Art historian Leslie Primo is an author and well-regarded broadcaster. He specialises in early Medieval Art and Architecture, Italian Renaissance art, and German art in the age of Reformation, Medici & Patronage. 

Leslie lectured at the National Gallery, London for 18 years, and hasappeared in several BBC productions, speaking in Renaissance: The Blood and the Beauty, and on the Life of Michelangelo; he also presented Turner: Light and Landscape.

The international art market is today dominated by four British auction houses, all founded in the 18th century, their record prices sensationally reported by the world's media. But what is it like behind the canvas? How do auction houses function? What goes on behind the scenes and what is required for a successful sale to take place? With an overview of the rise of two of the leading international salerooms, based in London and globally, this interactive lecture, given by an auctioneer and specialist with almost forty years' experience in both houses, reveals all.

Now retired, Simon Cottle enjoyed a 40 year career at two leading London auction rooms. He was Managing Director and Director  of European Ceramics and Glass at Bonhams Auctioneers. After studying History at University College, Cardiff and the University of Washington he began his career as a Senior Curator of ceramics, glass and silver at museums in London, Newcastle and Glasgow.

This is a whistlestop tour of major artworks, key themes, important ideas and stylistic changes in Modern and Contemporary art from the late 1800s to today to serve as an introduction to the myriad of styles in art in the 20th century.  

Sarah Ciacci has an MA in History of Art from University College, London. She has been a Blue Badge Guide for London since 2008 specialising in art, museums and galleries. She is also an art lecturer for trainee guides in Tate Modern, Tate Britain and for a period the National Portrait Gallery.

When we receive a letter or a Christmas card from someone we know, we often recognise the handwriting straight away, and know who it’s from without even opening the envelope. Recognising the hand of an artist can be like that – an instant certainty that the painting must be by Rubens, or El Greco, or Rembrandt. How do you explain that certainty to someone else?

Chantal Brotherton-Ratcliffe has an MA in History of Art from Edinburgh and a PhD from the Warburg Institute, London. She has 40 years experience as a lecturer and has taught at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection. 

We look at four hundred years of international jewellery design, examining the changing styles from the pomp of High Renaissance enamelled gold work to the glamour of Harry Winston diamonds. This presentation covers many of the key elements of manufacture, including the progress of diamond cutting, Art Nouveau, Arts & Crafts and Art Deco, Post-War Modernism and designs of the future. Other important areas covered include Cartier  and the jewels of the Duchess of Windsor. 

John Benjamin is a jewellery historian, lecturer, author and a broadcaster well known for his appearances over 30 years on the Antiques Road Show. He is a Freeman of Goldsmiths’ Company’s Court Assistant and Founder Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Arts Scholars.  

Indian classical music has a rich heritage stretching back before the thirteenth century. Its two major traditions - the Hindustani and the Carnatic - have given rise to some of the most beautiful and deeply spiritual music ever conceived. Yet Westerners tend to find it baffling. This lecture aims to break down the barriers to artistic appreciation. By the end of the lecture you will know your sitar from your sarod, your sarangi from your shehnai, and your tanpura from your tabla.

John Stevens gained his PhD in History from UCL, before going on to teach British Imperial History, Indian History and Bengali Language at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.  He is a regular visitor to India and has lectured at numerous Indian Universities.

Our art (even in our modern homes) owes much to the Romans. When the Romans invaded in AD 43, they came to stay and they brought with them not just their soldiers and their language, but their culture, way of life and art. We tap into what archaeology can tell us about the lives of ancient Britons as they adapted to Roman rule. As town life became the way ahead, art and skills flourished and became embedded in our society. We look at our own modern lives too, to explore and bring to life the continuing impact of Rome’s invasion of Britain.

Gillian Hovell studied Latin and Ancient History at Exeter University then branched out into archaeology. She is an award winning writer who specialises in relating the ancient world to our modern lives.

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

Dr Caroline Shenton is an archivist, historian and an award winning writer. She was formerly Director of the Parliamentary Archives in London and before that was a senior archivist at the National Archives. Her books, lectures and study days focus on political art and heritage in peril.

What other city can match the glories of the Three Graces along the waterfront? Inland there are monumental Egyptian ventilation shafts, banking palaces, dock warehouses, and the finest neo-Classical hall in the country. Oh, and two Cathedrals.

Ed Glinert is a much-published author, cruise ship speaker and tour guide, working in Manchester, London and Liverpool. He specialises in music (most genres), literature, architecture and art.

This lecture traces the origins of the Chinese Imperial Empire which was formed in 221 BCE and lasted until 1911. China’s first Emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi (221-209 BCE), unified China in 221 BCE and proved to be an exceptional bureaucrat, creator of infrastructure and Patron of the Arts. His greatest legacy, however, was born out of his obsession with immortality and this materialised in the form of the World’s largest Necropolis. Its fame came originally from the discovery of the Terracotta Warriors in 1976 but now the site is recognised for its vast infrastructure of buildings, including the still sealed Emperor’s Mausoleum. 

David Rosier spent 30 years working and living in East Asia.  He is an expert lecturer on Chinese Imperial Court Costume, plus all aspects of Imperial Court life, art and culture together with studies of China's greatest Emperors and Empresses.  He has organised and led Imperial Art Tours to China for a wide variety of organisations. 

Andy Warhol is remembered as the king of pop art who embraced celebrity and consumerism, and would become an American icon.  Yet there is a lesser-known side to him: the shy, gay son of immigrants whose prolific, experimental and inclusive artistic practice enabled a counterculture that would play a part in a transforming modern art.

Our speaker, Bill Powell, took early retirement as the UK Chairman of the Consumer Credit Trade Association and embarked on a completely different career as a tour manager, escorting groups of people to various destinations.  He started lecturing on cruise ships in 2013 and uses his experiences as a tour manager as the basis for many of his talks.

A wealthy Venetian in the Rialto area had access to goods from far and wide. Luxury goods were entering Venice both from the Islamic East and Northern Europe. This lecture vividly evokes a day on the Rialto, its surrounding buildings and its merchants. We will examine the wares that were on offer and how Venetians displayed them after purchase. 

Dr Antonia Gatward Cevizli is an independent art historian specialising in both Italian Renaissance art and Ottoman art. Her publications focus on cultural and diplomatic exchange between the Italian city-states and the Ottomans. Antonia has lectured for a number of institutions including Sabancı University, Istanbul; Sotheby’s Institute of Art; the National Gallery; the V&A Academy; and The Courtauld summer school. She has also worked across the collections of both Tate Modern and Tate Britain as a professional guide. She has lived in Siena, Venice and Istanbul. 

Jazz is one of music’s most important genres: a fascinating blend of rigorous structure, free-wheeling creativity, close-knit ensembles and imaginative improvisation.  His talk covers the early years of jazz up to the Second World War, and touches on the disparate influences which lay behind the emergence of jazz. Musical illustrations range from the blues, ragtime and the very first jazz recordings through to classics by Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and the dawn of the Swing Era.  Image attrib Adi Holzer

Sandy Burnett enjoys a career that combines broadcasting, performing and lecturing. After studying at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and working as music director for the RSC, National Theatre and in London’s West End, he spent a decade as one of the core team of presenters on BBC Radio 3. Combining engaging scholarship with hands-on expertise, he devises and leads cultural holidays all over the world, is the author of the Idler Guide to Classical Music, is a highly sought after double bassist on the London jazz scene, and was appointed the Academy of Ancient Music’s Hogwood Fellow for the 2018-19 season. 

When the Wallace Collection was bequeathed to the British nation in 1897 it was believed that the museum had twelve paintings by Rembrandt. Later, however, most of these pictures were re-assigned to other artists, to the extent that a hundred years later it was thought that there was only one genuine work by the great Dutch master - a wonderful portrait of the artist’s son Titus. Since then further research has suggested that in fact four of the other paintings are also wholly or partly by Rembrandt. But who decides things like this, and how do they make their decisions? 

Stephen Duffy is formerly Senior Curator of the Wallace Collection where he had particular responsibility for exhibitions and nineteenth-century paintings.  His most recent publication, The Discovery of Paris, is a book on early nineteenth-century watercolour views of Paris by major British artists such as Girtin, Turner and Bonington. He has written many articles and reviews for art magazines. 

Get ready for Spring with this lecture on the most wonderful flower still-life paintings, the symbolism and economic power of flowers, and the personification of Spring. 

Mariska originally studied Social Psychology at the University of Amsterdam but later turned to her true love - the Arts and Art History, majoring in The Dutch Baroque Arts. She also teaches for the Dulwich Picture Gallery and for the New York Adventure Club. 

A history of the Devonshires' outstanding collection told through their interests, characters and tastes over 16 generations, from Elizabethan beginnings to the current Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. Each generation has left its mark whether as connoisseurs, enthusiastic patrons and acquirers, fortuitous marriage, or the occasional benign indifference.  It is fascinating to see how these diverse personalities have created one of the finest family collections in Europe.

Simon Seligman studied art and architectural history at Warwick University, which included a compulsory term living in Venice, an experience of cultural immersion from which he is still recovering! For 19 years until 2010, he worked at the great treasure house of Chatsworth in Derbyshire, ending as Head of Communications. In that time he lectured extensively about Chatsworth, the Devonshire Collection and associated topics, throughout the UK and on several US tours.

The story of Spain’s most iconic architect, from his childhood spent on its beaches, forest and mountains, to his final years dedicated to the realisation of his ultimate fantasy, the Sagrada Familia, is absolutely compelling and immensely moving. We examine the theories and symbolism behind his creations and how he applied the lessons of nature to create both magnificent private mansions and a temple, as he saw it, worthy of God himself.

Brian Healey taught modern languages for many years in an independent grammar school and enjoyed a parallel career as a professional artist and interior designer. Since 2006 he has regularly lectured on cruises on art history or as a destination speaker. More recently this work has extended to art guiding through towns and museums in France, Holland, Belgium and Spain.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel changed the face of the English landscape in the 19th century. His ground-breaking projects included railways, bridges, tunnels, ships, and grand buildings such as the magnificent Paddington Station. He merged art with engineering and science and was a revolutionary.  This lecture looks at the man, his background, his work, and his legacy. 

Ian Swankie is an official guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Guildhall Art Gallery and St Paul’s Cathedral. He is also a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars, one of the City livery companies. 

This lecture examines depictions of food and feasting in the art of Western Europe and explores the architecture in which such meals were produced. Immortalised in paintings and frescoes, feasting and fine meals were a mark of wealth and status. From the medieval period to the modern era, imagery of feasts, banquets and intimate dinners are considered while examining some fine examples of kitchen design.

Sarah Pearson holds an Art History degree and postgraduate degrees in World Art Studies and Architectural History. She lectured at Reading and at the University of East Anglia for 10 years and now works as a freelance lecturer and an education provider.

image: Floris van Dyck - Still Life with Fruit, Nuts and Cheese - 1613

Nepal is an area of outstanding cultural and artistic importance. This lecture explores the wealth of art and architecture in the Kathmandu Valley, a place where both Buddhism and Hinduism have co-existed peacefully for almost two thousand years. The valley is the centre of Himalayan arts creation and is home to the Newark artists and craftsmen who were and still are renowned for their extraordinary skill in painting, sculpture and woodworking.

Zara Fleming is a freelance lecturer, art consultant and exhibition curator specialising in threat and future of Tibet. She has worked with many museums including the V&A and the Royal Academy.

It seems obvious that sculptors are inspired by nature. But the reproduction of a dolphin in bronze is not a sculpture but a statue. This lecture will look at art historical examples as well as contemporary practice to see how nature is depicted and how making sculpture is about seeing the sculptural in the world around us.

David Worthington graduated in Philosophy and Theology from Oxford then studied fine art in London, Barcelona and New York. He is a sculptor with shows at the Lefevre Gallery, Sladers Yard, Horatio’s Garden, The William Bennington Gallery , Glyndebourne Opera and the Lightbox Gallery in Woking. He also curates and writes about art.

image: Elisabeth Frink - Harbinger Bird - 1963

William Hogarth has been described as the first great English artist.   He was much more than that though. A ruthless political satirist he set the standard for later generations of satirists. Above all he can be enjoyed as a lover and illustrator of London life. This lecture examines his life, campaigns, charitable work, and above all, his art.

Noelle Gallagher is a lecturer at Manchester University whose research focusses on Restoration and eighteenth century literature and culture with a particular interest in the health humanities.

image: William Hogarth - A Rake's Progress (The Heir) - 1735

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 civilisation was between 300 and 900 A. D. During that time they built enormous monuments, produced beautiful jade and ceramic items and developed a calendar far in advance of anything in Europe. They had an advanced understanding of mathematics and astronomy and developed a hieroglyphic script.

Duncan Pring graduated from Oxford and completed a PhD at London university on the ceramics of Northern Belize. After graduating he worked as an archeologist then became a teacher in East Sussex. After retirement he is on a mission to improve our knowledge of the Mayan civilisation.

image: El Castillo at Chichen Itza

This lecture examines the life and times of Oscar Wilde from his Irish roots to his days as a student at Oxford and is meteoric rise to the heights of celebrity. We travel with him to the United States and examine his starring role within the artistic and theatrical worlds of the late 19th century London. Finally we learn how ‘tired of being in the heights, he plunged into the depths’ and became famous for being infamous….

Simon Whitehouse is a (recovering) actor, lecturer, presenter and an award winning London Blue Badge guide. His specialisms and passions are theatre, literature, fashion and art history but whatever the subject he prides himself on weaving a wonderful story from it.

The Glasgow Girls were women who made their mark in many branches of art and design, helped by a new forward-looking regime at the Glasgow School of Art. This lecture will introduce textile artists Jessie Newbery and Ann Macbeth, illustrator Jessie M King, fine artists Stansmore Dean, Bessie MacNicol and Norah Neilson Gray and the sets of talented sisters working together, the Waltons, the Gilmours and of course the remarkable Macdonalds.

Julia Marwood discovered a passion for art since discovering the work of Klimt while teaching English in Vienna. She is a tour guide at Manchester Art Gallery and specialises in Scottish art and the art of Manchester.

image:   Margaret MacDonald - "Embroidered Panels",  1902

Giuseppe Verdi is frequently called the greatest opera composer of the 19th century. He was born in 1813 and lived until 1901, his life spanning nearly a century of political turmoil and considerable personal tragedy.

Sarah Lenton has spent her working life in the theatre employed by the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Garsington Opera. She writes programme articles, radio and play scripts, lectures on the opera and ballet and broadcasts regularly for BBC radios 3 and 4.

Giotto’s style provided a revolutionary contribution to the development of Western art. This lecture presents some of the key novelties promoted by Giotto, putting them into context and highlighting the response of following generations of artists focussing on artists of the first half of the 15th century.

Sara Riccardi was born in Rome and studied History of Art at La Sapienza University of Rome. Sharing artistic knowledge and perspectives has quickly become her life mission and after moving to England she founded a company Art Across to share her knowledge and experience and deliver events and engaging talks to dive deep into art themes.

image: Lamentation Fresco in the Arena Chapel, Padua
 

'This lecture is generously sponsored by Equilibrium'

The tranquil and meditative paintings of Johannes Vermeer are among the best-loved artworks in the world. Relatively little is known about the master from Delft but that has not deterred a torrent of publications about him, both fictional and scholarly. One of the most hotly debated topics in Vermeer literature is his supposed use of the camera obscura.  This lecture will tackle this controversy head on by investigating the history of optical devices in art and examining the latest theories on Vermeer’s technique.  It will be a great opportunity to look at Vermeer’s beguiling body of work afresh through a different lens.

Rupert Dickens is an art historian based in south London with a special interest in Dutch and Flemish 16th and 17th century painting. He works at the Wallace Collection as a guide conducting public and private tours and lecturing on aspects of the collection. Rupert is also a tour director for a Cambridge-based company accompanying groups on art-themed tours to the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Austria and Italy. He has lectured to large audiences on subjects as diverse as the game of chess in art and Madame de Pompadour’s artistic patronage in 18th century France. 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.   

image: "The Milkmaid" - Johannes Vermeer c.1658

British artists such as Turner, Bonington and Colman were drawn to Normandy by its coastal scenery and its strong historical links to England. Later Boudin and Monet (who were both born in Normandy) also painted many Norman scenes. This lecture places pictures by all these artists in their historical context, and discusses and illustrates some of Turner and Monet's finest works.

Stephen Duffy was Senior Curator of the Wallace Collection with special responsibility for exhibitions and nineteenth century paintings.

image: The Cliff, Etretat, Sunset 1883 - Claude Monet

Although sport and recreation might seem an unlikely subject for The Arts Society, non-sporty types need have no fear. The themes of this lecture are architecture, design, heritage and popular culture.  There are currently over 316,000 listed buildings in England, and thousands more in Scotland and Wales. Only a tiny proportion of these are related to sports or recreation. This lecture introduces some of the most interesting examples, from a 15th century tennis court in Scotland to a 1970s skatepark in Essex and of course the Victoria Baths in Manchester. Why are these buildings so important? What do they tell us about our sporting heritage and social history? 

Simon Inglis is a writer and historian who specialises in the architecture and heritage of sport and recreation and is very familiar with the Manchester area. Since 2004 he has edited the "Played in Britain" series for English Heritage.  After a history degree at University College London, he freelanced for various publications, including the Guardian, Observer and Radio Times. He has curated exhibitions for the Building Centre and the British Council, been a regular contributor to radio and television, has travelled and lectured extensively, and written a number of books. Two were shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, while another, on British football grounds, was chosen by journalist Frank Keating as the best sports book of the 20th century. 

image: interior of the Grade II* listed Victoria Baths, Manchester

This lecture tells the story of men's tailoring over the past 200 years, told through the lives of the men who commissioned and created and wore it. Tailors, shirtmakers, hatters and other craftspeople in London’s West End, especially around Savile Row & Jermyn Street have shaped the way men dress since the Regency. How did men such as Beau Brummell, the Duke of Windsor, Tommy Nutter, Montague Burton, Alexander McQueen and John Stephen create their signature looks which influenced men’s fashion? This lecture also looks at the wider cultural shifts since the early 19th century to the present day and how they affected the way that men present themselves.

Russell Nash trained and worked as an actor, writer, puppeteer and theatre maker for 15 years. In 2015 he qualified as a London Blue Badge Tourist Guide. Around this time he rekindled his love of art and art history. He now regularly guides the major galleries and museums in London such as the National Gallery, Tates Modern & Britain and the British Museum. He has delivered lectures for institutes and museums, as well as numerous U3A groups and other societies. During Covid lockdowns he devised and delivered more than 30 different virtual tours and lectures to groups from the UK and across the globe.

image: Tommy Nutter, Savile Row tailor in the 1960s

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

Timothy Walker was the Director of the University of Oxford Botanic Garden from 1988 to 2014.  Since 2014 he has been a college lecturer and tutor in Botany and Plant Conservation at Somerville College Oxford. 

image: "Tweedland - The Gentlemens Club" by Gertrude Jekyll

Julia returns to tell us of the group of radical young painters who burst onto the Glasgow art scene in the early 1880s and set in motion the stirrings of modernism in Scottish painting.  Working out of doors in Scotland and France, they painted contemporary rural subjects strongly influenced by Dutch and French realism, especially the Naturalist paintings of Jules Bastien-Lepage and the tonal painting of the American artist James McNeill Whistler. This lecture introduces the characters and their works, and shows how they set the scene for what was still to come – especially the explosion of talent centred on the Glasgow School of Art under Francis Newbery, and the Scottish Colourists.

Julia Marwood lives in Macclesfield and is a tour guide at Manchester Art Gallery. She loves to share her enjoyment of art and is a regular lecturer on the Manchester collection and also has a particular interest in the work of Scottish artists.

This lecture tells Ukraine’s story through the shared culture which binds its proud people together. It explores the sacred art and architecture of Kyiv and its links to Byzantium, as well as the distinctive characters and ethnicities of Odesa and Lviv. It will also examine its rich folk culture traditions and music.

Rosamund Bartlett is a writer, lecturer and translator whose work as a cultural historian ranges across the arts. She completed her doctorate at Oxford and is the author of several books, including biographies of Chekhov and Tolstoy, and a study of Wagner's influence in Russia. She is currently writing a history of the Russian avant-garde. Her new translation of Anna Karenina for Oxford World’s Classics was published to acclaim in 2014. She has written on art, music and literature for publications such as The Daily Telegraph and Apollo, and received commissions from institutions including the Royal Opera House, Tate UK, and the Salzburg Festival. Her lecturing work has taken her from the V&A and the National Theatre in London to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, and she contributes regularly to Proms events and opera broadcasts on the BBC.

image: Monastery of the Caves, Kyiv, Ukraine

If any decade could be called The Golden Age of Hollywood, it was the 1930s. Its start coincided with the last of the silent films, but its end saw the apogee of the studio film – Gone with the Wind. In between came the establishment of the great stars and the famous names of the Hollywood studios as American film colonised the world.

Colin Shindler has been lecturing on American and British social and cultural history for over 20 years. He was awarded his PhD at Cambridge University and subsequently lectured on film for their History Faculty between 1998 and 2019 exploring its relationship to modern British and American social and cultural history. He also teaches a variety of adult education courses at Madingley and Higham Hall in Cumbria and has lectured on cruises.   Between 1975 and 1999 he pursued a wide-ranging career as a writer and producer in television, radio and film and has written three novels as well as numerous television scripts and radio plays. He is also the author of “Barbed Wire and Cucumber Sandwiches: The Controversial South Africa Cricket Tour of 1970” which was short listed for the MCC/Wisden Cricket Book of the Year in 2021. He is best known for his childhood memoir “Manchester United Ruined My Life” which was short listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award.

Before the British arrived in India, the Indian subcontinent was ruled by the Mughal Emperors. The stunning buildings and gardens they constructed from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century have left an indelible stamp on India’s architectural and cultural landscape. Mughal architecture fused elements from Islamic, Persian, Turkish and Indian architectural traditions, and gave rise to some of the most beautiful and iconic buildings in the world. From the Jama Masjid in Delhi, to the Taj Mahal in Agra, to the Shalimar Gardens in Lahore, this lecture will take you on a tour of some of Mughal India’s greatest buildings, and provide insight into the historical contexts and colourful personalities involved in their construction.

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

image: Taj Mahal, Uttar Pradesh, India

In 1845, William Morris travelled around Northern France, visiting the tapestry weaving studios to learn the technique of medieval tapestry weaving. At the same time, his dear friend Edward Burne-Jones, purchased a copy of Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory. Through the comradeship of the knights and their heroic quests, described in the book, Morris and Burne-Jones saw an allegory for their own artistic achievements. This book became their major source for inspiration throughout their lives, and culminated in their finest artistic achievement, a narrative series of tapestries called ‘The Quest for the Holy Grail’. The tapestries were commissioned, in 1888, by the Australian millionaire William Knox D’Arcy, to decorate and furnish the interior of his home, Stanmore Hall in Middlesex. This was their final major commission as Morris died within a year of their completion and Burne-Jones died two years later. 

Jacqueline Hyman lives in Bowden and gained textile conservation experience with the Museums' Service. She established a freelance studio in 1982 and is listed in ICON's Conservation Register. She is an accredited Conservator-Restorer and has lectured and given study days/courses for The Arts Society, Embroiderers' Guild, Lace Guild, Antique Collectors' clubs and others. She has also appeared on Channel 4, BBC 2 and the Discovery Channel.

image: “The Arming and Departure of the Knights” - one of the Holy Grail tapestries

Ravenna with its cluster of 5th and 6th century churches, baptisteries and mausoleums contains some of the finest examples of Christian art, a kaleidoscopic array of glittering wall mosaics. This was an art form in which the Byzantines excelled, producing examples of truly outstanding beauty and technical perfection in Ravenna. Dante describes the mosaics as “ A great symphony of colour, their chief characteristics being clarity, harmony, brilliant colours and decorative rhythmic design”.

Jane Angelini is a freelance lecturer for The Arts Society and other arts organisations. She runs her own art tours company, specialising in cultural visits. She speaks several foreign languages and has translated a number of works of 19th century Russian literature for Penguin Books and Oxford University Press. She has a BA in Russian Studies and an MA in Byzantine Studies.

image: interior detail of the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna

Note: This lecture will be a Hybrid Zoom lecture.  The lecture will be projected by Zoom to a live audience in St Bartholomew's Parish Church, but will also be watchable at home by Zoom link.

Wine has been part of our global society for over 7,000 years, and the story tells of its origin and appearance in all societies across the Mediterranean and through Europe. There is rich evidence of the role wine has played in these societies and how it became an important component of faith, well-being and festivity. From the kwevris of Georgia in 5,000 B.C., the symposia in ancient Greece, the thermopolia of Pompeii, the hospices of Europe, to the dining tables of fine society wine has been ever present. Drawings, paintings, engravings, buildings, pottery and wine labels themselves all contribute to the story.

David Wright has been a wine retailer, importer and distributor for 30 years.  In that time, he has publicly presented tastings and talks on wine to trade and private audiences.  These have taken the form of wine ‘tastings’ or charity events where a particular subject is presented and wines tasted.

Please note the change of date due to Holy Week services at St Bartholomew's

From the time of Aristotle observers have noted the frequency with which creativity is linked to unusual states of mind.  Most people are creative in some measure, but do not suffer from the darker side of the psyche.  For many artists the process of creation is a necessary prop, or facilitator, an activity which helps them navigate the pitfalls of their precarious lives.  This lecture explores why artists are impelled to create. 

David Cross is a writer, lecturer and independent art historian with interests in biography, sculpture and the artists of Cumbria. 

image:  "The Thinker", Auguste Rodin, bronze

This lecture explores the history and the arts of Vienna in the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite the enormous political challenges faced by Vienna between 1780 and 1830 it thrived culturally. In fact, it could be argued that Vienna never had a finer moment in terms of its artistic achievements. It was a period of outstanding writers, poets, architects and painters, but above all it was a period of great composers such as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert who made Vienna the musical capital of the world.

Peter Medhurst is a well known and popular lecturer with our society.  He appears in the UK and abroad as a musician and scholar giving recitals and delivering illustrated lectures on music and the arts.  He studied singing and early keyboard instruments at the Royal College of Music and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.

image: The State Opera House, Vienna

This lecture provides a comprehensive introduction to the architectural creativity of the Moors in Spain. The Alhambra of Granada, the Great Mosque of Cordoba and the Alcazar of Seville are their three most impressive monuments but there are many other examples worthy of mention. The classical origins that influenced the Moorish style as well as the unique interior decorative style which gives their architecture its beauty and exotic appeal will be explored.

Ian Cockburn is an art historian with a BA in art history and a MA in medieval Spanish art history. He is the founder and director of an art tours company specialising in guided cultural tours in Spain plus lecturing in many London art institutions.

image: The Alhambra, Granada

NB Due to the rapid spread of Covid, this lecture will be delivered via Zoom

For the series Downton Abbey, Andrew was commissioned to produce many jewels for the main characters.  In this talk Andrew guides us through the extraordinary periods and events between 1890 and 1929 where the great fashion houses collaborated with the finest of jewellers to produce works of art of outstanding quality and glittering opulence.  

Andrew Prince became interested in jewellery at an early age.  He started work in London's Bond Street, working for the Antiques Roadshow expert Ian Harris, under whose guidance he developed an appreciation for jewels that were valued for their quality of design and craftsmanship, rather than for how much the stones in the piece were worth.  Private commissions followed and his jewellery began appearing in films.  His creations have graced Mrs Henderson Presents, starring Judy Dench and The Young Victoria starring Emily Blunt and Miranda Richardson.  In 2012 he was chosen by the creators of Downton Abbey to supply a large collection of jewellery for the third series.  The characters played by Maggie Smith, Shirley Maclaine, Elizabeth McGovern and Michelle Dockery were all adorned with elegant tiaras, earrings and necklaces designed and created by him.

image: Tiara created by Andrew Prince for the show, Downton Abbey

NB The lecture will be held at St Bartholomew's Parish Church, Wilmslow and NOT at the Parish Hall

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 examines their differences, their similarities, their battles and their shared triumphs.  But who will be ultimately be crowned star painter?

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

image: Self Portrait, J.M.W Turner, c.1799

 NB The lecture will be held at St Bartholomew's Parish Church, Wilmslow and NOT at the Parish Hall

Lowry said of his tutor at the Manchester Municipal School of Art ‘I can’t overestimate the effect on me at that time of the coming into this drab city of Adolph Valette, full of the French Impressionists, aware of everything that was going on in Paris.  He had a freshness and a breadth of experience that exhilarated his students.’  With more than a touch of French elegance, Valette depicted modern life in wet and dirty Cottonopolis, creating a sense of timeless beauty.  He left behind an impressive body of work when he returned to the region of his birth, and continued there to produce light-filled, radiant works.  This lecture will explore the life and work of an artist whose fine work and inspirational teaching are finally receiving the recognition they deserve.

Julia Marwood lives in Macclesfield and is a tour guide at Manchester Art Gallery. She loves to share her enjoyment of art and is a regular lecturer on the Manchester collection and also has a particular interest in the work of Scottish artists.

image: Pierre Adolfe Valette - Albert Square, Manchester in 1910

Please note: This lecture will be presented via Zoom because of current restrictions on the use of our usual venue.  The Zoom invitation will be emailed to members in advance of the lecture.  

Ireland has a great wealth of country houses dating from the Medieval to the Victorian periods, their history is bound to the links with England. The lecture will recreate these houses and their lifestyles in an illustrated and entertaining recreation of Ireland's past.

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. For many years he taught at University level.  He founded Ciceroni Travel in 1999 and its programme of tours and study days reflect his interests in art history, archaeology, music and horticulture.

Please note: This lecture will be held on Zoom because of current restrictions on the use of our usual venue.  The Zoom invitation will be emailed to members in advance of the lecture.  Please watch you inbox.

image: Kilkenny Castle, County Kilkenny

The Fan Museum in Greenwich is the only Museum in the UK dedicated to the history of fans and craft of fan making.  The museum celebrates its thirtieth anniversary in 2021. It contains treasures ranging from a rare Elizabethan embroidered folding fan to contemporary examples decorated by street artists. There are fans painted by Sickert, Giacometti, Dali and even Gauguin. This lecture allows us to discover some of the key objects within this extraordinary collection.

Jacob Moss is curator at The Fan Museum, London, where he has worked since 2009 following the completion of a master’s degree in fashion curation at London College of Fashion. He became an Arts Society Lecturer in 2019. 

The lecture starts at 7.30pm, is free for members and will be delivered via Zoom.  The link will be sent by email two days before the event.  Admission will be open from 7.15pm. Please arrive early so there is time to sort out any connection problems.

Please note: This lecture replaces "Adolfe Valette: The Manchester Inpressionist" which will be given in October.

A Whitehall Wander is a virtual stroll down this historic street seen from viewpoints you'll never seen before. Whitehall is at the heart of government and we'll look at the buildings and monuments en route including the Banqueting House with its spectacular ceiling painted by Rubens, Horse Guards, Downing Street and the Cenotaph.

Gavin Webb is an award-winning Blue Badge tour guide to London. He loves to share his knowledge and enthusiasm for London with its 2000 years of history and its exciting, vibrant, contemporary scene. 

The lecture starts at 7.30pm, is free for members and will be delivered via Zoom.  The link will be sent by email two days before the event.  Admission will be open from 7.15pm. Please arrive early so there is time to sort out any connection problems.

Africa is not usually associated with great art but Nigeria is associated with 3 major artistic traditions : the 2,000 year old Nok terracottas of the North, the bronzes from the 12th to the 15th centuries and the later Benin Bronzes.  The manufacture and the cultural relevance of the bronzes will be discussed in the lecture. 

Richard Thomas studied in Canada and Trinity College, Dublin. His career as an academic and as a political and institutional analyst in the field of International Development enabled him to travel widely in Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He always sought to understand the arts and culture of the country or region he was living or working in since they illuminate the past and help to explain the present. He lived in Nigeria in the 1960s, near Ife, and became familiar with the art of Ife and Benin and the role they played in society.

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

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

image: "In the Flower Border at Munstead" by Henry Moon c.1896

Raphael is often referred to as one of the three great giants of the High Renaissance in Italy, alongside Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, yet his fame and position in the canon of art history may seem hard to explain.  In a relatively short space of time Raphael managed to move from humble initial commissions in and around his home town of Urbino to one of the leading artists at the Court of Pope Julius II, then the most important art patron in Italy.

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

image:  "The School of Athens" by Raphael c.1510

How and why did Young British artists leave a major mark on the international art scene and in such a sensational way during the 1990s and beyond?  Looking at the development of contemporary art in London during this critical decade the speaker charts the 10 years from the famous freeze exhibition of 1988, curated by Damien Hurst, which started the ball rolling. 

Anna Moszynska is a lecturer and writer specialising in Contemporary Art and has taught in cities around the world as well as reviewing for BBC Radio and for various art periodicals.  She currently teaches at academic institutions in London and Paris and runs her own art courses.

This talk gives a panoramic overview of two and a half thousand years of theatre history, tracing the origins of theatre traditions and showing how social and political influences have affected the theatre over this period.  It looks at the Greeks, Romans and Elizabethans with their vast outdoor theatres as well as the daylight performances to the Georgians and Victorians. 

Jane Tapley is a Special Events Organiser at Theatre Royal Bath where she frequently interviews visiting actors, writers & directors.  As well as lecturing to various societies she is a Blue Badge Tour Guide & Lecturer, Freelance Author and Researcher, Home Economist and Theatrical Landlady!

The history of this enduring and peculiarly British institution, from its origins in 16th century Italian commedia dell'arte through the influence of 19th century music hall, to the family shows that are still much loved today.  This talk is interspersed with personal anecdotes from the speaker's many years working professionally in pantomime.

Ian Gledhill has had a very varied career, from designing underground railways as an engineer for London Transport, to appearing in pantomime with Julian Clary. In between he has worked in travel and tourism, music publishing, television, and especially the theatre, where he has been an actor, director, set designer, stage manager and opera translator. His main interests include architecture, history, transport and classical music, especially opera and operetta.

It is said that Britain possesses the finest collection of 'living' stately homes in the world.  They represent one of the country's greatest assets and its greatest contribution to the decorative arts worldwide.  This lecture explains their origins in British history and the way in which they have evolved.

Anthony Russell is a cultural historian, writer and artist. He has travelled much of the world combining painting with tour lecturing. He spent six years as a consultant advising on the furniture needs of prestigious buildings throughout Britain, including museums, palaces, schools and cathedrals.  Now based in London he spends his time lecturing and undertaking research while assisting at the British Museum with outreach events and visiting lecturers.

image: Chatsworth House

What do these names mean to you?  Santiago Calatrava, Terry Farrell, Norman Foster, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, Jean Nouvel, I.M.Pei, Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers.
They are all starchitects. Starchitects are stratospheric. Their buildings straddle the world, if not as yet the universe. Their practices are vast and vastly cosmopolitan. Their creations are hailed as iconic and cutting-edge. Cities have been energised by them. Design has been stamped by them. Perhaps…. but what about the quality? And whence came they? Who was the first starchitect? Le Corbusier? Frank Lloyd Wright? And are we about to see the last of them as personality implodes into team anonymity and explodes into a mass of initials? Who knows? Come and find out more with Clyde Binfield.

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Professor Clyde Binfield is a Man of Kent, Cambridge graduate, cruise lecturer, Professor Emeritus in History,University of Sheffield, and a straight-up-and-down historian returning to some first and last loves – buildings, their creators and their settings.

Antony Gormley and Anish Kapoor are amongst the best known sculptors working in Britain today, both having major commissions for public works of art. With a wide range of inspirations and motifs, the work of these artists provides an interesting insight into contemporary views and preoccupations in Britain. The lecture will look at examples of the artists’ work exploring both the common ground between them, and the differences in style, technique and themes.

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

LEGENDARY PORCELAIN COLLECTORS: PRINCES, POWER

AND A PASSION FOR FRAGILE BEAUTY

This lecture was inspired by a memorable journey to Leipzig in December 1991, when, as a Christie’s porcelain specialist, I was asked to appraise some treasured Meissen porcelain vases and figures which had been hidden by their owners for many years. I have never forgotten the experience of visiting these residents of Leipzig after the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Like the fictional ‘Utz’ of Prague in Bruce Chatwin’s novel of the same name, they had a true passion for porcelain. The lecture begins with the 1710 invention of porcelain at Meissen, close to Leipzig, under the patronage of Augustus the Strong, the self-styled sufferer of ‘la maladie de porcelaine’ and concludes with the sophisticated, wealthy and discerning porcelain collectors living in Berlin, Hamburg and Dresden, who fell victim to the seismic political events of the 1930s and 40s. During the course of the lecture, we will meet others, separated by time and space, who were united by an obsession for the delicate beauty and translucent fragility of porcelain and a desire to have and to hold. Some, like Madame de Pompadour, the patron of Sèvres, regarded the possession of porcelain as a symbol of power and status. Her taste for sumptuous porcelain was shared by George, the Prince Regent, Edward ‘Beau’ Lascelles, whose collection is still at Harewood House, the Rothschilds - including Baron Ferdinand at Waddesdon Manor, John Jones, a Victorian tailor and businessman who donated his collection to the V&A and American captains of industry including Henry Ford II and Mrs Charles Wrightsman, patron of New York’s Metropolitan Museum, who furnished their grand houses in ‘le goût Rothschild’.

The photograph is of a Meissen porcelain ewer of the 19th century.

ANNE HAWORTH

Anne is a Lecturer at the V&A, and a guide for private tours of the State Rooms and The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace. She lecturers in British Painting for American students resident in London. In Autumn 2002, she catalogued the collection of Chinese porcelain at Kensington Palace. From 2002 2005, a committee member of the French Porcelain Society. From 1995 2002, was resident in Shanghai, China, visited ancient kiln sites and lectured to expatriate groups. From 1981 to 1995, she trained and became a senior ceramics specialist at Christie's and Bonhams head offices.

ENGLISH CARICATURE FROM HOGARTH TO PUNCH

Exuberant, topical, lively - and just a little rude - English caricature has always depicted human beings as they were rather than as they would like to be. From William Hogarth to David Low via Rowlandson and Gillray, we will explore this fascinating and revealing world.

The caricature is by Gillray and involves John Bull, Horatio Nelson and others. 

ANDREW DAVIES

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

The Wallace Collection, a national museum containing an outstanding array of paintings, furniture, porcelain, arms and armour, and other works of art, was brought together by five generations of one family between about 1780 and 1880.  All the Founders were remarkable - and sometimes rather strange - men in their own right, but the greatest collectors were the 4th Marquess of Hertford and his illegitimate son, Sir Richard Wallace, who lived most of their lives in Paris.  It is their French upbringing which largely explains the strong, but by no means overwhelming, French emphasis to much of the Collection.  This lecture tells the fascinating story of the Wallace Collection's formation, and also presents many of its finest treasures.

Stephen Duffy was Senior Curator of the Wallace Collection in London and had particular responsibility for exhibitions and 19th Century paintings.  He's recently published his latest book entitled 'The Discovery of Paris', which covers early nineteenth century watercolour views of Paris by major British artists.

NOTE: This lecture replaces the one in the printed programme

Robust colour and powerful social observation characterize the art of the Brueghels. Their biblical subjects, set in Flanders, teach us much about the village communities of their time. Cranach with his anorexic nudes and exotic mythologies has a more learned appeal. Greater than both, Dürer’s genius is worthy of reconsideration. His rich colour enhances both his portraits and his religious painting, while his meticulous studies of animals and portraits, drawn with silverpoint, charm and bewitch. His woodcuts are terrific. This lecture introduces these great northern masters, showing the best examples of their work.

The painting is "Hunters in the Snow" by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

DAVID CROSS

David is a Honorary Research Fellow, Durham University, Founder of the Cumbrian Biographical Project. and Past President of Cumbria DFAS. Author of biography of George Romney. Specialises in Lake District artists of all genres. Art history lecturer to undergraduate and adult classes at Universities. Catalogue of Paintings in Durham Castle (2002). In recent years he has lectured on cruises in the Mediterranean and Baltic. He has edited two volumes of the illustrated letters of Percy Kelly (1919-1993). His current research is an exploration of the public monuments and sculpture of Cumbria and Lancashire for a volume in the series for Liverpool University Press.

This lecture tells the story of 20th century fashion design, tracing how clothes, textiles and accessories were influenced by contemporary history.

It includes the elegant fashions of the Edwardian era, the glamour of the 1920s and 1930s, the austerity of the 1940s, the futuristic fashions of the 1950s, the liberating styles of the 1960s and the avant-garde fashions of the 1970s to the present day.

SALLY HOBAN

Sally has a PhD in History from the University of Birmingham and is a specialist art and design historian and antiques expert. She lectures across the world and has broadcast on BBC Two, BBC Four and BBC Radio 4. Sally broadcasts regularly on TV and radio and has worked at The Birmingham Assay Office with its outstanding silver collection, written for The Antiques Bulletin and is the author of the book Miller’s Collecting Modern Design.

Sally’s husband Steve Pritchard has extensive experience in art and design and retail and together they run one of the UK’s leading antique clothing and textile businesses.

Children's art has been discovered, only recently, in the history of time, as being of utmost importance in creative, emotional and spiritual development. This impassioned lecture describes how research has discovered that children create, without being taught, forms of expression from which language, numeracy and all those basic skills arise. It is time that the educational system here and everywhere else realise that one should not replace one with another but should be nurtured concurrently - art is not an insignificant 'frill'!
 

The photograph is of the ceramic mural at Styal Infants school which was created in 2017 by the children with the support of a ceramic artist. The project was funded by TAS Wilmslow as part of our support for Young Arts.

MR RICHARD BOX

Richard is a freelance artist (drawing, painting and embroidery), lecturer, teacher and author since 1985. Previously Head of Art at Avery Hill College of Education. He has taught in schools from nursery to secondary. He presently teaches and lectures to adults at Education Centres and to independent organisations, he is an accredtied Arts Society lecturer.

He exhibits his work regularly at various galleries throughout the country.

The scene of the Adoration of the Magi is central to our image of the Christmas story. The Bible gives us very little information about the wise men who came from the East bearing Christ the famous gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. A brief reference to them appears in the second chapter of St Matthew’s Gospel and what information is given is surrounded by ambiguity.  It may be a surprise to learn that their representation was based on later additions to the biblical account. By the 16th century there had been many changes in the depiction of the Magi, creating images and stories that have inspired music, poetry and art.

The painting is part of a triptych by Pieter Aertsen, C1560

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Shirley Smith graduated from the University of East Anglia with a first class honours degree in the History of Art, specialising in the Italian and Northern Renaissance. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a part-time lecturer for the University of East Anglia and for the Department of Continuing Education of the University of Cambridge. Shirley has run study days and certificate courses as well as residential weekend courses and also lectures to the Art Fund and individual clubs and societies. 

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. Given almost total artistic freedom, Fabergé and his designers had to conform to only three rules: that each year’s Easter present should be egg-shaped, that it should contain some surprise to amuse or delight its recipient, and that it should be different from any predecessor. The result was a series of creations demonstrating ingenuity and creativity for which there are few parallels in any other field. Styles range from traditional Russian to Art Nouveau, and their materials from carved hardstone to exquisite enamelled gold. The relentless search for novelty also means that they provide a fabulously quirky illustrated history of the decline of the Romanovs. Their subsequent history holds up a mirror to the twentieth century and encompasses Bolsheviks and entrepreneurs, tycoons and heiresses, con-men and queens. Eggs have been sold and smuggled, stolen and forged. Now, as they return to Russia, their history – like that of Russia itself - seems to have come full circle.

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Toby Faber  has written two works of narrative history, Stradivarius and Fabergé's Eggs, published by Macmillan in the UK and Random House in the US, and given lectures associated with these two subjects at venues including The Victoria and Albert Museum, The Library of Congress and the Huntington Library, as well as a number of literary festivals. His career began with Natural Sciences at Cambridge and has been through investment banking, management consulting and five years as managing director of the publishing company founded by his grandfather, Faber and Faber, where he remains on the board. 

Franz Liszt was a cosmopolitan figure but with the rise of Hungarian nationalism he was increasingly seen as the soul of the Magyar people, a position solidified with his wildly popular Hungarian Rhapsodies. Why did Liszt and others associate Hungarian music with gypsies?  The lecture explores what it was to be Hungarian at the time of the creation of the new capital city of Budapest in 1867, and why the much younger Bartok challenged his view of the Hungarian national style.

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

The camera has given us some of the most vivid images of modern times. This lecture examines a series of brilliant photographs and explains what makes these images so special. In particular we look at photographs which explore the depth of human experience in a spirit of optimism and compassion. The photographers involved range from the pioneers, such as Jacques-Henri Lartigue, to some mid-Century masters, including Bill Brandt, Bert Hardy and Henri Cartier-Bresson and finally, we look at the work of more recent exponents.

Photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson,1932 near the Gare St Lazare, Paris.

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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.

Vivaldi is the one Baroque composer whose music is a direct reflection of the city in which it was composed. Listen to a Vivaldi concerto and hey presto you are transported directly to the heart of 18th century Venice. The reasons for this are many – Vivaldi’s passion for colour, display and spectacle in his music; the unusual way in which Venice solved its problems with the poor and the homeless; Vivaldi’s health problems and his eccentricities as a man and a priest. Against the luxurious backdrop of 18th century Venice, and with live musical performances, this lecture explores the amazing world of Vivaldi’s music - music that is as intrinsically Venetian as the canvasses of Canaletto.

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Peter Medhurst is based in London, his work as singer, pianist and lecturer-recitalist has taken him all over the world. Born of German and English parents, he did his musical training in singing and early keyboard instruments at the Royal College of Music and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He is a familiar face to audiences of music societies, regional theatres and British festivals as well as to those of arts based organisations such as The Art Fund, The National Trust and NADFAS.

Peter gave a Christmas lecture to Wilmslow DFAS in 2015 and ran a NADFAS Study Day at Clonter Opera in June 2017, both very successful events.

We will discover the regional variations of Indian textiles from the Punjab and Gujarat to Bengal and Coromandel Coast, and consider  the materials, production techniques and designs such as the Boteh or Paisley motif in Kashmir. We will look at examples of textiles  from  each place.

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Jasleen Kandhari is a textiles & art historian specialising in the artistic and material heritage of South Asia & the Punjab. She received her BA in Asian art history with music from the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), University of London and her MA in Asian art history on scholarship from Sotheby’s Institute of Art.  She is the contributing Editor of Indian textiles for Textiles Asia Journal and tutors courses on Indian & Asian art history and textiles at University of Oxford Department of Continuing Education as well as lecturing on the Royal Academy of Arts tour to India: Treasures of the Punjab & ‘Little Tibet’ as the first expert led tour of Sikh Art.  Over the past 10 years she has lectured on Indian art and textiles for several museums and universities including the British Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, British Library, University of British Columbia, Asia House, Design Museum, the Ashmolean Museum of Art at the University of Oxford and more.

Emile Gallé was Europe’s finest master of glass during the Art Nouveau period but he was also renowned for his ceramics and furniture. He was first and foremost a designer and chemist, constantly perfecting new techniques. Although Lalique is best known for his Art Deco glass of the inter-war years, his career began in the early 1890s as the designer of the finest Art Nouveau jewellery. Louis Comfort Tiffany was destined to go into the family business but he opted for a career as an interior decorator instead. Today his name is synonymous with lamps and stained glass windows, his technique being likened to ‘painting’ with coloured glass. He was, like Gallé and Lalique, inspired by Japan and you will find many key Art Nouveau motifs in his workdragonflies, butterflies, peacocks and all kinds of flowers. Be dazzled by the beauty of Art Nouveau, which reached its apogee in 1900.

The photograph is of a dragonfly jewelry piece by Lalique.

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Anne  Anderson  graduated in Art History and Archaeology from Leicester University in 1978 and worked as an archaeologist for 8 years, being elected to the Society of Antiquaries in 1997. 1993-2007 senior lecturer on the Fine Arts Valuation degree courses at Southampton Solent University, specialising in the Aesthetic Movement, Arts & Crafts, Art Nouveau and Modernism. She is currently Hon. Research Fellow at Exeter University; a Fletcher Jones Fellow of the Huntington Library, CA; a fellow of the Henry Francis Du Pont Winterthur Museum and Library; Cumming Ceramic Research Foundation Fellow (2007 and 2010) and consultant for Lord Frederic Leighton's Studio-House, Kensington.  Her 2008 exhibition Ancient Landscapes, Pastoral Visions Samuel Palmer to the Ruralists attracted some 47,000 visitors. She has published books on Roman pottery, Art Deco teapots and Edward Burne-Jones. A lecturer for The Arts Society since 1993, Anne toured Australia in 2000, 2006, 2009 and has lectured on cruises. Her television credits include BBC's Flog It! Anne is also a tutor at the V&A on the Chardin to Cézanne year course.

The Silk Road was a series of trade routes that linked the Far East with the West. The routes began to develop in the 1st century BC and were actively used by merchants for more than a millennium. An explanation of the Silk Road is illustrated with examples of the art and architecture created along its routes and looks at the following cultures during the first millennium: Persia, Islam, Ferghana Valley, India, China, South-East Asia and finally Japan.  It is considered as an historical phenomenon including who the traders were and the type of commodities they carried, such as glassware and ceramics. Details are given of some of the sites along the Silk Road including Sogdian earth-built cities, Persian carved petroglyphs and the Mogao caves at Dunhuang.

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Angela Smith has a PhD from the Warburg Institute, London University. The author of numerous articles and several books including A Timeline of Art History (2013), an experienced lecturer who has taught for several universities and has worked as a researcher for the National Inventory Research Project. She has led tours to various museums and galleries, most recently a three week cultural tour in Spain for ADFAS and run study days for several groups of The Arts Society including 'A History of Western Art & Architecture', 'Art & Architecture along the Silk Road' and 'English Church Architecture'.

As these two heavyweights battled to become the most significant artist of the 20thC, they created some of the most beautiful, powerful and challenging art ever produced, and left to us a compelling record of human creativity operating at its highest level. This lecture compares their work.

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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. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts,  President of Bolton DFAS and is a practising artist, painter, sculptor, printmaker and ceramicist. With his wife, also an artist and accredited lecturer for The Arts Society, he runs weekend and one day courses. 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. Has featured on TV and radio and had many awards including a prestigious Peabody award.

No artist served his papal masters as diligently as Bernini.  Working almost throughout the 17th century, his sculptural masterpieces, architectural innovations and decorative works transformed the city of Rome, and still remain sources of wonder today. This lecture begins by describing the origins of the term 'Baroque' and goes on to examine several of Bernini's creative schemes in Rome, commissioned by succeeding popes. It then embarks on a visual "whistle-stop" tour of Western Europe to see where else the Baroque style of art and architecture was being practised, such as in Catholic France under Louis XIV.   But more sober styles of art in architecture and painting can be seen in Protestant Holland with the paintings of Rembrandt, Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch.  We end in Spain with a brief glimpse at the work of Velasquez and Murillo, though we try to see as many examples as we can!

The painting of Bernini is a self portrait from about 1623.

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Fenella  Billington joined Wirral DFAS in 1983. After a Masters Degree in Art History at Manchester University she was a Lecturer for the University of Liverpool's Continuing Education Programme for Adults,  has guided tours to Rome and Florence, and been a speaker on cruises. She gives freelance talks to art societies, historical associations and charitable institutions, including the Art Fund, U3A and the National Trust. She is a Liverywoman of the Worshipful Company of Skinners of London.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE LECTURE DATE,  TUESDAY 5 DECEMBER IS THE FIRST TUESDAY OF THE MONTH (WE NORMALLY MEET ON THE SECOND TUESDAY).

The lecture looks at the impact Charles Dickens had on the way Christmas was understood in the nineteenth century and the way it was represented pictorially. For Dickens Christmas was a vital channel for conveying deeply held values on childhood, the family, work, poverty and charity.

His powerful message, particularly in A Christmas Carol, affected the imagery of Christmas, from feasting and carol singing to Father Christmas himself. The urgency and humanity of Dickens’ Christmas message reached beyond representations of Christmas itself to influence artists’ portrayals of the poor, goodwill and the human spirit, and Dickens’ vision was an important influence in the development of the Social Realist School of painting.

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Claire Walsh gained her doctorate at the European University Institute in Florence, and has lectured at the V&A, the Courtauld Institute and Museum of London. She has also lectured widely in Europe, the USA, including Yale and the Huntingdon, and in Canada.

The Art of Piero della Francesca: the Light of the North meets the Logic of the South. 2016 was the 600th anniversary of the birth of Piero della Francesca so now is the perfect time to revisit the work of this enigmatic painter. His grave, solid figures set in a timeless landscape and lit by a clear light encapsulate the harmony of man and his world that lay at the heart of Italian Renaissance thought, a perfect fusion of light and logic, which while reflecting his native countryside, conveys a spirituality that reaches out over time and boundaries. Whether working in the service of the church or of his patron, Federigo da Montefeltro, his paintings radiate a serenity and timelessness which will take us far beyond this anniversary.

The painting is "The Nativity" which is in the National Gallery, London.

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Shirley Smith, a NADFAS lecturer for 15 years, graduated from the University of East Anglia with first class honours in History of Art. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and part–time lecturer for the University of East Anglia and for the Department of Continuing Education of the University of Cambridge, she also lectures for the Art Fund and individual clubs and societies. She specialises in Italian and Northern Renaissance art and architecture and is particularly keen to set the art and architecture of a period in the context of the society for which it was produced.

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

For more information about Mark and his ventures go to his website www.markhill.net . The photograph is of Mark on the Antiques Roadshow.

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“Antiques. I don’t understand them and they’re beyond my budget. Nobody even collects anymore. They’re not for me.” A persuasive introduction to buying antiques and integrating and using them in today’s homes. The state of the antiques market and the different meanings of the word value are considered, and we take a look at what current and future generations of collectors are buying, why they are buying it and how they are displaying it.

Where possible, Mark will bring a few examples of the objects that he is talking about, so that they can be handled by the audience.

Toby 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). His publications include The Noble Art of the Sword: Fashion and Fencing in Renaissance Europe 1520 1630, ex. cat. (2012) and 'The Arming of an English Man at Arms, c.1415', appendix, in Sir Ranulph Fiennes' new book Agincourt: My Family, The Battle, and the Fight for France (2014). 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.

The photograph is of Toby dressed for action!

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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 Kolm an 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. 

Shauna Isaac studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art in the UK and Smith College in the USA. She runs an art recovery company and serves on the advisory board of the European Shoah Legacy Institute.  Publications include articles for The Art Newspaper, Art & Law Magazine and Art Quarterly.

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The Nazis looted over 20% of Western Art during World War II and the effects of Nazi looting are still evident today. This lecture will cover the following topics: setting the scene in Germany, the Fuhrermuseum, Nazi art repositories, Post War restitution and the Monuments Men, contemporary restitution issues and current international recovery efforts. There are several landmark international cases that will be discussed in detail, including Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer (which is pictured above)  and the stash of looted art recently found in Cornelius Gurlitt’s flat.

Dr Peter Le Rossignol has a passion for the decorative arts and the technology of earlier cultures. He has a doctorate in Art History as well as degrees in Decorative Arts and Fine Art Valuation and has been lecturing on the decorative arts for forty years.

He has given a number of broadcast talks and regularly hosts antiques roadshows and country house tours. His special interests include collectors and travel, eighteenth century art, silver and jewellery, and the Oriental decorative arts.

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The brainchild of Louis XIV, the magnificent baroque palace of Versailles was built for political reasons to control the court and the aristocracy of France. The adolescent Louis XIV lived through troubled times and had to escape the Fronde rebellion with Louis XIII, the shock of which he never forgot. The lecture highlights some of the Staterooms and explains the reasoning behind the grandeur and the craftsmen who were implicit in their building and decoration. Louis XV’s mistress Mme. de Pompadour bought the Sevres porcelain factory with money from the King, she employed many famous painters and sculptors during her tenure and produced some of the most sublime items. These wares were used for political purposes as well as decorating the Chateaux of France; prior to this intervention by Mme de Pompadour a certain German factory’s porcelain was the most fashionable in France having serious economic consequences.  The lecture includes slides of some of the most prestigious items made by Serves during Louis XV reign.

Michael Howard  is President of Bolton NADFAS and until recently he was the Course Leader of the School of the History of Art and Design at the Manchester Metropolitan University, where he taught both academic and studio-based students. He is a practising artist, a painter, sculptor, printmaker and ceramicist. He has exhibited at the Royal Academy; his work is represented in the Manchester Art Gallery and in many private collections in the UK and abroad.

Michael wrote “L S. Lowry: A Visionary Artist” and has curated a number of exhibitions including Lowry's industrial Landscape of 1953 at the Lowry December 2007-May 2008. He also worked on the film on the artist that acts as an introduction to the artist's life and work at the Lowry Centre. He has published widely on European art of the 19th and 20th centuries, mostly on the Impressionists.  He represented the UK at the 2006 Varna Biennale and has featured on television and radio many times.

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Rothko had the very highest ambitions for his paintings, he planned that our encounter with his large canvases stained with fields of variegated colour should act upon us as a Greek tragedy or as Michelangelo’s Laurentian chapel might - to force us into an immediate confront the sublime and terrifying mysteries of existence.  And yet in countless houses and apartments, they hang in reproduction, as tasteful decoration.  For some these are at the very pinnacles of what we can achieve, for others the most exact of examples of the huge pomposity of so much of modern culture.

What to do? Come to the lecture and join the debate !

Dr. Kathleen McLauchlan has lectured at the V&A since 1990 and specialises in French painting. She read Modern History at Oxford University before completing an MA and a PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art.  Kathleen has worked for a range of arts institutions, including the Open University, NADFAS,  Birkbeck, University of London and Morley College.

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Many stories are told about Degas, his attitudes and his work.  This talk seeks to unpick myth from reality, pointing out the strange, even contradictory nature of Degas’ modernity and the ways in which he gave expression to it in his art.  We concentrate on the 1860s and 1870s, a period when Degas was still in search of an artistic identity, and was starting to experiment with modern life subjects – in the office, at the races or at the ballet.  We set these works against his early ambition to be a history painter, and compare Degas’s scenes of modern life with works by his contemporaries Manet, Renoir and Tissot. 

Marina Vaizey was born in New York and moved to Britain in 1959. She studied at Radcliffe College, Harvard and Girton College, Cambridge.  She has been an art critic for The Financial Times and for the Sunday Times and has curated exhibitions on fine arts, photography and decorative arts.  Author of many books including “100 Masterpieces of Art”, “The Artist as Photographer” and “Great Women Collectors”.  Edited the Art Quarterly and The Review for the National Art Collections Fund.  She has been involved with many museums and arts organisations including the V&A, the Geffrye Museum, the Arts Council and the Crafts Council.

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Peggy Guggenheim was perhaps the most flamboyant and fascinating collector of contemporary and modern art - and lovers - of the 20th century, a poor little rich girl whose insecurities combined with her bravery and her originality enabled her to make one of the best and most enduring art collections which has entered the public domain, notably on view in Venice.  Her life story has been the subject of autobiography, biography and film, and no story of art in the 20th century is complete without her.

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

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The lecture explores the impact of Captain James Cook’s  three extraordinary voyages of discovery on European thought, art and science.  Cook is widely renowned as an explorer, pioneering navigator and preventer of scurvy and his voyages provided unprecedented information about the Pacific Ocean, and about those who lived on its islands and shores. This was to have a profound influence on The Enlightenment. The lecture is lavishly illustrated with the exquisite drawings and watercolours of Sydney Parkinson, the glorious paintings of William Hodges and George Stubbs, the botanising of Sir Joseph Banks and the remarkable cartography of James Cook himself.

Alan Read, is a NADFAS lecturer with a masters and first class honours degree in History of Art from Birkbeck College. He has extensive lecturing experience and is also a gallery guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery and a London Blue Badge Guide and a City of London Guide.

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Everyone knows the ingredients of a traditional Christmas: gathering around the Christmas tree, pulling crackers, eating Christmas pudding and mince pies.  Those last-minute cards sent to people you’ve not seen all year.  These are the festive celebrations with which most of us grew up and they still hold a special magic as representing the timeless Christmases of days gone by.  But where did they start?  This lecture looks at the characters and personalities of the people who began those traditions or introduced them to this country.

Bob Gowland was a Chartered Surveyor for some 40 years and a Fine Art Auctioneer for 35 years, 20 years with Phillips, including a spell as President of Philips America, and 10 years as an independent valuer/auctioneer on his own account. He served for 8 years on the British Silver Hallmarking Council and was Chairman of the Society of Fine Art Auctioneers for 10 years.

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These three well known games have a common ancestry in the Tournament, one type of which required a team of knights to defend a castle gate - the goal in football. This goal also became the large window the server defends in Real Tennis. The tiny one man door in the large castle double gates was called a wicket gate which the batsman defends in Cricket.

Tennis (not to be confused with Lawn Tennis) was an aristocratic game, so there are many extant early depictions of tennis in Old Master paintings, drawings and prints. Lawn tennis is covered later in this section.

Cricket played in recognisable form from Tudor times was a Wealden game mostly played in Kent and Sussex by commoners as well as the nobility. The earliest cricketing image so far discovered shows graceful maidens playing cricket in Montpelier in the south of France in c.1280.

Football was a mob game until the mid 19th century when rules became codified. The game is discussed from Medieval times.

The lecture describes the games played by both men and women from their inception to the early 20th century. The evidence can be seen in Medieval paintings from the 13th century onwards, and later Old Master paintings drawings and prints and 18th and 19th century portraits and depictions of the games. Some of the few extant early artefacts of each game are also shown.

Group Captain Michael Clegg’s  RAF career involved twenty years flying duties worldwide as an anti-submarine warfare specialist followed by staff appointments, including nine years in a NATO post in Italy as a political adviser on Greek-Turkish issues. He was a founder member of the International Archaeological Society in Naples, lecturing, leading tours of Graeco-Roman sites and participating in excavations. He has lectured extensively on the Classical World and currently plans and leads cultural tours to Italy, Greece and Cyprus.

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Osiris was an Egyptian god, usually identified as the god of the afterlife, the underworld  and the dead,  but also as the god of transition, resurrection and regeneration.  

With pyramids, tombs, mummies and elaborate funeral practices the Ancient Egyptians appeared to be obsessed with death.  In fact the opposite was true, they were seeking passage to life in the next world.

Please note that this lecture replaces "Gilding the Lily - the City of Florence" that had been planned for October.

Louise Schofield was for 13 years Curator of Greek Bronze Age and Geometric Antiquities at the British Museum, and was responsible for the Mycenaean collection. She has also worked on international archaeological projects, principally in Turkey, Albania and Greece. 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.

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 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. The painting is of "Solomon and Sheba" by Giovanni Denim

This lecture looked at life in this spectacular Palace from Henry VIII to Queen Victoria and beyond - how the architecture of the building has been altered over the years to accommodate changing ideas of good taste - and how the layout of State Rooms was specifically designed to enhance the status of the Monarch. Using original slides taken during the restoration after the devastating fire of 1986 we compared the before and after and consider the skill of the restorers. We look at how the laying out of the new King's Privy garden was planned on the design of 1701 and opened once again in recent years by Prince Charles to enhance the glory of Hampton Court Palace.

How did a German refugee from Hitler, an internee and a jobbing journalist, become the Grand Old Man of English art history – Cambridge Slade professor and a lecturer in the University for a quarter of a century? The answer lies in his extraordinary one-man survey of all the architecturally significant buildings in the country, county by county. This lecture investigates what Pevsner said, rightly or wrongly, about buildings in Cheshire and sets his remarks in the context of the’ Buildings of England’ as a whole. The series has both detractors and passionate defenders, but no imitators. Pevsner himself said, “There won’t be another madman so soon.”

We are all familiar with playing cards but how aware are you that they go back to the 14th Century? There are surviving decks from as early as 1475. The English took their cards from the French and The Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards is one of many trade guilds of the City of London that protected the import of French and other foreign cards into England. The Company was granted its charter in October 1628. Playing cards become truly interesting when the face of the card deviates from the standard, i.e. when the kings and/or queens, for example, are recognisable monarchs. Thus the potential of a pack of cards as a medium of communication, propaganda or education was not lost on our forefathers. Events in 1678 involving the infamous Dr Titus Oates is represented in a 52-card pack entitled The (Horrid) Popish Plot, the first of several political decks published to capitalise on both the popularity of gaming and the hunger for news and information.

Lizzie Darbyshire gained her MA at the Courtauld Institute of Art where her research focused on French and British nineteenth-century fine art.She lived in Paris for seven years and now works as a freelance lecturer for NADFAS and other similar organisations.

The lecture will take us back to 1877 when the newly opened Grosvenor Gallery displayed Whistler's 'Nocturne in Black and Gold - the Falling Rocket'. The revered art critic John Ruskin accused Whistler of deceiving the public and the result was one of the most famous libel cases in the 19th Century. The personalities and stories surrounding the case will be explored and the long term legacy of the affair will be considered. The picture is of the painting at the centre of the controversy.

The lecture, 'The Great Twelve', is an introduction to the Senior Livery Companies of the City of London, their medieval origins and their role in modern society. Today there are 103 Livery Companies in the City, direct descendants of the medieval trade guilds. As a Liverywoman of the Worshipful Company of Skinners, Fenella will be able to bring a personal insight into this fascinating subject. The coat of arms is that of the Worshipful Company of Salters.

No cabinetmaker’s name is better known than Thomas Chippendale’s. This lecture examines the basis for his fame and concludes that he was to English Furniture what Shakespeare was to English Literature! It was Chippendale’s creative design talent together with his traditionally skilled craftsmanship which enabled him, through his cabinet making business, to design and produce some of the finest and most innovative examples of 18th century English furniture in the Rococo, ‘Chinese’, Gothic and Neo-Classic style, as this lecture will show. Recommended books: The Life & Work of Thomas Chippendale by Christopher Gilbert (Trefoil Books). “The Gentleman & Cabinet Maker’s Director” by Thomas Chippendale – a “Dover Publication” re-print of the 3rdEdition of Chippendale’s book.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE DECEMBER LECTURE IS ON THE FIRST TUESDAY OF THE MONTH AND WILL START AT 7-30PM.

Peter Medhurst is based in London, his work as singer, pianist and lecturer-recitalist has taken him all over the world. Born of German and English parents, he did his musical training at the Royal College of Music. He is a familiar face to audiences of music societies, regional theatres and British festivals as well as to those of arts based organisations such as The Art Fund, The National Trust and NADFAS.

The Bible gives us very little information about the wise men who came from the East bearing Christ the famous gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. All reference to them is housed in the opening chapter of St Matthew’s Gospel and what information is given is surrounded by ambiguity and approximation. However, by contrast, there is no shortage of music, poetry and art that has been inspired by these men, and this lecture examines the impact of the Three Kings on the culture of later generations.

TONIGHT'S WINES

Christmas cheer (and mince pies too!)

WHITE

Freemans Bay Pinot Gris 2014, from the Marlborough Region of New Zealand.

RED

Estevez Cabernet Shiraz Reserva 2013, from the Rapel Valley in Chile.

(Both wines are from Aldi)

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE LECTURE WILL START AT 7-30PM.

Imogen Corrigan served for twenty years in the Women's Royal Army Corps (WRAC) and the Adjutant General's Corps. She retired from the Army in 1994 as a Major, having served in the UK, Germany and Hong Kong. In 2004, Imogen graduated from the University of Kent with a 1st in Anglo-Saxon and Medieval History, and then studied for an M.Phil at Birmingham University. Her research subject was: The Development and Function of the Foliate Head in English Medieval Churches. Imogen has lectured extensively on Anglo-Saxon and Medieval subjects in Britain and Europe, and is a NADFAS lecturer as well as being a speaker for the Kent Federation of History and East Kent National Trust.

How to read the signs and symbols within Medieval art, some more easy to detect than others. This lectures considers art of the period c.1100 – c.1500 and guides the audience through where it might be found and the forms it might take as well as what it meant to the Medieval viewer. This ranges from formal sculpture to graffiti. It answers some basic questions (e.g. why are fonts usually octagonal, is a hedgehog a good or bad figure in Medieval art?), but also considers body language and how to spot saints. There is also a detailed analysis of at least three different types of art form. The photograph is of a roof boss in Norwich Cathedral depicting Noah's Ark.

2015 marks the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, one of the most famous constitutional documents of all time. To celebrate this occasion, the lecture will explain what Magna Carta is, how it was made, its historical importance, describe artworks inspired by Magna Carta and take a brief tour of the locations where the four original copies are held.

Edmund Burke said that David Garrick “raised the whole character of his profession to a liberal art” This talk explores the worlds of the 18thand 19th century British theatre through the lives of seven outstanding actors. Their reconstruction is achieved by studying their images in paintings, engravings and later, photography. David Garrick was friend and patron of Hogarth, Zoffany and Reynolds. Sir Thomas Lawrence was devoted to Sarah Siddons and painted many portraits of the great actress together with her brother. John Philip Kemble. She was also painted by Reynolds, Gainsborough and Romney. Edmund Kean, a dissolute genius, comes to life through the brush and pen of George Clint and Samuel de Wilde whilst Ellen Terry’s beauty was captured in photography by Julia Margaret Cameron and on canvas by George Frederick Watts, her first husband, and John Singer Sargent. Henry Irving was knighted in 1895 thus achieving for the theatrical profession the status that Garrick had sought. Millais captured Irving’s dignity whilst Bastien-Lepage shows us the Bohemian player-manager. Suggested Reading That Despicable Race. Bryan Forbes, Elm Tree Books 1980 David Garrick. Alan Kendall, Harrap Ltd 1985 Henry Irving. Laurence Irving, Faber & Faber 1951 A Strange Eventful History: Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their Remarkable Families. Michael Holroyd, Chatto & Windus 2008

It is often assumed that modern mountaineers are better equipped now with modern performance sportswear than their predecessors. This lecture will look at some examples of the clothing of early mountaineers and present a different perspective from Victorian climbers to the exploits of George Mallory. George Mallory (pictured), famous for his 1924 attempt on Everest with Andrew Irvine, was the son of the vicar of Mobberley. TONIGHT’S WINES All Good Mouthfuls! WHITE Vignobles Roussellet Sauvignon Blanc Probably to the disappointment of the lovers of this grape, this is the first occasion in the year 2014/15 that we have served sauvignon blanc. This example is a humble Vin de France, which, like a number of wines from Aldi, punches well above its weight. 12% RED Cepa Lebrel Rioja Reserva 2009 Rioja, which is produced primarily from the Tempranillo grape blended, more often than not, with a touch of Garnacha, needs no introduction! Reserva wines must be aged for three years of which at least one must be in oak. We discovered this at an amazing special offer price at Lidl. 13.5%

Leonardo da Vinci was not a physician, so why did he study anatomy? Not only did he believe that art was based on a scientific understanding of everything depicted but he subscribed to the hypothesis that man was a microcosm of the universe and if the form and function of man could be explained then the universe would be better understood. This talk explores the way in which Leonardo acquired his knowledge of anatomy and ties it in with the chronology of his travels and well known artistic achievements. M It is illustrated with examples of his anatomical drawing and reflects the extraordinary accuracy of his findings. A knowledge of human anatomy is the foundation stone of the practice of modern medical science. Leonardo’s anatomical drawings were lost for 250 years finally coming to light as illustrations for anatomical teaching in London. Delineating human form inevitably raised questions about human function for Leonardo, particularly on a mechanical basis and its place in a wider environment. This aspect is reviewed with examples of his extraordinary perception of what are now every day applications. Recommended Reading: Leonardo da Vinci on the Human Body. O’Malley and Saunders, Greenwich House 1982 Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist. Clayton and Philo, Royal Collection Publications, 2012 TONIGHT’S WINES Return to Chile Casillero del Diablo (“The Devil’s Cellar”) We reprise our February selection. Concha y Toro is one of the biggest wine producers in the country and the Casillero brand offers good value for money. Sourced from Tesco. WHITE Chardonnay 2013 From the Limari Valley in the northern region. It is only 20km from the Pacific and the cooling ocean influence plays an important part by delaying the ripening of the grapes. 13.5% RED Merlot 2013 From the Central Valley south of Santiago. The Merlot grape produces supple, fruity, easy-drinking wines. 13.5%

Denmark has no less that 14 Royal Palaces. Over the centuries the Danish Kings enriched the land with great building programmes, from simple dwellings to sumptuous palaces. Four of the most and splendid palaces, their extraordinary history and contents will be discussed. The four are The Rosenburg, Fredriksborg (pictured), Amalienborg and Fredensborg Palaces. TONIGHT’S WINES April Assortment This month, in order to use up stocks, we return to four wines from the winter meetings in 2014. A number of members have asked us to indicate from where we have sourced the wines and we are happy to oblige. Entirely coincidentally the wines tonight all came from Tesco. WHITE From November the Lucien Marcel French Colombard from the Gers region, and from December the South African Chenin Blanc RED From November the Lucien Marcel French Carignan from the Herault region, and from December the First Cape South African Shiraz.

In 2015 Europe will commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. This special lecture offers an artistic and cultural appreciation of the battle that was a defining moment in European history. It shows how artists have interpreted Waterloo and so influenced our understanding of what actually happened on 18 June 1815. The paintings, drawing and caricatures are the language of the age and are often so powerful they alone have influenced our perceptions of the battle and its subsequent interpretation. We see today what the artist wanted us to see. How true to the history are their impressions? The Art of Waterloo is a fascinating story. TONIGHT’S WINES March Marvels WHITE Vin de Pays du Gers 2013, Lucien Marcel Gers is a region in the south-west of France and is better known for Armagnac. The cool climate (It is not far from the Pyrenees) produces a crisp, refreshing wine. The principal grape is Colombard. 11.5% RED Douro 2013 A blend of grapes (Tinta Roriz, Touriga Francesa and Touriga Nacional) grown on the steep banks of the River Douro in northern Portugal. It is deep-coloured and rich with an aroma of spicy blackcurrant. 13%.

The lecture seeks to communicate a creative artist of genius. By focussing on his work (and his rhetoric too) one can begin to capture the essence of an American civilisation, one that is Western but not European. It illustrates elements which refer back to colonial days and the traditional crafts of England, whilst also illustrating those which have points of reference with America before Columbus…and with Crete….and with Japan….and indeed (although Wright strenuously contested this) with contemporary European Modernism. The lecture shows a man who was always intensely conscious of each individual setting but was transcontinental, and yet reflected what is now the world’s dominant culture. TONIGHT’S WINES Chilly Outdoors, Chile Indoors Casillero del Diablo (“The Devil’s Cellar”) Concha y Toro is one of the biggest wine producers in Chile and the Casillero brand offers good value for money. WHITE Chardonnay 2013 From the Limari Valley in the northern region. It is only 20km from the Pacific and the cooling ocean influence plays an important part by delaying the ripening of the grapes. 13.5% RED Merlot 2013 From the Central Valley south of Santiago. The Merlot grape produces supple, fruity, easy-drinking wines. 13.5%

The lecture describes the necessity for cotton fibre to be imported from Egypt in the 19th Century to keep the weaving mills of Bolton in production when American cotton was embargoed due to the Civil War. Contact between a mill owner’s daughter and Flonders Petrie, who was excavating in Egypt led to the Bolton Museum acquiring an outstanding collection of Egyptian textiles ranging from the early Pharaonic dynasties to the Coptic 10th Century. The photograph, above, is of a fragment of a fringed linen garment from Tel El Amarna, circa 1,350 BC. ---------This evening's wines. ----------- WHITE Gavi 2013 The October wine from Italy. Gavi is the home of the Cortese grape, which produces a dry but fresh wine with a hint of nuttiness. 12% RED Shiraz The Syrah grape from France has been a roaring success in Australia. This is a typical example with flavours of cassis and berries. Not too strong at 13%! Teroldego The October red wine. An indigenous Italian grape from the Trentino region. 12.5% [We need periodically to clear the society's wine surplus. On these occasions we may offer a wider choice.]

Throughout the year, ancient customs are re-enacted , of which the origins often are obscure. Many have a mixture of pagan, Christian and historical elements, with the individual strands sometimes so tightly interwoven that they are difficult to discern. The seasons are marked with wassailing, straw bear ceremonies, plough blessings, strange ball games and wild hobby horses in the spring, well dressing, diving for bibles, and rush bearings in the summer, various forms of fire celebrations, the collection of Wroth Silver and the firing of Fenny Poppers in the autumn and mistletoe cutting, mumming and wren hunting in the winter. You will be taken on a journey that will reveal all about Hare Pie Scrambling and Bottle kicking, the Horn Dance, Garland Day, Mayor Weighing and the Penny Hedge. You will be amazed at the great variety of, often relatively unknown, events that take place! THE WINES TO FOLLOW TONIGHT’S LECTURE ARE: A South African Selection (A sunny spot for a chilly night!) WHITE Chenin Blanc 2014 South Africa overtook the Loire as the home of this grape some years ago. This example comes from the Swartland, on the western coastal terrace north of Cape Town. 14%. RED First Cape Shiraz 2013 Shiraz needs no introduction! This example is blended by a co-operative (with 5 shareholders and over 200 farms) based in the Breede River Valley, which is the largest wine area in the Western Cape. 14% AND - Mince pies will be served !!!!!!!!!

Many of us have a strong idea of what George IV’s Royal Pavilion at Brighton looks like, but fewer know of the changes that took place as the building evolved into the oriental fantasy we recognise today. This talk will chart the dramatic evolution that took place under successive architects and show how even the abandoned designs closely reflect the changing needs of George as he moved from Prince of Wales to Regent and finally King. Suggested Reading John Morley, The Making of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, London, 1984 John Dinkel, The Royal Pavilion, Brighton, London, 1983 Jessica Rutherford, A Prince’s Passion: the Life of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, 2003 Mike Jones, Set for a King: 200 Years of Gardening at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, 2005 THE WINES TO FOLLOW TONIGHT’S LECTURE ARE: Vive La France! WHITE Vin de Pays du Gers 2013, Lucien Marcel Gers is a region in the south-west of France and is better known for Armagnac. The cool climate (It is not far from the Pyrenees) produces a crisp, refreshing wine. The principal grape is Colombard. 11.5% RED Vin de Pays de L’Herault 2013, Lucien Marcel A wine from the Languedoc. The Herault region lies between Beziers and Montpellier and produces a full, fruity and easy-drinking wine. The principal grape is Carignan. 12%

SILVER ANNIVERSARY LECTURE The lecture will look at how important silver was in the great houses of England and how it has evolved over the centuries. From ablutions to banquets, silver was at the heart of a country house life and reveals much about it. A linked study day with James Rothwell on SILVER is being organised for Wednesday 15 October at Lyme Hall. Details will be made available as soon as everything is finalised. WINE: For details of the wine to be served after the talk please see News for the date of the lecture.

Known as a manufacturer of unique Art Deco Glass, Lalique was also a jeweller of great imagination and skill. His work features the sinuous curves and natural reference so prominent in Art Nouveau design. Jewels made for Sarah Bernhardt represented wildly imaginative designs with some macabre elements. Calouste Gulbenkian one of his patrons said “He ranks amongst the greatest figures of art of all time and his masterful touch will delight future cognoscenti.” This from the man whose motto was “Only the Best.”

There has been a stained glass revival in the last 30 years, new types of glass and new techniques have been developed as well as more imaginative uses of the traditional leaded technique. These include fused glass, sandblasted and acid etched glass and enamelling on float glass. Stained glass or architectural glass work (a more accurate term), is commissioned extensively in secular buildings as well as churches. This lecture focuses mainly on work in airports, schools, hospitals and other secular buildings. It will include pictures of how glass and windows are made. Please note: This lecture will be preceded by the Annual General Meeting of the Society at 7.15 pm.

CHANGE TO LECTURE - Due to start at 7.30pm

In exploring the impact of Japanese prints on western art, Dr. Anderson will examine whether these prints changed ideas of composition and colour and how they influenced major artists such as Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec. He will ask whether, radically, they helped to overturn nineteenth century academic art. Please note that the lecture will start at 7.30pm.

Dr. Anderson was a professional archaeologist for ten years before his interests moved to art, antiques and auctioneering. In 1994 he joined the team at Southampton Solent University to lecture on the only BA (Hons) degree course of its kind looking at the commercial art world. A Senior Lecturer, he teaches courses on the history and theory of interior design and visual culture. He has lectured to many adult audiences for various University Extra-mural departments, to NADFAS groups and the WEA. For the last few years he has also been a consultant valuer for BBC tv's 'Flog It'.

In 2008 the East Bedroom at Harewood House was hung with a newly conserved 18th century Chinese wallpaper which had been stored in an outbuilding for approximately 150 years. The paper is one of the best examples of its type and is accompanied by the original Chippendale furniture that was made to be placed alongside it in the 1770s and a reproduction of a 1760s chintz. This lecture not only examines the role of Chinese wallpaper in 18th century trade but also provides a 'behind the scenes' look at managing a major conservation project. There are very few books specifically on Chinese wallpaper but there are a few good ones on Chinoiserie: Jacobson, D. Chinoiserie, 1993 Beevers, D. Chinese Whispers: Chinoiserie in Britain 1650-1930, 2008 Saunders, G. Wallpaper in Interior Decoration, 2002 Melissa wrote a booklet about the Chinese wallpaper entitled ‘The Chinese Wallpaper: Harewood House’ it is available through the Harewood House Trust and she can organise copies for anyone who is interested. The photograph is of the East bedroom, Harewood House. Reproduced by kind permission of the Earl and Countess of Harewood and the Trustees of the Harewood House Trust PLEASE NOTE, THIS LECTURE REPLACES ONE ON MACCHU PICCHU

This lecture reveals actual case studies, demonstrating the lengths forgers will go to in passing off works as legitimate. Skilled forgers capable of imitating well known artists have provided the ability to dupe many at the highest levels within the art market. Edvard Munch painted four versions of the Scream. Two of them feature among the most famous (or infamous) cases of art crime of all time. One was stolen from a museum in Lillehammer on the opening day of the Winter Olympics in 1994. The other was stolen at gun point from the Munch Museum in Oslo in 2004. Both paintings were eventually recovered.

Chatsworth’s 105 acre garden and surrounding1000 acre park is a fascinating and varied historic landscape particularly famous for its waterworks, rock gardens and sculptures. This lecture spans five centuries to tell the story of one family’s impact on a Derbyshire valley. --------------- Simon Seligman was Head of Communications at Chatsworth in Derbyshire during the filming of the Working Title film, Pride and Prejudice (2005), directed by Joe Wright, and starring Keira Knightley, Matthew Macfadyen, Judi Dench, Donald Sutherland and Brenda Blethyn, and during the making of the 2008 film, The Duchess, directed by Saul Dibb, also starring Keira Knightley with Ralph Fiennes, which was based on Amanda Foreman’s biography of Georgiana, the famous 18th century Duchess of Devonshire. --------------- FURTHER READING: http://www.chatsworth.org/files/june_2010.pdf

Elegant, well-mannered and fashionable, this sophisticated Parisian absorbed the ideas of the old masters and redefined them in the language of the real world around him: the cafes, the dance halls and cabarets of the city. Crackling with light and energy, and the incomparable brilliance of his brushwork, these paintings shocked and appalled the public at the time but have earned him the unrivalled status in history of being the first painter of the modern world. Douglas Skeggs has a degree in Fine Art and has been lecturing, broadcasting and writing on paintings for over 30 years, covering a vast range of subjects.

This lecture by Bertie Pearce is being given at the NADFAS AGM in May 2014 and is pre-viewed in a short article on page 11 of the Winter edition of the NADFAS Review magazine. By all accounts we will have a very entertaining evening on the 3rd.!