established himself as the leading portrait painter of his age – the age of elegance. Alexandra Epps takes us through the rise, the fall and rise again of this prolific society painter; a journey which introduces us to the fashionable elite of Paris, London and Boston. Discover an artist who devoted his entire life to the creation of beauty.

Alexandra Epps is an Official Guide and Lecturer at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Guildhall Art Gallery and Pallant House Gallery. She is a graduate of Saint Martins School of Art and has an MA from the London College of Printing. Alexandra’s background is in design having practised as a graphic designer running her own design consultancy for many years.

This is a bonus on-line lecture

Enjoy a fascinating appraisal of some of the world’s most renowned Impressionist painters. Lois Oliver will be using Baudelaire’s influential essay ‘The Painter of Modern Life’ as her starting point as she explores celebrated paintings of Parisian life by artists including Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Rodin and Mary Cassatt. Baudelaire described his ideal artist going out into the city to seek out new subjects for art; a ‘passionate spectator’, rejoicing in the experience of the crowd. We’ll see just how they shape up.

Dr Lois Oliver studied English Literature at Cambridge University, and History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, completing a PhD thesis on 'The Image of the Artist, Paris 1815-1855'. She’s worked at the Harvard Art Museums, the V&A and the National Gallery. Alongside an associate professorship, Lois also writes audio and multimedia tours for clients including the National Gallery, Royal Academy, Royal Collection, and Tate, and has appeared on BBC Radio and TV.

This lecture been cancelled due to the Coronavirus epidemic

Stonehenge is the most celebrated and sophisticated prehistoric stone circle in the British Isles. Having established why Stonehenge must be regarded as architectural in its layout and construction, this lecture will go on to reveal how, over the last two centuries, this iconic structure has inspired painters, potters and poets. Blake, Turner, Constable and Moore are amongst those who have all been drawn to this magnificent ruin, resulting in a diverse catalogue of images and impressions. Finally, we will look at Stonehenge as a global icon and how it’s instantly recognisable stones now grace tea towels in Wiltshire, phone cards in Japan and stamps from Bhutan.

A proud possessor of his own collection of ‘Stonehengiana’, Julian Richards studied archaeology at Reading University and has since worked as a professional archaeologist - in commercial archaeology, for English Heritage, for the BBC and as an independent. Julian’s career in broadcasting has involved him in researching and presenting Meet the Ancestors and Blood of the Vikings for BBC 2 and Mapping the Town for Radio 4. He is the author of a number of English Heritage publications on Stonehenge, including the previous and current guide books to the monument and its landscape.

This lecture been cancelled due to the Coronavirus epidemic

This lecture explores the way in which artists over the centuries have included transparent glass objects in their paintings, taking huge delight in capturing the shadows and reflections seen within the glass as well as displaying their skill in portraying what lies behind and beyond. It will include the remarkable depiction of glass objects in Roman wall-paintings, works by artists such as Titian, Veronese and Caravaggio - where both the Gods of Olympus and the disciples are seen drinking out of fragile Venetian cristallo - and the proliferation of glass drinking vessels in Dutch still-life paintings.

Jane Gardiner trained at the V&A where she continues to give lectures. She was Senior Lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute of Art for 17 years, becoming a Deputy Director of Sotheby's, UK. Jane’s expertise is in great demand and she has also lectured for the National Trust, the Art Fund, London University, Buckingham University, l'Institut d'Etudes Superieures des Arts in Paris, on cruise ships and at antiques fairs and interior design conferences across America.

This lecture has been cancelled due to the Coronavirus epidemic

Gustav Klimt’s primary subject was the female body and his works are marked by a frank eroticism. Klimt and his colleagues broke away from the imperially endorsed art institutions in Vienna in 1897 and founded the Secession – a movement hoping to create a new style that owed nothing to historical influence. 1897 was also the same year that Gustav Mahler arrived to take charge of the Opera House in the city. Comparing these two totemic fin de siècle talents, this lecture places Klimt and Mahler in context, asking what fundamentally links and, indeed, divides them.

Described by The Times as a ‘leading cultural historian’, Gavin Plumley is well known for his work on Central European music and culture during the 19th and 20th centuries. In addition, he writes widely for newspapers, magazines and opera and concert programmes around the world. He appears frequently as a guest and as a presenter on BBC Radio 3 and on BBC Radio 4 and has given lectures for the National Gallery, the British Museum, the Royal Opera House and Wigmore Hall.

This lecture has been cancelled due to the Coronavirus epidemic

The depiction of parties has always been popular in the history of Western Art. Everyone, it seems, loves a party. To illustrate this Alice Foster takes her references from a wide variety of historical sources; weddings in the Bible, 2nd century Greek mosaics, Renaissance allegories of refinement and excess, 16th century peasant parties, 18th century harlequins and the celebratory styles of 20th century painters. The focus is on the variety of merrymaking, banqueting, dances and music in a feast of colour.

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.

In the years after the Second World War, London was dark, grimy and gap-toothed by bomb damage. Yet alongside austerity there was also enormous creativity and a longing for beauty and glamour. Young artists, such as Lucien Freud, John Craxton and John Minton were developing stark new styles of representing people. Meanwhile, Francis Bacon’s work contrasted sharply with Cecil Beaton’s lavish tableaux of opulent pastel-shaded ball-gowns modelled by debutantes. Jo Walton looks at the changing face of post-war London seen through the eyes of artists beginning to make their names. It’s a journey that, for some, would lead to super-stardom.

A job as a bookseller turned into a twenty year career for Jo Walton who went on to run her own specialist art bookshop in London. She has also worked for the auctioneers, Christies. In addition to teaching art history, Jo has been a volunteer guide at both Tate Britain and Tate Modern. Sharing her passion for the periods, places and artworks she loves, Jo is now a freelance lecturer for The Art Fund, Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery and a host of arts societies throughout the UK.

This lecture is sponsored by our partners Clifton Ingram Solicitors.

Click here to go to their website

Rembrandt van Rijn is the best known of all Dutch masters. He painted landscapes, religious scenes, mythological subjects and portraits. Celebrated as the most successful artist in Amsterdam, he revolutionised the treatment of portraiture. By way of contrast, Vermeer’s artistic output was more modest and after his death became almost entirely unknown for well over a century. By contrasting these two artists, Lucrezia Walker will offer an informed insight into Dutch art of the 17th century.

Lucrezia Walker is a regular lecturer at the National Gallery. As well as offering her expertise in the galleries, she also regularly presents in the more formal setting of the lecture theatre. She has a significant role in the Tate Gallery’s Development Department, speaking to corporate sponsors at their offices and at their private receptions at both Tate Modern and Tate Britain. She was Lay Canon for the Visual Arts at St Paul's Cathedral 2010-2014.

How does the Royal Opera House cope at Christmas? 12 Bohèmes, 15 Hansel and Gretels and 24 Nutcrackers? Sarah Lenton’s first-hand account takes us into the wings, into the dressing rooms, up in the flys and onto the stage. Using clips, photos and interviews, we’ll enjoy a virtual reality trip around the theatre as the festive season swings into action. Sarah lifts the curtain on how everyone works together to make sure that those in the spotlight can give a world class performance.

Sarah Lenton has spent her working life in the theatre, principally at the Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne and English National Opera. She writes and gives lectures on operas and ballet alongside live opera broadcasts and podcasts for BBC Radios 3 and 4. She has written and directed many shows, including more than 20 for the Royal Opera House Linbury Studio Theatre and for Glyndebourne Touring Opera. Sarah is ordained and has recently been licensed as a West End Theatre Chaplain.

This lecture is sponsored by our partners Clifton Ingram Solicitors.

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Last supper in Pompeii celebrates the Roman love affair with food and drink. It takes us on a journey from fields and vineyards to markets and shops. We’ll learn how Romans sourced their food and drink and enter the heart of the bustling city. Inside fashionable homes we’ll recline in the dining room with exotic food and fine wine, surrounded by silver, mosaics and frescoes. All this against a backdrop of no refrigeration, no running water and questionable hygiene.

Dr Paul Roberts is the Sackler Keeper of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford University. From 1994 to 2014 he was Roman Curator in the Department of Greece and Rome at the British Museum. He has excavated widely across Greece, Libya, Turkey and, in particular, Italy. His research focuses on the day-to-day lives of ordinary people in the Greek and Roman worlds. He has recently curated 'Last Supper in Pompeii', the exhibition upon which tonight’s lecture is based. It is running at The Ashmolean until January 2020.  

Les Parisiennes is a story about women’s lives in Paris during the dark years of Nazi occupation and beyond. These include British and American women, couturiers, jewellers, actors, singers, night club dancers and housewives.  The lecture opens with a spectacular surrealist circus ball held at a chateau in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles. Many of the guests could not believe that war was imminent. Journeying through the years to 1947, we arrive at the launch of Christian Dior’s lavish new look and share the poignant story of why he named his new perfume Miss Dior.

Biographer, historian, author and former Reuters foreign correspondent, Anne Sebba has now added broadcasting to her formidable skillset. Having worked on both BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, she also regularly appears on television talking about her writing and her experiences. Her latest book is a history of Paris between 1939-49 seen through women's eyes. It was published in 2016 as Les Parisiennes How the women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s. Anne is a former chair of Britain's 9,000 strong Society of Authors.

Grayson Perry, who won the Turner Prize in 2003, is close to becoming a ‘National Treasure’. His beautiful, finely-crafted pottery, which frequently has a sting in the tail, and his colourful, imaginative and often amusing tapestries are enormously popular in the fine art world. Initially considered as something of a rebel, he is now an acknowledged member of the Establishment. He has exhibited in the British Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, was appointed a Royal Academician and delivered the Reith lectures for the BBC in 2013. In this lecture, we will look at his work in some detail, as well as considering his cross-dressing alter ego, Claire, and his fondness for his childhood teddy bear, Alan Measles. 

Frank Woodgate is a Lecturer and Guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, lecturer for the Art Fund, the National Trust, U3A and other organisations. He lectures and leads tours for the Arts Society  He lectures and runs courses at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester.

This lecture is free to non-members - simply email MemSecTheArtsSocietyWham@gmail.com to reserve your place.

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

Jo Banham is a freelance curator, lecturer and writer. From 2006-2016 she was Head of Adult Learning at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and before that Head of Learning and Access at the National Portrait Gallery, and Head of Public Programmes at Tate Britain. She has also been Curator of Leighton House and Assistant Keeper at the Whitworth Art Gallery. She has published on many aspects of Victorian and early 20th century decoration and interiors. She is currently curating an exhibition on William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement for the Juan March Fundacion in Madrid and the Museu Nacional d’Art Catalunya in Barcelona. She is also Director of the Victorian Society Summer School.

Should we accept that the very best photographs can be regarded as Fine Art? This question is at the heart of a lecture which argues that photography can equal, not to say exceed, more traditional disciplines in the key genres of portaiture, landscape and still life. Photography, moreover, has carved its own area of excellence in depicting the human condition. All these ideas are discussed with reference to the work of some of the acknowledged masters of photography, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Fay Godwin, Bill Brandt, Ansel Adams and Wolfgang Tillmans. 

Brian Stater’s chief interests lie in photography, architecture and history and he combines all three in his lecturing career. He has taught at University College London since 1997 and became an accredited lecturer for The Arts Society in 2003. He is a member of the Association for Historical and Fine Art Photography and an exhibition of his own photographs has been staged at UCL. In an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the skills of some great photographers of the past, he has begun to work with a pre-War Leica camera, as used by his great hero, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and many others.

According to Giorgio Vasari, when Michelangelo encountered the work of Titian he remarked that although his colouring was admirable, his work lacked ‘disegno’. The idea quickly developed that although Venetian painting imitated nature admirably, it lacked the intellectual rigour of Florentine art. This lecture outlines the origins of the disegno v colorito myth by considering drawings and paintings produced in Florence and Venice during the Renaissance by artists such as Domenico Ghirlandaio, Vittore Carpaccio, Titian and Michelangelo, in order to assess the development of two disparate artistic traditions and the changing role of drawings in artistic production during the period.

Caroline Brooke is Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck School of Art History. She is currently completing a PhD on Venetian painting. She lectures regularly at the National Gallery, Courtauld Institute, Carlton Club and the Academia Italiana. Her publications include articles for the Burlington Magazine, Master Drawings and book reviews for the Art Newspaper and Art Quarterly. She is author of the Universal Leonardo project website, and was script advisor for the Channel 4 documentary, Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance (2003/4).

Please note that this lecture will take place in Salisbury Hall.

This lecture features the work of the official artists who travelled with Captain James Cook on his three remarkable voyages of discovery from 1768 to 1780. Cook’s endeavours were recorded in a range of sensational illustrations and artworks of the people and places of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and many Pacific islands. Artists marking these exploits include Alexander Buchan, Sydney Parkinson, William Hodges and John Webber. It’s a story of navigation and discovery which will also highlight the creators of the world’s first accurate time-keepers, Sir Joseph Banks and John Harrison. 

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

This lecture is sponsored by our partners Clifton Ingram LLP Solicitors.

Click here to go to their website

Please note that this lecture will take place in Salisbury Hall.

Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini were brothers-in-law and among the most celebrated painters of their day. While Mantegna's Paduan origins and subsequent career at the Gonzaga court in Mantua fuelled his interest in classical antiquity, Bellini's Venetian background conditioned his feeling for colour and light. This lecture explores the intriguing artistic relationship of these two renaissance giants, often seen in contrast to one another, but who in fact shared much common ground. This lecture will complement and elaborate on the National Gallery exhibition of the works of Mantegna and Bellini on display from October 2018 to 27th January 2019.

Paula Nuttall is Director of the Victoria and Albert Medieval & Renaissance Year course. She is author of From Flanders to Florence: the Impact of Netherlandish Painting 1400-1500 (Yale, 2004). She was a member of the Scientific Committee for the exhibition Firenze e gli antichi Paesi Bassi at the Pitti Palace, Florence (2008), and co-curated the exhibition Face to Face: Flanders, Florence and Renaissance Painting at the Huntington Art Collection, San Marino, California (2013). She also lectures for the Courtauld Institute, Christie's Education, the Art Fund and the National Gallery. She was formerly lecturer at the British Institute of Florence.

Please note that this lecture will take place in Salisbury Hall.

The fame of the Queen of Sheba has lasted across the many intervening centuries since she made her epic journey from her distant land to the court of King Solomon. A passage in the Bible’s Book of Kings has immortalised this Queen and the journey that she made, her camel caravan laden with gold and incense as gifts for the king of Jerusalem. In this talk Louise Schofield looks at how the Queen of Sheba has captured the imagination of great artists, inspired epic films and has led archaeologists to go in search of her land – a search that has led to discoveries of great temples, tombs and treasures in both the Yemen and Ethiopia

Louise Schofield is an archaeologist who was Curator of Greek Bronze Age and Geometric Antiquities at the British Museum from 1987-2000.  Her book, The Mycenaeans, was co-published by the Getty Museum and the British Museum in 2007. She now writes, lectures and runs international archaeological projects - previously in south-eastern Turkey, Greece and Albania and currently in Ethiopia. She has been working in Ethiopia since 2006, directing archaeological, conservation and development projects in that extraordinary country. Her current archaeological site – in Tigray province, north-eastern Ethiopia – is a temple, probably dedicated to a moon god and dating to the 5th century BC – a time when this area of Ethiopia formed part of the kingdom of Sheba.She has just been appointed Visiting Professor of Archaeology at the American University of Rome.

One hundred years ago a group of American musicians docked in London, bringing with them for the very first time one of the twentieth century’s most important musical genres: jazz, a fascinating blend of rigorous structure, free-wheeling creativity, close-knit ensemble work and improvisation. This lecture covers the early years of jazz from its beginnings through to the start of the Second World War. Drawing on his practical experience both as musicologist and gigging musician, Sandy is able to shed light on jazz from the inside. His illustrations range from early pre-impressions by Maurice Ravel and others and the very earliest jazz recordings through to classics by Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and the dawn of the Swing Era.

Sandy Burnett is  a musician and broadcaster, conductor and double bass player who may be familiar to many of you as a radio presenter. After studying music at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and working as music director for the RSC, National Theatre and in London’s West End, Sandy Burnett spent a decade as one of the core team of music presenters on BBC Radio 3. He enjoys a varied career that embraces broadcasting, conducting, playing double bass and communicating his passion for music. His radio series for Ireland’s RTÉ Lyric FM, Great Moments in Classical Music, recently won silver in the Specialist Music category of the PPI Radio Awards. He regularly leads cultural lecture holidays, and is the author of the Idler Guide to Classical Music.He now travels the world performing and enthusing about music, devising and leading music holidays for companies such as ACE Cultural Tours and Martin Randall.

This lecture is sponsored by our partners Clifton Ingram LLP Solicitors.

Click here to go to their website

Old Saigon, elegant Hanoi, mystical Ha Long Bay ... these places captivated French artists of the 19th century colonial regime in Vietnam where they taught painting at the School of Fine Arts. Their sensual portraits and exotic landscapes evoked an idyllic world of gracious people with rich artistic traditions harking back to ancient civilisations. Imbuing their students with Western ideas, artists such as Alix Aymé, who revived lustrous lacquer work and silk painting, and Victor Tardieu, a pupil of Matisse, formed a generation of Vietnamese painters whose creative expression fused Eastern imagery with Paris Modernism. This lecture shows the historic background of Indochina, of ancient Hindu temples, Buddhist pagodas and Chinese style palaces, that was transformed by the addition of French architecture and culture. A new aesthetic emerged, depicted by French artists as paradisiacal and romantic, reflecting an era and a way of life that would vanish with war.

Denise Heywood is an art historian, author, lecturer, photographer and journalist. She worked in Cambodia in the 1990s and has been a scholar of Southeast Asian art ever since. Her books include one on the Buddhist temples of Laos, Ancient Luang Prabang and Laos, and Cambodian Dance Celebration of the Gods, with a foreword by the daughter of King Sihanouk. She lectures for the Art Fund, the School of Oriental and African Studies on their post graduate Asian Art Course and for Madingley Hall (University of Cambridge) as well as for organisations such as the British Museum, the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. She has lectured worldwide for universities, museums, colleges, art institutions. She has led cultural tours to Southeast Asia and France for the Royal Academy, the Art Fund, Asia House.  She is a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Studies in the UK, Asia House and the Royal Geographical Society.

From Chartres cathedral to Angkor Wat, religion has been the inspiration for many of the greatest buildings of the world. Indeed, for much of human history, the story of architecture and the story of faith were synonymous.

This lecture explains the architecture of each of the major faith traditions, revealing how it is shaped by their rituals and beliefs. It briefly covers the sacred architecture of such early societies as Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Americas before focusing on the living faiths: the great continuities embodied in the sacred architecture of Buddhism and Hinduism, and the revolutionary changes brought about in monotheistic Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It thus brings fresh insights into some of the most remarkable buildings on the planet.

The aim is to leave the audience understanding why and how (for example) a mosque is different from a synagogue or a church (and how they interrelate), as well as having a ‘big picture’ overview of what is happening where and when in the sacred buildings of planet earth.

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. His book The Secret Language of Sacred Spaces: Decoding Temples, Mosques, Churches and other Places of Worship around the World was published in 2013 and The Shire book of Medieval Architectural Style the following year. He is currently working on a major book on geology and place in the British landscape. He is a part time lecturer in the History of Art at the University of Bristol; holds a degree in the History of Art from the University of Sussex. He also leads tours on medieval church art, architecture and history and is Lay canon (Keeper of the Fabric) at Bristol Cathedral.

Bring a Friend for Free

Although a key player in early twentieth century avant-garde art in Paris, Raoul Dufy is not widely known outside specialist art circles. Why? Maybe because his imagination and versatility in drawing, painting, stage design, ceramics, fabrics, book illustration, and giant murals defy a narrow 'category'. Dufy's originality and technical virtuosity cut across traditional boundaries. He constantly astonishes by creating a universe of joyousness which can too easily be misunderstood as 'unserious'. Dufy's life-long interest in the relationship between painting and music is another fascinating dimension. When art collector and intellectual Gertrude Stein wrote 'Dufy is pleasure' it was the ultimate compliment. 

Mary Alexander has 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. Her 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. She is now a freelance lecturer to various arts, heritage and antiquarian societies. She has also worked in Pentagram design consultancy in London and New York, organising conferences and special events. She is 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 and 2013. Mary is an enthusiastic member and President of Glaven Valley DFAS. 

This lecture will introduce some of the most important sets of tapestries in Europe including the Lady and the Unicorn, those commissioned by the Dukes of Burgundy in the 15th century, Rafael’s designs for Pope Leo X, Henry VIII’s Abraham tapestries, Louis XIV’s 17th century series around the Seasons and the Months made at the Gobelins factory and on to the 21st century set commissioned by the Queen of Denmark. We will explore the designs and the craft of tapestry and why it has been the most expensive form of artistic expression until recent times. 

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

Books of Hours are private prayerbooks of the late Middle Ages.  They are probably the most famous of all medieval illuminated manuscripts, often painted by the finest artists of the time. The lecture looks at what a Book of Hours usually consists of, how and why such manuscripts were used, how they were made and illuminated, what they cost and how they have survived.  

Christopher de Hamel is Donnelley Fellow Librarian of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He was responsible for all catalogues and sales of illuminated manuscripts at Sotheby's for twenty-five years until 2000. He has doctorates from both Oxford and Cambridge and two honorary doctorates, and has written well over a hundred books and major articles on medieval manuscripts, translated into numerous languages. He is probably the best-known expert on medieval manuscripts in the world, and has given public lectures extremely extensively in six continents. He is the author of the best-selling Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts. 

Using illustrations from carvings, wall paintings, pottery, mosaics, sculpture, stained glass, illuminated manuscripts, and 18th and 19th century paintings, Sarah traces the history of one of the world’s most ancient and beloved musical instruments from thousands of years BC, to its arrival in northern Europe, including the huge developments and improvements during the renaissance and 19th centuries that created the highly mechanised and beautiful instrument we see played in orchestras and as solo instruments today. Performing on her own reproduction and antique instruments, Sarah will demonstrate the development and evolving sound and repertoire of the harp throughout its history. 

Sarah Deere-Jones 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. Her lectures include live music and songs on harps. 

This is a  Clifton Ingram sponsored lecture

Understanding of colour is fundamental to our understanding of so much of the history of Western art yet we rarely understand it and often take it for granted. If we compare colour in paintings to the colour of things in real life, we find that artists take considerable liberties with their colour. Why? In this talk we will find out about the origins and development of pigments and techniques from fresco and tempera to oil painting and how certain restrictions in the availability of colours dictated the style of specific schools of art. We will see why certain colours were more sought after and why. We will discover ways in which colour can be put in the service of a more satisfying composition in a painting, how it can be used to evoke certain sensations and emotions in the viewer and how it can carry cod- ed messages and symbolism to tell us more than just meets the eye. Colour can be used to give us a more scientific representation of outdoor light as in the art of the Impressionists. We will look at examples of paintings from the Middle Ages right up to colour field painting in 1950s America. 

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

Edward Hopper's paintings of urban life are typically characterized by a sense of loneliness and alienation. The most celebrated example is Nighthawks, a work of 1942, which depicts three men and a woman gathered in a brightly illuminated restaurant in downtown New York. We are given few clues as to the identity of these people, whether they know each other or are in any way related. It is in fact the inexplicable quality of this scene which has made it so intriguing to generations of viewers, and has turned Nighthawks into one of the iconic images of 20th century urban life. This lecture considers the background to Hopper's masterpiece and offers possible reasons for its lasting fascination. 

Kathy McLauchlan graduated at Oxford University and the Courtauld Institute. In 2001 she completed a PhD thesis on French painters in Rome during the 19th century. She is a course director at the V&A and freelance lecturer specialising in 19th century art history. She has published catalogues and articles for the British Council and the Barbican Art Gallery and is currently head of the Visual Art Department, Morley College, London. 

There's more to the world of street art than Banksy. Hidden Canvases 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 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 you Aryz and who knows you might even start looking at the world a little differently. 

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

In this illustrated lecture, Sarah Dunant, international bestselling novelist of the Italian renaissance, shares the secrets of her trade. To recreate the past as a living, breathing place, Sarah has visited churches, archives, museums and art galleries all over Italy. This is the story of her discoveries; how the decoding of old paintings alongside the work of the most modern historians helped her to penetrate hidden worlds inside the Renaissance, finding wonder and drama in ordinary lives and exploring the complexities of politics and religion along with emotion, the senses, and the heady appetites of body and soul. 

Sarah read history at Cambridge, then worked for many years as a cultural journalist in radio and television on such programmes as Kaleidoscope (BBC Radio 4), The Late Show (BBC 2), and Night Waves (BBC Radio 3). She has published thirteen novels, taught Renaissance studies at Washington University, St Louis, is a visiting tutor on the MA in creative writing at Oxford Brooks and has lectured around the world at festivals and conferences. Her last five novels have been set within the Italian Renaissance. Her next, In the Name of the Family (to be published in 2017) completes the story of the Borgia family and the remarkable period of Italian history in which they lived.

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

Professor Marie Conte-Helm is an established NADFAS lecturer. She is currently Executive Director of the UK-Japan 21st Century Group, a Visiting Professor at Northumbria University, a Member of the Board of Governors for the University for the Creative Arts and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She was Director General of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation from 1999-2011 and previously held senior academic positions at various UK universities. She is widely published and has lectured throughout the UK and abroad. Professor Conte-Helm was awarded an OBE in the 2011 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to UK-Japan educational and cultural relations.

For those interested in architectural and garden design of the Victorian and Edwardian periods, the names of Sir Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll are inseparably linked together. Lutyens’ buildings are the most individual of their time, blending respect for materials, a natural sympathy for the site, and an endlessly inventive set of practical and aesthetically pleasing solutions. Equally inspired are the gardens designed by Miss Jekyll. Her work remains a constant source of inspiration to gardeners to this day, with her endlessly inven-tive planting schemes where colour, pattern and texture shape the gardens which she designed.

Lutyens owed his career to Jekyll as she employed him when he was just starting out introducing him to many of his early clients. Both were in turn inspired by the great changes stimulated by the Arts and Crafts movement and this source united them from the start. It is a story of kindliness, mutual support and artistic cross-fertilisation. They inhabited a golden age in late Victorian and Edwardian England, a world, which in some respects ended for both of them in 1914. 

Tom Duncan was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he studied History of Art and Ancient History & Classical Archaeology. He then studied for his Masters in the United States, and moved to England in 1984 to complete his Ph.D. He has lectured widely to heritage and artistic organisations, nationally and internationally, for many years.

He regularly leads tours through his own company, CICERONI Travel, specialising in several areas, including Ireland, Italy, the Middle East and tours to leading musical and opera festivals. 

In a bid to change Russia’s reputation from primitive to sophisticated, Peter I toured Europe, returning with 260 chests of weapons, scientific instruments, tools, and a stuffed crocodile. But perhaps his greatest legacy was his art patronage, amassing a collection that included Russia’s first Rembrandt. He both invited European artists like Jean-Marc Nattier and Bartolomeo Rastrelli to train locals and sponsored Russian artists’ trips to Europe and, of course, built St. Petersburg, a magnificent city inspired by Amsterdam.

Marie-Anne Mancio trained as an artist before gaining a PhD in Art and Critical Theory from the University of Sussex. She has lectured in art history for the City Lit, Tate Modern, the Course, Art in London, London Art Salon, Dulwich Picture Gallery, the Nth Degree Club and many private art societies; she also runs art history study tours abroad. 

The creative initiatives made by Picasso and Braque from 1909-1914 that came to be known as cubism were pivotal to the development of modern art internationally.The Italian Futurists were inspired in part by cubism, the British Vorticists were receptive to its ideas and in the United States leading artists of the American avant-garde were also excited by its possibilities.  The lecture will consider a range of work from international modernist artists who responded to the observations of time and motion that encapsulated much of the cubists' exploration. An exploration that had at its heart how to create new artistic practices for the twentieth century age of modernity.  

Tricha Passes gained a BA from the Courtauld Institute and MA from Bath Spa University; her thesis examined the work of Roger Fry and Roland Penrose. Research posts include work on 150 years of the Bristol School of Art (2003), Peace Gardens of the 1980s (2005) and Stanley Spencer: Journey to Burghclere (2006). Taught in the Art History Department at Bristol University since 2005 and in 2009 won the Teaching and Learning prize for the Faculty of Arts. Has also taught in the Visual Culture Department at the Faculty of Creative Arts at Bristol UWE since 1998, the Department for Continuing Education at Oxford University since 2008, and for American Studies Programmes in London since 1999.

In these years of World War 2 Anniversaries 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. Instead of commemorating their own losses German artists looked to creating art forms that would respond to questions of apology and atonement: How does a nation of former persecutors mourn its victims?

Angela Findlay is a professional artist, writer and freelance lecturer. 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.

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. 

 The Venetian scuole were semi-religious confraternities or guilds bound together by profession, nationality or devotion and the Scuola dedicated to St Roch was one of the wealthiest and most prestigious, enabling its members to fund the construction and decoration of a splendid new headquarters. The vast canvases which cover the walls and ceiling of this elegant Renaissance building represent one of the most ambitious artistic projects of the 16th century and one of the greatest achievements of their creator, Jacopo Tintoretto. We examine how Tintoretto was able to secure this celebrated commission, and explore the genesis and development of the series. El Greco famously praised Tintoretto’s Crucifixion as being the greatest painting in the world.

2018 will mark the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto’s birth which will be marked by a number of celebratory events worldwide.

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

Armour was one of the great Renaissance art-forms, but today it is usually overlooked by art historians, scholars and enthusiasts. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries almost all of the richest, most powerful noblemen in Europe could be counted as dedicated patrons of the armourer’s art. This was an intensely personal art, both expressive and decorative. Its essence was the creation of a living sculpture, a process which demanded not only fantastic skill in the sculpting of iron and steel, but also mastery of all decorative techniques available to the Renaissance metalworker. The achievements of virtuoso master armourers like Kolman Helmschmid, Konrad Seusenhofer, Filippo Negroli, Pompeo della Cesa and Jacob Halder were not however just about splendour and richness. They also embodied more complex messages, about status and the social order, divine power, and attitudes and identities. 

Toby Capwell is Curator of Arms and Armour at the Wallace Collection in London, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and an internationally acknowledged expert on Medieval and Renaissance weapons. His book, Masterpieces of European Arms and Armour at the Wallace Collection (2011) was named Book of the Year by Apollo Magazine in 2012. He appears regularly on television, most recently as presenter and armour advisor on Richard III: The New Evidence (2014), and as the writer and presenter of Metalworks: The Knight's Tale (2012). After fifteen years of research, Toby's groundbreaking book Armour of the English Knight: 1400-1450 was published in September 2015; the second part, dealing with the second half of the 15th century, will be released in 2017

Superbly skilled,  Rodin and Degas are two of the most loved of all modern artists, They celebrated, in their different ways, the vulnerability, beauty and splendour the human body. Though rooted in traditional values, both were unremittingly radical in their work. Renoir once said of Degas, ‘Even if he had never picked up a paint brush in his life, Degas would still have been the greatest artist of modern times'. And both artists' work represents Rodin's belief that a sculptor 'not only represents the muscles, but the life which animates them' 

Michael Howard is Programme Leader in the School of the History of Art and Design at the Manchester Metropolitan University where he teaches both academic and studio based students. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and President of Bolton NADFAS and is a practising artist, painter, sculptor, printmaker and ceramicist.  He has curated many exhibitions and published widely most notably on Lowry, Goya, Whistler and Cézanne. Exhibited at the RA. His work is in Manchester Art Gallery and in private collections in the UK and abroad.

The life of Lee Miller, told with reference to those with whom she exchanged creative inspiration – Man Ray, Roland Penrose, Pablo Picasso, David E. Scherman, her father Theodore Miller and her son Antony Penrose. A definitive view by her son and biographer this presentation has been acclaimed for its ability to embrace many different levels of the history of art and photography, social commentary and emotional connection with the subject. • Contains some war time images which may be disturbing. 

For the past 30 years Antony Penrose has conserved and disseminated the work of his parents, Lee Miller and Roland Penrose. He is the director of The Lee Miller Archives and The Penrose Collection at Farley Farm House in Sussex and has seen his parents' work featured in major exhibitions at the V&A, National Portrait Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the Whitworth. He has lectured at museums and universities around the world, and made documentaries for television. Publications include The Lives of Lee Miller, Lee Miller's War (editor), The Angel and the Fiend, The Home of the Surrealists, Roland Penrose the Friendly Surrealist and The Boy Who Bit Picasso.

Dublin in the eighteenth century was the second city of the just emerging British Empire. From Dublin, the English monarch’s Viceroys, usually English noblemen, presided over a glittering court at Dublin Castle, and stood at the apex of a society renowned for its liveliness and hospitality. This society of Anglo-Irish nobles, gentlemen and rascally drunkards and gamblers lived in surroundings of enormous grandeur, presided over by women of singular independence such as the renowned diarist, Mrs. Mary Delany. 

Their public buildings were of unprecedented grandeur for these islands. The Parliament House by Sir Edward Lovet Pearce, Trinity College by a host of architects and the many exquisitely detailed buildings by James Gandon create a dazzling impression. Their private houses were often conceived almost on the scale of European palaces, decorated and furnished accordingly. Indeed, one Protestant Bishop was described as living in “Popish” splendour in his townhouse on St. Stephen’s Green! 

This world, seen at close quarters through contemporary accounts, paintings, engravings and the evidence of the buildings themselves, many of which have miraculously survived to this day, will give an insight into an unforgettable place and age. 

Tom Duncan was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he studied History of Art and Ancient History & Classical Archaeology. He then studied for his Masters in the United States, and moved to England in 1984 to complete his Ph. D. He has lectured widely to heritage and artistic organisations, nationally and internationally for many years.

He regularly leads tours through his own company, CICERONI Travel, specialising in several areas, including Ireland, Italy, the Middle East and tours to leading musical and opera festivals. 

The pronouncements of Art critics and experts are often hilariously lampooned. This lecture focuses on the bafflingly mysterious Polish Rider in the Frick Collection and is an evaluation of a decades-long project intended to settle just which paintings are actually Rembrandt's. This has ended up as much a study of the trickiness of attribution as of Rembrandt the artist.

The lecture reviews a number of controversies and considers the fury of judges listening to connoisseurial assertions when questions of quality come to court. 

The minefields facing experts need not deter the rest of us from making artistic judgments just based on life experiences we all have. 

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

The Art of Flanders in the fifteenth century includes some of the most celebrated paintings in the history of western art. Too often it has been compared (unfavourably) with its Italian neighbour rather than seeing it in its own context. The world of northern Europe was not tied to the discoveries of the classical world; it developed with the idea of the self conscious artist, aware of the world around him and seeking to create an artistic equivalent of that world via close observation that would satisfy the church, the mercantile city and the chivalric court. Issues of realism were mastered with the perfection of the flowing technique of painting in oils.

Alice Foster lectured for the University of Oxford Department of Continuing Education for 15 years and organises the History of Art module for a Summer Programme at Brasenose College, Oxford for American students. A frequent lecturer on the residential courses at Farncombe Estate in the Cotswolds and has been a guest lecturer at the University of Bristol and New College, Oxford. Teaches History of Art courses in conjunction with the Oxfordshire Museum, and with the Three Counties History of Art Society. She guides study holidays in Italy and has been a NADFAS lecturer since 2004. President of Banbury DFAS. 

The past few years have seen the meteoric rise of this extraordinarily versatile young designer with his acclaimed Olympic Cauldron and iconic new London bus. Over the last twenty years the Heatherwick Studio has used an intriguing combination of curiosity and experimentation to produce a vast range of solutions to design challenges around the world. This talk looks at the problems presented, and the wonderfully creative ways in which Heatherwick and his team have responded.

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

A general introduction to the history, art and culture of this extraordinary land, lying deep in the heart of Central Asia surrounded by some of the highest mountains in the world. Despite its geographical inaccessibility, it developed a rich and vibrant Buddhist culture and artistic tradition. This lecture gives a brief overview of Tibetan history from the time of the great Tibetan Empire (6th – 9th century) up to the present day; explores the fascinating art and culture inspired by Buddhism, introduced from India in the 7th century, and gives an insight into the current political situation.

Zara is a freelance lecturer, art consultant and exhibition curator specialising in the art and culture of Tibet, the Himalayan areas and Mongolia. Initially based at the V&A, she has also worked with the Central Asian Department of Bonn University, the Orient Foundation, the Royal Academy, Tibet House, the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside and Asia House. In addition to lecturing for NADFAS, she lectures for museums, universities, Asian art societies, and private associations. Guest lecturer and tour guide on numerous trips to the Himalayas. Edited Masterpieces of Mongolian Art: Vol 1 and has published many articles in the field of Buddhist art and culture.

Picasso told his biographer, John Richardson, that his work was like a diary – “To understand it, you have to see how it mirrors my life”. This lecture examines the way Picasso’s emotional life influenced what he painted and how he painted it. His response to each new love in his life can be seen in the different styles in which his many women were represented. When he fell out of love, that fact would be revealed first in his paintings. The lecture concentrates on the seven most important women in his life (two of whom he married).

Val is Lecturer and Guide in Tate Britain and Tate Modern, and for Tate on cruises. she is a lecturer in other major galleries, including the Dulwich Picture Gallery, and, on religious art, in churches and cathedrals. She is a script-writer for Living Paintings Trust (art for the blind and partially-sighted).

It has long been recognised that the worlds of the visual and aural arts link with extraordinary power when one medium inspires the other. This lecture, which spans over 600 years of the arts, analyses and discusses a range of related works, bringing together the music of Martinu with the frescoes of Piero della Francesca, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus with Respighi’s Trittico botticelliano, Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead with Rachmaninoff’s symphonic poem and Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie with the piano playing of Albert Ammons.

Peter appears in the UK and abroad as 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. He takes groups to Europe. Lectures include live music sung and played on piano, virginals or clavichord.

From the Renaissance until the late 19th century, art and science existed as one culture. Artists were scientists and scientists were artists. What did they produce? How did this approach work? What can we learn from them? Drawing on examples from 600 years of art history, including the work of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Hans Holbein, Rembrandt, Joseph Wright of Derby, and William Morris, and also covering modern art movements such as Cubism, this lecture offers a new perspective on how the history of art can illuminate aspects of science.

Sally is Visiting Lecturer at the University of Birmingham and has lectured extensively on art, design and antiques throughout the UK. She has broadcast on BBC Two and BBC Four, presents regular history programmes in the Midlands and her publications include Miller's Collecting Modern Design (2001). She has an Honours certificate in public speaking from The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and is a freelance arts journalist for local, national and international media.

The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology is a wonderful building housing world class collections. Illustrated with images from Oxford to Afghanistan, and brushing shoulders with splendid characters like Thomas Howard the Earl of Arundel, George Villiers the Duke of Buckingham, John Tradescant (Elder and Younger), Elias Ashmole, Charles Robert Cockerell and Sir Arthur Evans, this talk will tell the fascinating tale of how the Ashmolean acquired some of the finest Classical artworks outside Greece and Italy. Moving across sites in Greece and Rome, it will conclude with a virtual tour of many of the museum’s most intriguing artefacts.

As a Classics Tutor for Oxford University Department for Continuing Education, Professor of History of Art for the European Studies Program of Rhodes College and The University of the South, Steve has spent much of the last 30 years travelling extensively in the world of the Greeks and Romans both physically and intellectually. He has published A Brief Guide to the Greek Myths (Robinson, 2007) and A Brief Guide to Classical Civilization (Robinson, 2010) and is currently working on A Brief Guide to the Roman Empire.

Hogarth is probably one of the most recognisable English artists of the 18th century; however he was a complex character and this lecture explores that part of his life and his hope to lay the foundations for an English style and school of art. He trained as an engraver with Ellis Gamble, manufacturing trade cards; he left the apprenticeship early as he had proved himself to be a genius in his field. He engraved silver and produced an album of designs for this purpose; he was also an accomplished portrait painter. His involvement with Sir James Thornhill and Captain Coram are also discussed; he married the former’s daughter and followed in his footsteps as Sergeant Linner to the King. His prints are the most well-known of his works; they are very similar to their author’s intriguing mindset and are full of hidden meanings.

Peter has degrees in Decorative Arts & Historic Interiors and Fine Art Valuation; he also holds a DPhil in Art History. He has forty years' lecturing experience, including to the Art Fund in Jersey and Guernsey, the Ringwood Antiques Club Hampshire, the Jersey College for Adult Education. His interests include eighteenth century fine & decorative art, the Grand Tour, Oriental decorative arts, and silver and jewellery. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

Carl Larsson (1853 – 1919) is Sweden’s best known artist and together he and his wife Karin blended traditional native designs with the then unfashionable 18th century Gustavian style and the newly emerging Arts & Crafts influences. This eclectic approach resulted in a distinctive and influential style. His intriguing watercolours of the house and family spread this style throughout Europe, and it is today enjoying a new lease of life in the IKEA age.

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

From the mountains of Jiangxi province in far-off China, down river, over lake and mountain, and finally across oceans, nearly all the Chinese ceramics on display in European museums, stately homes, palaces and personal collections are survivors of an epic journey and of monumental human labour -Luxury created in the labour of millions. Each year in the 1600s and 1700s millions of pieces - services, vases and ornamental wares - were portered over the mountain border into Guangdong province, passing through the aptly-named ‘Gate of Heroes’. I take you on the same journey, the one you may have seen in my 2011 BBC film Treasures of Chinese Porcelain. And knowing the great human labour involved you will never again pass or look at a piece of Chinese porcelain without this journey coming to mind.

Lars is a Ceramics as well as a Hogarth specialist. He is a regular lecturer and broadcaster on TV and radio and leads occasional tours to China. Born in Copenhagen, he read Archaeology at Cambridge, was at Sothebys for sixteen years, and is today London's Foundling Museum's 'Hogarth Ambassador'. He holds an Honorary Doctorate in Art, is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and sits on the court of The Company of Weavers, London's oldest guild. He has served twice on the Art Fund's Annual Prize to Museums and Galleries.

Rock, Bark, Ochre: the story of Aboriginal art in the culturally distinct communities of the north of Australia; an extraordinary story of continuous artistic endeavour from rock-paintings dating back 50,000 years, to modern work done on bark in natural ochres.

Rebecca Hossack is the founder of the internationally renowned Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery. She is credited with introducing Aboriginal art to Europe. She served as the Australian Cultural Attaché in London from 1993 to 1997 and broadcasts regularly on Aboriginal Art, contributing articles to both the Macmillan Dictionary of Art (1996) and the Oxford History of Western Art (2000). Born in Melbourne in 1955, and having initially studied law, she changed career to study at Christie’s, and then won a scholarship to work at the Guggenheim Museum in Venice. In March 1988, she opened her first gallery. As well as pioneering exhibitions of Aboriginal art in London, Hossack has also curated important collections from Papua New Guinea, tribal India and the Bushmen of the Kalahari.

Ian is an expert on 18th century hoaxes and the images and contemporary reports associated with them. He is an accredited NADFAS lecturer and has also given talks to U3A, Rotary Societies and schools. With his background as a professional magician, Ian's talks stand out for being not only informative but also extremely entertaining.

Toby Faber is the grandson of Geoffrey Faber, the founder of Faber and Faber publishing company. He worked as an investment banker and management consultant before joining Faber and Faber in 1966. He retired from the post of managing director in 2001 and remains on the board as a non-executive director. He is a trustee of Yale University Press. He now writes and lectures. He has had two books published: one on Antonio Stradivarius and the second on the Imperial Easter Eggs of Carl Fabergé. He has lectured widely in the UK and US including at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Library of Congress, and the Hay Festival. He is a NADFAS accredited lecturer.

Anthea Streeter studied Fine and Decorative Arts in London and continued her studies at Harvard. While at Harvard, where there was great enthusiasm for American design, she became interested in 20th Century architecture. 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.

Jane Angelini is BA in Russian studies and MA in Byzantine Studies. She is a translator of Russian literature for Penguin Books and Oxford University Press. She lectures for NADFAS, cruise companies and other arts organisations. She leads groups on cultural tours in Europe and Russia: Ravenna, Venice, Sicily, Rome, Istanbul, St Petersburg, Moscow.

Theodora Clarke is an art historian, lecturer and critic specialising in Russian art and European modernism. She lectures widely on twentieth-century avant-garde painting and sculpture to audiences across the UK at museums, galleries, universities and associations. She has lectured at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Tate Britain, Harvard University, the Courtauld Institute of Art, the University of Bristol and Cambridge University. Theodora has also taught adult art history courses and day schools at the Royal West of England. Academy on Russian art and twentieth century avant-garde art. She is founder and editor of the online arts magazine Russian Art & Culture. She also set up Russian Art Week in London and publishes a bi-annual guide to this major event. Theodora leads cultural trips to Russia (St Petersburg and Moscow).

Frank Woodgate is a lecturer and guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, lecturer at Dulwich Picture Gallery, the National Trust, the Art Fund, and other organisations, and scriptwriter for the Living Paintings Trust (art for the blind and partially-sighted).

Philip Venning was for 28 years Secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. He is a member of the Westminster Abbey Fabric Commission and was a former Council member of the National Churches Trust, and a member of the Expert Panel of theHeritage Lottery Fund. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Society of Arts. In 2011, he was awarded the Queen Mother Memorial Medal for his contribution to building craftsmanship, and in 2012 accepted, on behalf of the SPAB, The Europe Nostra Award which is the heritage equivalent of the Oscars. Philip has spent most of his working life promoting and progressing the restoration and servicing of ancient buildings. He has lectured extensively in the UK to a wide range of audiences.

Eveline Eaton is BA Hons Courtauld and is a freelance lecturer in Fine Arts and Tour Guide to Berlin/Dresden/Munich/Côte d’Azur/Normandy/New York. She has been an accredited NADFAS lecturer since 1990. In 2013 she was elected chair of the Dresden Trust, an organisation helping with the rebuilding of Dresden.

John Ericson was previously Director of Studies in the School of Education in the University of Bath. He is now a freelance lecturer drawing upon his eclectic range of interests and enthusiasms. His highly professional digital presentations go well beyond the ordinary lecture with slides. All his talks are very well illustrated, are highly informative and presented with humour.

Oliver Everett is Librarian Emeritus of the Royal Library, Windsor Castle. He was Librarian of the Royal Library and Assistant Keeper of the Royal Archives from 1985 to 2002. He was Assistant Private Secretary to Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, 1978-80; and Private Secretary to Diana, Princess of Wales, 1981-83. He wrote the official guidebook on Windsor Castle and articles on the Royal Library as well as helping with two books on aspects of the Royal Collection. He lectures widely in Britain and abroad.

Wokingham DFAS welcome new members and everyone interested to this free Introductory meeting Venue: Bearwood College Theatre, Bearwood College, Sindlesham, RG41 5BG Theatre doors will open at 7.00pm and the talk will start at 7.45pm. WIne and soft drinks will be served before the meeting. This evening will provide an excellent opportunity for anyone wishing to join Wokingham DFAS to complete a membership enrolment. If you would like to attend this free lecture please could you let us know that you will be coming (and the number of persons in your party) by replying to info@wokinghamdfas.org.uk