The July lecture will be given by Andrew Spira when he will ask if paintings and sculpture can be forms of visual music.

 Alexander Wallace Rimington published Colour Music in 1912, describing his invention of a large 'colour organ' that projected visual displays of music in colour. He toured extensively with this device, entertaining audiences with what he called 'colour music'. He was not the first to imagine links between sound and colour: since the Renaissance, thinkers have proposed systems connecting music and visual harmony, many of them imaginative or speculative. The idea of 'colour harmony' still reflects this tradition. This lecture traces the history of the 'visual music' from its origins to the present, illustrated with images and sound examples.

Born in London, Andrew graduated from the Courtauld Institute, before working at the Temple Gallery (specialists in Byzantine, Russian and Greek icons) where he developed a passion for Russian art. For several years, he was a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, focusing on the collections of silver, metalwork and jewellery, and the British Galleries. He subsequently joined Christie’s Education where he was a Programme Director for fourteen years. Throughout this time, he has been writing, teaching and leading tours to cultural sites all over Europe, as well as to Armenia, Georgia and Turkey.

Andrew is an avid pianist. Following a shaky introduction to the world of live music (Gary Glitter at the Rainbow Theatre, Finsbury Park, 1973), he had the good fortune to hear Alfred Brendel playing Bach which inspired him to change track. He was, and still is, inspired by the Baroque tradition of improvising fugues on themes generated by throwing dice but, alas, he does not belong to it.

 Guests are very welcome, but we make a charge of £10 a head. 

There are only spaces for 60  so please come in good time to avoid disappointment. 

 An electric buggy will be available at the car park from 10.30 am to transport guests to the House. The five places will be offered on a first come first served basis. Please call the number on the notice

n 1943, the German SS officers in charge of Auschwitz-Birkenau ordered that an orchestra should be formed among the female prisoners. Forty-seven women and girls were drafted into a hurriedly-assembled band that would play to other inmates as they left each morning and as they returned at the end of the day. They were made to give weekly concerts for Nazi officers, and members were sometimes summoned to give individual performances of an officer’s favourite piece of music. For almost all of the musicians chosen to take part, the orchestra was to save their lives.

Please note this is an evening lecture at Stephens House, 17 East End Road N3 3QE

Thursday 11th June at 8-10 pm

Following the success of our evening lecture by Patrick Bade in January, TASHH is offering another evening lecture to give friends and family of our members the opportunity to attend a lecture in the evening and enjoy a wonderful garden. The lecture will be held at Stephens House in Finchley followed by refreshments. Stephens House is an elegant Grade II listed building in beautiful and extensive grounds. It was gifted to the public by Henry (“Inky”) Stephens who made his money from Stephens Ink.

We are delighted that John Hilary, an expert on the German Jewish community in England has agreed to talk to us. John will be talking about his new book, Magnates and Masterpieces – The German Jewish Collectors of Edwardian Britain. This is the first publication to explore the contribution made by German-Jewish collectors to the early twentieth-century art scene. Together with numerous images from their spectacular collections, the presentation will explore the ideals and aspirations that the collectors brought with them from their New Humanist upbringing in Germany, most notably a belief in the power of art to enrich the soul. Copies of the book will be available to purchase.

John Hilary is an honorary professor at the University of Nottingham, and an affiliate of the Jewish Country Houses project run out of the University of Oxford. Following a successful career in the non-governmental sector, he has focused his attention most recently on the history of German Jews in Britain. His previous book From Refugees to Royalty: The Remarkable Story of the Messel Family of Nymans, was published in 2021.

We will warmly welcome you, your friends and family. The cost of the evening to include the lecture followed by wine and nibbles is only £20 whether or not you are a member. There is plenty of parking in East End Road and nearby roads and the Committee is looking forward to seeing you all at this very special event.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

The cost for this event is £20.00 per person (non-member included). for a booking form, please click here

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

Laurie has spent over 35 years in the diamond industry, and she finds it is simply not possible to talk about

diamonds without the name De Beers entering the conversation. She will talk about the De Beers Diamond  Cartel and how they became so powerful - more so than South Africa’s officially elected government. We will understand how one company “Romanced the Stone” making the diamond synonymous with love and commitment, and how they controlled the flow of diamonds to the carat for nearly a century.

With over 35 years in the diamond industry, diamond expert Laurie Wickwire represents the industry across all sectors: mining, sorting, grading and brokering some of the world’s key rough stones. A leader in the industry, Laurie is the On-Air Diamond Expert for the international television shopping channel QVC where her opinion is regularly sought by over a million viewers each week.

Whether presenting diamond shows on national channels the BBC, ITV and QVC, hosting diamond master  classes, filming jubilee specials, or creating the historical jewellery range for both Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle gift shops, Laurie’s love of the diamond industry is apparent.

A graduate of GIA London, IGI Antwerp, and DeBeers Institute of Diamonds, Laurie is both a certified diamond grader and certified pearl grader. Additionally, she holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in International Business & Finance, and a Bachelor of Arts in French.

Laurie’s industry knowledge has seen her interviewing celebrities at the Cannes Film Festival, publishing articles on Ocean Mining or the British Coronation, guest on numerous internationally streamed podcasts, enrichment lecturer on luxury cruise liners and creating bespoke commissions for the Royal Family.

Guests are very welcome, but we make a charge of £10 a head.

There are only spaces for 60 guests so please come in good time to avoid disappointment.

An electric buggy will be available at the car park from 10.30 am to transport guests to the House. The five

places will be offered on a first come first served basis.

Alice provides a painter’s perspective on famous artworks from the 17th to the 21st centuries. Rembrandt and Turner are revealed as artistic risk-takers, whose new combinations of glazes, surfaces, pigments and processes re-defined the language of painting.  

These two forefathers of experimentation lead the way for modern artists such as Pollock and Fontana, who went beyond the brush, the canvas, and the gallery wall itself in search of the meaning of making.  

Explore the mess and methodology of the creative process: from broken brushes to smudged thumbmarks, raw pigment to secret sketchbooks, slashed canvases to immersive light installations, this lecture uncovers a new way of seeing painting

Peter Medhurst appears in the UK and abroad as a musician and scholar, giving recitals and delivering illustrated lectures on music and the arts. He studied singing and early keyboard instruments at the Royal College of Music and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.

This lecture given by Antonia Keaney is on The Unknown Churchill – Winston Churchill and Blenheim Palace.

It is now over 150 years ago since Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was unexpectedly born at Blenheim Palace. This lecture draws upon the private resources of Blenheim and adds new and refreshing insights into this remarkable man. We examine the breadth of talent, achievement and personality of the "Greatest Briton": soldier, politician, statesman, painter, writer, orator, family man - and bricklayer!

Antonia joined Blenheim Palace in 2008 as a member of the Education Team, later becoming the Palace’s Social

Historian and Researcher. Both roles have involved her curating or co-curating a number of Palace exhibitions

including A Passion for Fashion – 300 Years of Blenheim Style upon which her recent book is based.

An experienced public speaker, both virtually and in person, Antonia has delivered a ‘Conversation’ at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor, been ‘In Conversation’ with fashion editor Caroline Issa, designer Stephen Jones and TV and radio presenter, Sue Perkins, and has participated in both the Oxford Literary Festival where she presented her children’s book and more recently at Cheltenham where she chaired a discussion between authors

Guests are very welcome, but we make a charge of £10 a head.

There are only spaces for 60 guests so please come in good time to avoid disappointment.

An electric buggy will be available at the car park from 10.30 am to transport guests to the House. The five

places will be offered on a first come first served basis.

As centuries passed, a language of symbols in art developed so that artists could tell stories with deeper and more intricate emphasis, important for an audience that did not always share the same spoken language and was often illiterate. 

Even though many of these symbols are still in use today, modern audiences have lost the ability to recognise and read them. However, even in centuries past artists and consumers of art would use emblem books to know which symbols to use when depicting ideas, beliefs and stories. Especially during the Renaissance and the Baroque periods these types of books experienced huge popularity and were part of a fashion to discuss and debate different aspects of a work of art and show off one's knowledge.

Evening Lecture on Berthe Weill

Followed with refreshments  

Stephens House, 17 East End Road N3 3QE 

Tuesday 6th January 2026 from 8 – 10pm

For the first time TASHH is offering an evening lecture to give friends and family of our members the opportunity to attend a lecture in the evening when they may not be able to attend during the day.  The lecture will be held at Stephens House in Finchley followed by refreshments. Stephens House is an elegant Grade II listed building in extensive grounds which was gifted to the public by Henry (“Inky”) Stephens who made his money from Stephens Ink. 

We delighted that Patrick Bade, a very well-known speaker, has agreed to give us a talk about the work of Berthe Weill.  Berthe Weil was a Jewish gallerist who opened a tiny gallery in Paris at the end of the 19th century and had the taste and foresight to be the first to exhibit Picasso, Matisse and Dufy. She moved on to bigger galleries once they achieved fame. She also supported many other artists including female artists such as Suzanne Valadon. She gave Modigliani his only solo show. She was persecuted in the war as a Jew and was helped financially after the war by her friends in the art world as she was penniless. She is the subject of an exhibition in the Orangerie in Paris at the moment which has been in Canada and other cities.

Patrick Bade has been leading tours in London and Europe for over 40 years. He has lived in Munich and currently divides his time between London and Paris. He is fluent in German and French

He holds a BA in History and History of Art from University College London and an MA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute. For many years until 2016 he was senior lecturer at Christies Education (in conjunction with Glasgow University). He taught courses on Fine and Decorative Arts Renaissance to 20th century as well as course on the history of opera.

We will warmly welcome your friends and family. The cost of the evening to include the lecture followed by wine and nibbles is only £10 whether or not you are a member.  There is plenty of parking in East End Road and nearby roads and the Committee is looking forward to seeing you all at this very special event.  

For booking details, please click here

In this lecture we look at Oscar’s great literary successes, beginning with The Picture of Dorian Gray in 1890 followed by 4 smash hit plays in 3 years. We focus especially on The Importance of Being Earnest, one of the funniest, most performed and most frequently quoted plays Described as ‘A Trivial Comedy for Serious People’, it was of its time and yet ahead of its time, satirising the shallowness and superficiality of upper class Victorian society. 

We explore some of the hidden elements which the audience then (and perhaps now) were not aware of and discover that for the author, this glittering triumph heralded the beginning of his own fatal final act…2025 marks the 130th anniversary of the premiere of The Importance of Being Earnest.

We are still living amongst the infrastructure created by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the 19th century. He changed the face of the English landscape with his ground-breaking projects including railways, bridges, tunnels, ships, and grand buildings such as the magnificent Paddington Station. He merged art with engineering and science and was a pioneer and a revolutionary. And he was brilliant. We'll look at the man, his background, his work, and his legacy.

The lecture will be given by Ian Swankie, a Londoner with a contagious enthusiasm for art and architecture. He is an official guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Guildhall Art Gallery and St Paul’s Cathedral. He is also a freelance London tour guide. Since 2012 he has led a popular weekly independent art lecture group in his hometown of Richmond in West London. He is an accredited lecturer for The Arts Society, and a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars, one of the City Livery Companies.

The car park at Kenwood House is currently closed.  There is limited parking in the car park for blue badge holders

There are only spaces for 60 guests so please come in good time to avoid disappointment.  

The development of abstract art in the early 20 th century was a revolution. After centuries – millennia even – of figurative art, a painting or sculpture could be a work of art without representing anything directly recognisable. When examining how this new visual language came to be, names like Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian, but also Robert and Sonia Delaunay, and Wyndham Lewis come to mind. But what if I told you that shortly before all these artists did so, a Swedish painter, and a woman, was already creating large abstract paintings? She was called Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), and she was a trained painter and a mystic. She was not connected to the avant-garde and never showed her non-figurative works to the public in her lifetime. She actually stipulated in her will that her works should only be revealed to the public after several decades. When the monumental series were first showed to the public in 1986, the art world was perplexed. To this day, her case still divides art experts. How should we study her paintings and other works such as watercolours and drawings? Should the mystical connection exclude af Klint from the history of modern art? This is a thought-provoking case. Hilma af Klint’s example encourages us to question how the history of art has been written, and what might have been left aside in the process, and for what reason. It is a great and exciting story to recount!

Please join us at 10:45 on the 18th of September

Eric Gill (1882-1940) has been called the greatest artist-craftsman of the twentieth century. He is also one of the most controversial. Despite this, one cannot ignore how his art  touches our lives – from the font used for the Waitrose logo to the imposing sculpture of Ariel and Prospero on the front of Broadcasting House in London. After abandoning a career in architecture, Gill forged a career in stone masonry and inscription cutting, later expanding into sculpture, wood engraving and typography. He was also a prolific polemicist who expounded his views in a stream of pamphlets and essays on topics ranging from sculpture to birth control.

This lecture by Gill's great-niece explores the artist's formative years. Starting with his childhood in Brighton and Chichester, we follow the impressionable young Eric's progress in London and his subsequent 'escape' to Ditchling in Sussex where he co-founded a Catholic quasi-monastic craft community. In the talk you'll learn about the places and people who influenced, inspired and shaped Eric's beliefs and art as he followed a personal quest for beauty and truth in his life and his work.

President’s Lecture given by Dr Julius Bryant on 21st August 2025 at 10.45

‘John Lockwood Kipling, the William Morris of India ‘

John Lockwood Kipling (1837-1911) has many claims to fame but in the United Kingdom, he was proud to have his reputation outshone by that of his son, Rudyard. His early years as a specialist in architectural ceramics were spent as part of the team building the Victoria and Albert Museum and in 2017-18 he was the subject of a major exhibition at the V & A and in New York’s Bard Graduate Center. This pioneering exhibition revealed how, in the national art and design schools of India and Pakistan today, ‘JLK’ is still held in high esteem as a teacher and museum director who championed the traditional arts and crafts of the sub-continent, as a benign agent of the British Empire. 

As the initiator of the exhibition and the V&A’s lead curator, Dr Bryant will share his research adventures, through a journey over several years seeking lost works of art and design and negotiating loans for the exhibition. Sharing many of his personal photographs, he will take us from Osborne on the Isle of Wight to Bateman’s and Bagshot Park, to Mumbai, to Simla and the Vice Regal Lodge surrounded by the Himalayas, to Lahore and even into a former missile store beneath Salisbury Plain. 

We are delighted that Julius Bryant has again agreed to give the Presidential Lecture.  Julius is the Keeper Emeritus of Word and Image at the Victoria and Albert Museum. He is the author of many books and in an earlier life was Curator at Kenwood House and has written the authoritative book on the Iveagh Bequest 

The cost of the lecture is £25 per person or guest 

ALL PROFITS FROM THIS LECTURE WILL BE PAID TO MAGIC LANTERN

If you wish to attend, or if you are unable to but want  to make a donation to Magic Lantern, please click here for instructions

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 17th July 2025 at 10.45 for the lecture by Connie Gray

Throughout the history of Dior there is one fashion artist who above all others held carte blanche to illustrate, promote and define the essence of Christian Dior through a flowing striking brushstroke that was to become a trademark of Dior’s elegant philosophy. 

In this fascinating talk, discover the life and art of René Gruau (1909-2004) and why his imaginative and beautifully crafted art for Dior is considered amongst the most iconic fashion images of the 20th century and why a young man from Rimini, Italy and a Frenchman from Normandy were so interlinked throughout their lives long before either found fame and fortune in their chosen careers.

Connie Gray is a director of the art gallery Gray M.C.A. As an art dealer, curator & specialist in 20th century fashion illustration, she is on the advisory committee of The Frances Neady Collection of Fashion Illustration at F.I.T. in New York & is regularly invited to lecture on the history & social importance of fashion illustration.  She travels extensively sourcing & researching original works by the fashion masters of the 20th century & curates the exhibition Drawing on Style held in London & New York annually that brings together the very finest examples of the genre.  

Guests are very welcome, but we make a charge of £10 a head. 

There are only spaces for 60 guests so please come in good time to avoid disappointment.  

An electric buggy will be available at the car park from 10.30 am to transport guests to the House. The five places will be offered on a first come first served basis. 

IMPORTANT NOTICE

This lecture has been generously sponsored by Trisha Ward in honour of the late Jean Beecham.  On Monday 21st July it would have been her 100th birthday and, together with her dear husband Eric, were enthusiastic and active members of TASHH when it was formerly known NADFAS.  Gracious, elegant and, above all, tremendous fun, she would have so enjoyed the subject of today’s lecture.

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 19th June 2025 at 10.45 for the lecture by Sandy Burnett.  

Sandy Burnett will tell us the story of one of the greatest creative collaborations of all:  Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, whose team of dancers, choreographers, and costume and set designers transformed expectations of what a night in the theatre could be, and the circumstances behind its most notorious stage work of all. Sandy examines the build-up to the Rite of Spring’s premiere in Paris, takes a look at the original costumes, plays excerpts from this fascinatingly inventive score, and explores what divided opinions of that first-night audience quite so dramatically.   No, nothing could stop the riot at the Rite at its first performance in 1913. Music and video clips will be included in the presentation

Since 2017, Sandy has been an accredited Arts Society lecturer, his talks aimed at unlocking the worlds of classical music and jazz to general arts-loving audiences; his busy diary of speaking engagements taking him right across the world.  After spending a season as the Academy of Ancient Music’s Hogwood Fellow, in the spring of 2020, he set up an online Listening Club to explore great works of classical music.

Guests are very welcome, but we make a charge of £10 a head. 

There are only spaces for 60 guests so please come in good time to avoid disappointment. 

An electric buggy will be available at the car park from 10.30 am to transport guests to the House. The five places will be offered on a first come first served basis. 

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 22nd May 2025 at 10.45 for the lecture by Brian Macdonald.

Brian Macdonald will talk about his travels looking for 19C knotted rugs, bags and other trappings of nomadic tribes as they moved over their traditional territories where they have lived for generations. During the early 1970s, Brian spent many months during 1972-1977, living amongst Qashqa’i and Afshar nomads in southern Iran, as well as travelling in Afghanistan, which began to foster his passion for the wonderful pre-1900 woven art of these nomadic peoples. After returning to the UK at the time of the Iranian revolution his subsequent visits to Iran were spent travelling and searching amongst nomads such as the Bakhtiari, Qashqa’i and Shahsevan, for these exquisite pre-1900 weavings, which have become harder to find and have now virtually disappeared amongst the nomads themselves.

Brian has written a book about his passion for tribal rugs - Tribal Rugs – Treasures of the Black Tent. This was first published in 1997 and received a warm reception from collectors, dealers and enthusiasts worldwide. Ghereh International Carpet & Textile Review (Spring 1998) described it as “one of the finest books written on tribal rugs”. The book is now in its third up-dated edition. Brian has travelled extensively in Afghanistan and Turkey and was made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1990.

Guests are very welcome, but we make a charge of £10 a head.

There are only spaces for 60 guests so please come in good time to avoid disappointment.

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 24th April 2025 at 10.45 for the lecture.  

Julia Korner has a conservation studio where she restores paintings. Often paintings appear where the artist and subject are forgotten.  Julia will describe her search for the forgotten histories of these undiscovered works and, through conservation and academic research, will restore some of them to their rightful place in history.  This lecture will take us from the Italian Renaissance, through Mannerism, to the Dutch Golden Age. 

 Our April talk will be given to us by Julia Korner, a specialist and lecturer in fine art conservation and the restoration of paintings, sculptures and frames. She is also a valuer, passionate collector, advisor and curator of paintings and works of art. Julia trained in art history and conservation, Cambridge, England. Then, for twenty years, she worked for Christie's as a paintings’ specialist, building extensive knowledge of Old Masters, and of British, European and American paintings from the 1700s onwards. She set up Christie's Maritime Department in 1986, followed by the Frame sales, the Aeronautical, Exploration & Travel and the Polar sales. Julia was elected Huntington Fellow of the Mariners' Museum, Newport News, Virginia, USA, in 1997. A seven-year commitment there saw her catalogue this collection and that of its sister organisation, the South Street Seaport Museum, New York.

Guests are very welcome, but we make a charge of £10 a head. 

There are only spaces for 60 guests so please come in good time to avoid disappointment. 

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 20th March 2025 at 10.45 for the lecture.  

Ralph Hoyle will talk about mid 18th Century Rococo early English silver and will bring with him a piece of silver for the audience to handle and examine.  He will explain the importance of the Huguenot influence in tea culture and silver design, and then interpret the heraldry to reveal the fortunes and disasters of the original owners.

Ralph Hoyle  was a schoolboy member of the Wine Label Circle, a society devoted to the study of silver decanter labels, and went on to be its President. He is a long-standing member of the Silver Society. He has given talks to the Art Fund, the Sheffield Assay Office, the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, Historic Houses and small charity-raising events. He brings pieces from his own collection for the audience to handle and examine while he discusses design and social context, and makes revelations about the original owners he has identified from the heraldry.   

Guests are very welcome, but we make a charge of £10 a head. 

There are only spaces for 60 people so please come in good time to avoid disappointment. 

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 20th February 2025 at 10.45 for the lecture.  

Norman Rockwell was a celebrated and prolific 20th C American painter and illustrator whose work has probably been seen by a larger audience than any other artists in history.  His work enjoys broad popular appeal in North America and abroad where Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of scenes of everyday life he created for The Saturday Evening Post.

Today there is little debate about Rockwell’s technical competence but that does not explain the continuing popularity of his work and the fact that when on rare occasions his paintings do come to auction, they sell for millions of dollars! So, what is it that gives his paintings such acclaim? One distinguishing feature of Rockwell’s work is that many of his paintings tell poignant stories that invariably make us smile. He is sometime referred to as ‘A storyteller with a brush’.

In this lecture we will explore the boundary between ‘art’ and ‘illustration’, even Rockwell said he was not sure of the difference. We will then examine Rockwell’s methods of working before analysing a range of his immense output. During his professional life he met and painted many of the most famous people of the mid twentieth century. In addition, we will refer to his personal life that was both interesting and complex, he married three times.

 Our February talk will be given to us by John Ericson.  He has worked as a lecturer at the University of Bath where he was Director of Studies in the School of Education with responsibility for the professional development of teachers. He has worked extensively overseas as an educational consultant, and this has given him the opportunity to give lectures and presentations at conferences all over the world. Over the last decade he has been a popular speaker on the Arts Society circuit in the UK and Europe as well as a frequent visitor to the societies in Australia and New Zealand. In his professional life he has developed a particular interest in presentation skills including the role of pictures in learning and the appropriate use of PowerPoint.  

PLEASE NOTE that we can only accommodate 60 people so come early to ensure a place 

Guests are very welcome, but we make a charge of £10 a head 

My talk is about the extraordinary life of Josephine Baker, who was a remarkable woman. She was an African American who rose to fame in America, despite her colour and, hating the discrimination, emigrated to France where she became one of the most famous entertainers of her time. She had a fascinating life, performing world-wide, spying for France during the war and risking her life, adopting a large number of children of different races and becoming a civil rights activist. She mixed with the most important people of her age and had a career with many ups and downs. This talk will include videos, more than 100 years old, showing Josephine dancing.

The tour is at 10.45 pm on Tuesday 28th January 2025 and will last approximately an hour. The cost of the visit is £15.00 per person

You will receive a link to join the tour nearer the time

For further information please contact our Visits Organiser, Tamara Rabin, at tamara@therabins.co.uk, or on 07791 211 524, please click here for a Booking Form

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 16th January 2025 at 10.45 for the lecture.  

Winslow Homer originally trained as a newspaper illustrator, imbuing his style with a distinctive, graphic clarity designed to make an immediate impact. His approach to watercolour was much influenced by an extended stay in the Northumberland port of Cullercoats, where he was much inspired by the hard life of the North Sea fisherfolk. He is best known for his dramatic and moody seascapes, as well as moving studies of individuals such as farmworkers, teachers and children in his homelands of New England, at peace at last after the Civil War. Thus, he presents us with a fascinating and at times nostalgic portrait of the heart of America at a time of rapid expansion and change

Our January talk will be given to us by Brian Healey.   Brian has been a senior modern languages teacher in an independent grammar school for many years.  He has also enjoyed a successful parallel career since the 1980s as a professional artist and interior designer. Since 2006 he has been regularly appointed to a number of prestigious ocean and river cruise lines, either as resident artist, guest lecturer on art history or as destination speaker for more than forty countries. Most recently this work has successfully extended to art guiding through important towns and museums in France, Belgium, Holland and Spain. Brian has a relaxed distinctive lecturing style that successfully employs humour and innovation to encourage learning and dialogue with his audiences. Brian is an experienced University Lecturer, consultant, researcher and visual artist. He grew up on Merseyside and The American Fulbright Commission awarded him a one year visiting exchange ‘Professor’ post at Southwestern College, California. 

Brian has presented at a wide range of Museums, Art Galleries, Universities, Conferences and Cruise ships in the USA, Asia, Australia and the UK.  He was accredited as a Lecturer by the Arts Society (UK) in November 2017.

  Guests are very welcome, but we make a charge of £10 a head 

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 19th December at 10.45 for the lecture.  

The exotic lure of the Orient has inspired European artists for centuries. In this lecture we will be taking an artistic journey across the Near and Middle East to see how Western artists brought the mysteries of ‘The Other’ to the fashionable salons of Europe throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

PLEASE NOTE that we can only accommodate 60 people so come early to ensure a place.

Our December talk will be given to us by Geri Parlby.    Geri is a former Fleet Street journalist and film PR. She has a first-class honours degree in History and Theology, a Masters in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute and a Theology doctorate from Roehampton University in London. She has been lecturing for the past 18 years both in the UK and internationally. She is also principal lecturer on the South West Area Arts Society History of Art course. 

Guests are very welcome, but we make a charge of £10 a head. 

After the lecture you are invited to enjoy a glass of wine, nibbles and a seasonal chat with your fellow members

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 21st November at 10.45 for the lecture.

America was hit by the Great Depression in 1929. President Roosevelt created the WPA (Works Progress Administration) and the New Deal. The government initiative meant employment for over eight million largely unskilled Americans and, importantly, 5,300 artists. Murals, painting, photography, graphic design all flourished. In this lecture we will explore some of the key artists from this era. The abstract painters Jackson Pollock and Stuart Davis will be evaluated along with the social realism of Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn. The soundtrack of the era is provided by Woody Guthrie and Jimmie Rogers.

PLEASE NOTE that we can only accommodate 60 people so come early to ensure a place.

Our November talk will be given to us by John Frances. John has a relaxed distinctive lecturing style that successfully employs humour and innovation to encourage learning and dialogue with his audiences. John is an experienced University Lecturer, consultant, researcher and visual artist. He grew up on Merseyside and The American Fulbright Commission awarded him a one year visiting exchange ‘Professor’ post at Southwestern College, California.

John has presented at a wide range of Museums, Art Galleries, Universities, Conferences and Cruise ships in the USA, Asia, Australia and the UK. He was accredited as a Lecturer by the Arts Society (UK) in November 2017.

Guests are very welcome, but we make a charge of £10 a head

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 17th October at 10.45 for the lecture.  

PLEASE NOTE that we can only accommodate 60 people so come early to ensure a place. 

Ben Nicholson was born into a very creative family and became one of Britain’s leading abstract artists in the years before the Second World War. Best known for his beautiful still life and landscape paintings, which combine representational and abstract elements in a disciplined harmony, he was a great champion of Modernism. His personal life, however, was not always so harmonious. Married first to the painter Winifred Nicholson, and later to the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, his art challenged that of his father, the highly successful Edwardian painter Sir William Nicholson.

What was it about their relationship that drove Ben? And how does Ben’s career reflect the wider conflicts between abstract and traditional art forms in the mid twentieth century? This lecture explores the development of Nicholson’s beautiful images, set against a background of conflict – personal, international and artistic.

Our October talk will be given to us by Jo Walton.  Jo has combined teaching and lecturing with a career in art bookselling and has been a volunteer guide at both Tate Britain and Tate Modern. She is now a freelance lecturer for The Arts Society, the Art Fund, and Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery and local art societies.

 Guests are very welcome, but we make a charge of £10 a head 

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 19th September at 10.45 for the lecture. 

PLEASE NOTE that we can only accommodate 60 people so come early to ensure a place. 

Paul Durand-Ruel  was a French art dealer associated with the Impressionists and the Barbizon School. Being the first to support artists such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, he is known for his innovations in modernizing art markets, and is generally considered to be the most important art dealer of the 19th century.  “Without Durand-Ruel we should have starved” said Monet of Durand-Ruel.  How did a single man change the art market and bring the Impressionists to public notice? Join us to look at how Impressionist painting became famous, and its practitioners successful. 

Our September talk will be given to us by Lucretia Walker who is a regular lecturer at the National Gallery, both in front of the paintings and in the lecture theatre. For the Tate Gallery's Development department, she speaks to their corporate sponsors in their offices and at their private receptions in both Tates. She teaches US undergraduates on their Study Abroad semesters in London. She was Lay Canon for the Visual Arts at St Paul's Cathedral 2010-2014.

Guests are very welcome, but we make a charge of £10 a head 

President’s Lecture given by Dr Julius Bryant on 15 August 2024 at 10.45

‘William Morris and the Green Dining Room’

William Morris (1834-1896) is Britain’s best-known artist-designer and interior decorator He is equally distinguished as a socialist and poet.  His company was commissioned to decorate what is known as “The Green Dining Room”.  People coming to the V&A can enjoy visiting this room which, opened in 1868 and   features a number of the organic patterns that made him famous.  The Green Dining Room is part of a suite of three restaurant spaces which opened in 1868. Better known as ‘The Morris Room’, this public commission heralded the launch of Morris’s business, later known as ‘Morris & Co.’     Julius Bryant has written about the room in two V&A books (published in 1986 and in 2017) but now his new research has made him question the extent of Morris’s contribution to its design and decoration. 

The commission offered to William Morris’ company coincided with the firm’s other key early public project, namely a series of reception rooms at St James’s Palace that are known there as ‘The Morris Rooms’, which Dr Bryant has also been researching. It now seems more appropriate to name them after his friends and business partners the artist Edward Burne-Jones and the architect Philip Webb, who designed Morris’s first family home, Red House in Bexleyheath. Recent discoveries also raise the question of just how, when and why the V&A’s public dining room became so identified with Morris alone. 

This lecture is about the research process, in which questions will arise more often than they can be answered

We are delighted that Julius Bryant has again agreed to give the Presidential Lecture when he will tell us about William Morris and his contribution to the Victoria and Albert.  Julius is the Keeper Emeritus of Word and Image at the Victoria and Albert Museum. He is the author of many books and in an earlier life was Curator at Kenwood House and has written the authoritative book on the Iveagh Bequest 

The cost of the lecture is £20 per person or guest 

ALL PROFITS FROM THIS LECTURE WILL BE PAID TO MAGIC LANTERN

Please click here for a Booking Form, which can be used even if you are unable to attend and you wish to make a donation to Magic Lantern. 

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) and Diego Rivera (1886-1957) have iconic status in Mexico. Rivera's intricate visual narratives, rich with allegory and symbolism, adorn the walls of public buildings. Inspired by Aztec and Maya imagery, and by early Italian fresco painting, his vast murals combine social criticism with faith in human progress. Kahlo's work, unlike Rivera's, is small in format. Arguably Mexico’s most original painter, she made herself the principal theme of her art. Her paintings reflect her experiences and dreams. This lecture surveys the work of both artists; it chronicles their turbulent marriage and Mexico's history after the 1910 Revolution.

Chloe Sayer is a freelance specialist in the art and culture of Latin America. She has lectured in the UK, Canada, Ireland, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand. She has curated exhibitions and assisted on TV documentaries for BBC and Channel 4. She has also made collections in Mexico and Belize for the British Museum and is Research Associate in the Department of World Cultures at the Royal Ontario Museum. In 2016 she was awarded the prestigious Ohtli medal by the Mexican government for her long-standing commitment to Mexican culture. Her many publications include Mexican Textiles (British Museum Press, 1990), Arts and Crafts of Mexico (Thames & Hudson, 1990), Focus on Aztecs and Incas (Watts Books, 1995), The Incas – The Ancient World (Wayland, 1998), Tex- tiles from Mexico (British Museum Press, 2002), and Mexico: Clothing and Culture (Royal Ontario Museum, 2015). Chloe has also pub- lished articles in travel guides, newspapers and magazines.

PLEASE NOTE that we can only accommodate 60 people so come early to ensure a place. Guests are very welcome although we make a charge of £10 a head for each of them.
We are looking forward to seeing you.

Worshipped by Aesthetes and cultivated by Impressionists the sunflower casts its golden rays across art and culture. A personification of the divine and the regal, we trace its history from classical myth to twentieth century painting via Van Dyck and Van Gogh, Clytie and Klimt, Monet, Rivera, Wilde and Watts. Green and gold, human and divine, the adoring and the adored, the Sunflower.

Budapest was formed in 1873 by the unification of Buda and Pest, situated on either side of the River Danube. The new capital was the focus of resurgent Hungarian nationalism, which found expression through lavish new buildings, the continent’s first underground railway system and myriad paintings featuring specifically Hungarian subjects and locales. Meanwhile, in the countryside, composers Bartók and Kodály began to collect the music of their compatriots. Placing these endeavours in a historical context, this talk explores how  the Hungarians came to understand national identity through cultural means

In 1830 Delacroix set off for North Africa and wrote wonderful journals which also inspired his paintings.  This lecture will detail painterly responses to a new country, which he saw as exotic and slightly frightening.  We will discuss why later artists such as Matisse and Kandinsky followed in search of some of his magic and inspiration. We will look at Delacroix’s technique and his use of colour and understanding of the light which so inspired him in Africa

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 21st March at 10.45 am.  

 Our March lecture “Tapestry:  The Ultimate Wall Decoration“ is given by Susan Kay-Williams.

 Tapestries were the most expensive wall decorations in the Middle Ages and beyond. Often commissioned in sets, taking years to produce, they graced some of the most significant courts of Europe from the 15th century to the 21st. This lecture will explore the making of tapestries and some landmark sets including those of the House of Burgundy, Pope Leo X and Henry VIII all made by the weavers of Flanders and those of Louis XIV and the Queen of Denmark made by the weavers of the Gobelins factory in Paris. It will explore the changing approaches and some of the stories translated into tapestry.

 Susan Kay- Williams is the Chief Executive of the Royal School of Needlework. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Dyers and Colourists. This is in recognition of her work on the history of dyes. Susan lectures worldwide and in 2013 published The Story of Colour in Textiles. Susan curates exhibitions for the RSN at Hampton Court Palace. She is also responsible for the archive collection of the RSN.

 PLEASE NOTE that we can only accommodate 60 people so come early to ensure a place.  

 Guests are very welcome although we make a charge of £10 a head for each of them.

 We are  looking forward to seeing you.

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 15th February at 10.45 am.

Our February lecture “The Nocturne in 19h Century Music and Art “is given by Peter Medhurst. In addition to exploring the history of the musical nocturne, the lecture explores its relationship with the world of art.

In 1859 when Franz Liszt edited the Nocturnes of the Irish composer John Field, he said in his preface ‘to him we may trace the origin of pieces designed to portray subjective and profound emotion.’ Once Field had coined the term nocturne in 1812, other composers such as Chopin, Mendelssohn, Fauré and Debussy followed in his footsteps and contributed to an increasing repertoire of atmospheric and meditative night pieces. However, from the early 1870s, the term ‘nocturne’ was used in the titles of paintings by the American painter, James Whistler, and in addition to exploring the history of the musical nocturne, the lecture explores its relationship with the world of art.

Peter Medhurst appears in the UK and abroad as a musician and scholar, giving recitals and delivering illustrated lectures on music and the arts. He studied singing and early keyboard instruments at the Royal College of Music and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Peter has spoken to TASHH before, and his lectures were very popular.

PLEASE NOTE that we can only accommodate 60 people so come early to ensure a place. Guests are very welcome although we make a charge of £10 a head for each of them.

We are looking forward to seeing you.

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 18th January at 10.45 am.  

J. Paul Getty’s astonishing wealth came from oil and with it this tycoon of the West Coast acquired an astounding collection of antiquities which he displayed from the late 1950s in his Herculaneum inspired Getty Villa at Pacific Palisades. Opening just before the Millennium, Richard Meier’s Getty is known for being clad in specially cut blocks of Italian travertine and the Museum houses an extraordinary collection of art works from the Renaissance to the present day. This lecture explores the privileged but tormented lives of the Getty family and their museums and art works.  

Professor Andrew Hopkins was previously Assistant Director of the British School at Rome from 1998 to 2002 and since 2004, Associate Professor at the University of L'Aquila. Part of his PhD (Courtauld Institute 1995) on Venetian architecture was awarded the Essay Medal of 1996 by the Society of Architectural Historians (GB). A Fellow at Harvard University's Villa I Tatti in Florence in 2003-2004, and in 2009 was the Paul Mellon Senior Visiting Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Amongst his many publications are, with Arnold Witte, Alois Riegl, The Origins of Baroque Art in Rome (2010), and Baldassare Longhena and the Venetian Baroque (2012). 

PLEASE NOTE that we can only accommodate 60 people so come early to ensure a place.  

Guests are very welcome although we make a charge of £10 a head for each of them.

We are  looking forward to seeing you.

Come and join us for a Christmas Special at Kenwood House on 21st  December at 10.30 am.  PLEASE NOTE NEW START TIME

We will start our meeting with a short talk by Briony Brickell, CEO of Magic Lantern, the charity supported by TASHH, who will tell us about their work.  

 We will then hear our December lecture “The Four Seasons “given by Valerie Woodgate. 

 For centuries the Four Seasons have acted as a reminder of both the passage of time and the Ages of Man.  Through the skill of the artist, both ancient and modern, we can experience the torrid heat of Summer, the cool mists of Autumn, the beauty of snow-bound Winter, the bright freshness of Spring and the spiritual and allegorical meaning often embedded in the subject. 

Valerie Woodgate is currently a Lecturer at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, for the Art Fund, the National Trust, U3A, City of London libraries (Barbican and Guildhall), and other organisations.   She lectures on Zoom for arts organisations.  She was a Tate Guide for 39 years; member of Teaching Team at Dulwich Picture Gallery, where as well as lectures, she gave 50 Study Days; evening courses for DPG; lectures and courses at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester; on P&O cruises representing the Tate; lectures at University of Cape Town; scriptwriter for The Living Paintings Trust.

Please join us for Prosecco and mince pies after the lecture when you will have an opportunity to chat with your fellow members. 

 Please note that we can only accommodate 60 people, so come early to secure a place.  It would help the Committee with catering if you could let us know in advance if you are coming.

Guests are very welcome although we make a charge of £10 a head for each of them.

We are looking forward to seeing you at this very special meeting.

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 16th November at 10.45 am.  

 PLEASE NOTE that we can only accommodate 60 people so come early to ensure a place.  

Our November lecture “The Imperial Eggs of Faberge” “is given by Toby Faber.

Between 1885 and 1916 Carl Faberge 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.    They provide their own illustrated history of the decline of the Romanovs. 

Toby is an experienced lecturer and public speaker who has been accredited by The Arts Society since 2012. His career began with Natural Sciences at Cambridge and has been through investment banking, management consulting and five years as managing director of the publishing company founded by his grandfather, Faber and Faber, where he remains on the board. He is also non-executive Chairman of its sister company, Faber Music and a director of Liverpool University Press.

Toby has written three narrative histories: Stradivarius – Five Violins, One Cello and a Genius; Faberge’s Eggs; and Faber & Faber – The Untold Story, as well as a novel, Close to the Edge. Of these, only the obvious one is published by the family firm.

 Guests are very welcome although we make a charge of £10 a head for each of them.

 We are  looking forward to seeing you.

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 19th October at 10.45 am.  

PLEASE NOTE that we can only accommodate 60 people so come early to ensure a place.  

Our October lecture “Landscapes, Legends and Archaeology of Ethiopia” “is given by Louise Schofield.

Ethiopia is a mysterious and beautiful country steeped in history and legend. Its people live a life that is truly biblical and timeless. Their ancient history is populated with evocative names – the Queen of Sheba once ruled over large stretches of the north of the country. The Axumite kingdom introduced Christianity in the fourth century AD and has left a living legacy in the myriad colourful frescoed rock-hewn churches. Louise has been working in Ethiopia since 2006, living for much of the year in a small tent in a village in the north-eastern province of Tigray. This lecture looks at the art, archaeology, legends and landscapes of Ethiopia.

Louise Schofield is an archaeologist who was Curator of Greek Bronze Age and Geometric Antiquities at the British Museum from 1987-2000. Her book, The Mycenaeans, was co-published by the Getty Museum and the British Museum in 2007. She now writes, lectures and runs international archaeological projects - previously in south-eastern Turkey, Greece and Albania and currently in Ethiopia. And rather wonderfully she has just been appointed Visiting Professor of Archaeology at the American University of Rome.

Guests are very welcome although we make a charge of £10 a head for each of them.

We are  looking forward to seeing you.

The temples, iconography, sculptures, textiles, dance performances, literature, landscapes and people of Burma are infused with the spirit of Buddhism. This gentle philosophy, preaching peace and serenity, has inspired some of the greatest art and architecture in the world, nowhere more so than in Burma, now known as Myanmar.

This lecture shows the artistic glories of ancient temples throughout the country, especially Bagan (formerly Pagan), their statues, carvings, murals and history. It illustrates the religious symbolism imbued in textiles and alludes to early dance performances. It touches on the old city of Yangon, formerly Rangoon, and it’s faded colonial architecture, including sacred Christian churches as well as Buddhist temples and the glories of the Schwedagon Pagoda.

Denise Heywood is an art historian, author, lecturer, photographer and journalist.  She worked in Cambodia in the 1990s and has been a scholar of Southeast Asian art ever since. Her books include one on the Buddhist temples of Laos, Ancient Luang Prabang and Laos, also in French, and Cambodian Dance Celebration of the Gods, with a foreword by the daughter of King Sihanouk. She lectures for the Art Fund, the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies on their post-graduate Asian Art Course and for the V&A; also for organisations such as Madingley Hall (University of Cambridge), the British Museum, the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, Asia House, the National Trust, the Royal Geographical Society and has lectured worldwide for universities, museums, colleges, art institutions, literary societies and travel organisations. She writes for art, literary and travel publications and has appeared on television and radio. She has led cultural tours to Southeast Asia and France for the Royal Academy, the Art Fund, Asia House and many more and lectures on cruise ships.

PLEASE NOTE THAT WE CAN ONY ACCOMMODATE 60 PEOPLE SO COME EARLY TO ENSURE A PLACE 

In the spirit of coronation year, Arts Society members are invited to study the greatest partnership in the history of royal collecting in Britain. Victoria and Albert shared their love of art despite having very different tastes, ranging from Victoria’s portraits of her pets by Landseer to Albert’s pioneering collection of the art of early Renaissance masters such as Duccio and Memling. Many British and German artists enjoyed their patronage and together they also formed the best collection of modern sculpture since Charles I. Most works were given as gifts to each other on birthdays and Christmas and this very personal collection was carefully arranged in their marine villa, Osborne.  Members will be taken on a newly researched tour of their home as it was in their day and will also see some of their key donations to their great joint project, the Victoria and Albert Museum.

We are delighted that Julius Bryant is giving the Presidential Lecture this year when he will tell us about Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s love of art and their shared passion for collecting.  Julius is the Keeper Emeritus of the Victoria and Albert Museum. He is the author of many books and, in an earlier life, was Curator at Kenwood House when he wrote the authoritative catalogue on the Iveagh Bequest.

The cost of the lecture is £18 per person

ALL PROFITS FROM THIS LECTURE WILL BE PAID TO MAGIC LANTERN

Even if you are unable to attend, you may wish to make a donation to Magic Lantern. If so, please send it to us using the booking form.

Please click here for a booking form

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 20th July at 10.45 am.  Kenwood is at its best in the summer  

 PLEASE NOTE that we can only accommodate 60 people so come early to ensure a place.  

 Our July Lecture, “Coffee with the Wittgensteins “ is given by Sarah Lenton 

 The Wittgenstein family is rich, talented and doomed. Karl Wittgenstein’s 8 children contained 4 musicians, 1 philosopher (and architect), 1 artist and a major patron of the arts. They lived in style, enjoyed the friendship of Brahms, Klimt, Freud and Prokoviev, yet three committed suicide and the survivors had to cope not only with their Wittgenstein genes but the Third Reich. This talk  explores the world of this fascinating family.

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

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 15th June.  Not only will we be in a much loved venue, but the walk to the House is currently full of flowers and scents  

 PLEASE NOTE that we can only accommodate 60 people so come early to ensure a place.  

 Our June lecture, Pop goes the Artist – from Warhol to Dylan is given by Suzanne Fagence Cooper 

In the sweltering heat of a New York summer, Andy Warhol invited Bob Dylan to his Factory to sit for a screen test.  It was 1965. After enduring his silent, slow-motion portrait, Dylan became intrigued by Warhol’s monumental silver screenprint of Elvis dressed as a cowboy.  He took it home as a souvenir, strapped to the top of a station-wagon.  (It is now one of the highlights of the collection in MOMA New York). This lecture examines Pop Art through the eyes of these controversial artists. 

Suzanne Fagence Cooper, MA, PhD, is a curator and historian who specialises in 19th and 20th century British art. An Arts Society accredited lecturer, she was a curator and Research Fellow at the V&A Museum for 12 years and has collaborated with many of Britain’s regional museum collections. She is the author of To See Clearly: Why Ruskin Matters (2019) and How We Might Live: At Home with Jane and William Morris (2022), and curated the 2019 exhibition Turner, Ruskin & the Storm Cloud at York Art Gallery.

Please come and join us at Kenwood House for a lecture on 18th May at 10.45 am. We are fortunate in having Mariska Beekenkamp-Wladimiroff coming to talk to us about Vermeer, a very topical subject. 

PLEASE NOTE THAT WE CAN ONY ACCOMMODATE 60 PEOPLE SO COME EARLY TO ENSURE A PLACE AS THIS WILL BE A VERY POPULAR LECTURE 

The lecture is entitled  - The largest Vermeer exhibition ever - A Review

Is there anything more to say about Vermeer? The people at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam thought so, as did the 450,000 people who snapped up all the tickets within 3 days (if the website hadn't crashed it probably would have been quicker!).

Seeing so many brings about the chance to compare and this is possibly the strength of this new exhibition, especially with new technical analyses available.

If you do not have the chance to go to Holland or want to prepare if you are one of the lucky ones with a ticket please Join Dutch art historian Mariska Beekenkamp-Wladimiroff as she points out what to look out for, what to study and appreciate and what to take away from this universally adored artist.

Mariska is a Social Psychologist by trade; it took until the birth of her children to take up her love for the arts again. Heavily pregnant with number 3, Mariska finished her MA at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, in Dutch Baroque Art. Soon after this she was lucky enough to lecture for the most wonderful group of students. She decided this was what she wanted to do and set up Art Historical London offering art historical lectures, courses, tours, travel and events from London. Over the years this has expanded to events in New York and Amsterdam, and since March 2020 has offered her events on line.

Fully accredited PTLLS lecturer she also teaches on the public programme of the Dulwich Picture Gallery, and can provide live, online and recorded lectures for groups or individuals.

The TASHH AGM will take place at Kenwood House on 20th April at 10.30 am.  Please come and join us.  The AGM will be followed at 10.45 am by our April lecture, The Story of Indian Modern Art given by Georgina Bexon.

PLEASE NOTE that we can only accommodate 60 people so come early to ensure a place. 

At the birth of Indian Independence in 1947, a group of talented and determined artists set out to create a new art for a new country. They drew on ancient artistic traditions but also had a radical view of how Indian art could speak to its audience. This movement, known as the Bombay Progressives Artists' Group, created an art very much for and of its time – acting as witness to a country in turmoil and relating the fascinating story of transition and growth of the new India.

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

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

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 16th March.   It is lovely to be back at our popular venue and we look forward to seeing you there 

PLEASE NOTE - AS THE LECTURE ROOM ONLY HOLDS 60 PEOPLE,  MEMBERS ARE STRONGLY ADVISED TO COME EARLY TO BE SURE OF A PLACE

Ida and Louise Cook appeared to outsiders as two ordinary sisters from the suburbs. They travelled into London every day, working hard at their lowly jobs for the civil service and coming home to their warm and supportive parents. They never expected to marry. They were part of the “singled out” generation that suffered because thousands of young men had been killed in or traumatised by World War One. But in fact, they used their genuine love of opera to act undercover in Nazi Germany and rescue musicians, Jews and other Hitler opponents. A pair of eccentric scarlet pimpernels who risked their lives, yet their story is barely known.

Anne Sebba: award winning biographer, historian, after dinner speaker and author of eleven books. In 2016 Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940’s, optioned for a TV multi part series, was the winner of the 2016 Franco-British Society book prize. Previously Anne wrote That Woman, a biography of Wallis Simpson and the scandal of the 1936 abdication crisis based on her discovery of a secret cache of letters. A former Reuters Foreign Correspondent, Anne is a broadcaster and regularly appears on television talking about her books, mostly biographies of women including Jennie Churchill, Mother Teresa and Laura Ashley. She is a former chair of Britain's 10,000 strong Society of Authors and lecturer who gives talks to a variety of audiences in the US and UK as well as on cruises, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. Her latest book is Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy published in the UK and US in 2021, shortlisted for the Wingate Prize and optioned by Miramax. Reviewing the book in the Literary Review, Anne Sebba was described as ‘the ideal biographer, sympathetic without being blind to her faults with a sure understanding of the period.’

Please come and join us at Kenwood House on 16thFebruary.  We are all delighted to be back there and look forward to seeing you at our popular venue  

PLEASE NOTE that we can only accommodate 60 people so come early to ensure a place.  

 Our February lecture, Summeringin Newport – Cottages, Celebrities and Suffragettes is given by Mary Alexander 

During the Gilded Age, the historic port of Newport, Rhode Island, was often referred to as the 'Queen of Resorts' or 'New York By the Sea'. In the summer season, the wealthy elite of New York city relocated to their mansions or 'cottages' in Newport to enjoy cooler air and its many leisure and cultural activities. 

Earlier commentators such as Henry James satirised the 'social wars' of old versus new money, and selectively focussed on women as vain social climbers. We will view this through a very different lens - one of huge generational change when daughters demand the right to vote for all women, to dine together, to play tennis in radical new sportswear, to sail a boat solo, or even to bathe on a private beach without stockings! Daring plans hatched in Newport one summer, lead to the founding of the first women only club in Manhattan. The role of fashion and social status in this radically changing environment is critical 

 We will be given an insight into the life of these wealthy people 

 Mary Alexander has thirty years' experience as a lecturer, with a BA in History and History of Art and a MA with distinction in History of Art from University College London. Experience includes public lectures in museums, tutoring for the Open University, visiting lecturer at Christie's Education in London, museum curator at Platt Hall, the Gallery of Costume, Manchester. Now a freelance lecturer to various arts, heritage and antiquarian societies. She also worked in Pentagram design consultancy in London and New York, organising conferences and special events. Author of various articles on design and visual awareness issues, her background combines an unusual blend of academic and visual communications skills. Lectured for ADFAS Australia and New Zealand in 2011, 2013 and 2016. Mary is an enthusiastic member and President of The Arts Society Glaven Valley.

I know you have enjoyed the Zoom lectures that we gave during lockdown as well as the hybrid lectures given later.  Now we are back at Kenwood House, it seemed appropriate for one last Zoom talk about a picture at Kenwood.  I will be giving a talk by Zoom only on 2ndFebruary at 10.45.  

The subject is Henrietta of Lorraine, whose portrait by Van Dyck is at Kenwood House dining room.  Very little is known about her, but I will tell you what I have learned about this very feisty lady and the artist that painted her portrait

You all know me as the Visits’ Organiser.  In addition, I am a volunteer at Kenwood House, and I give talks at Kenwood as well as to a wider audience through English Heritage. 

This talk is by way of thanks to you all for supporting TASHH during these last difficult years and I hope that you will enjoy hearing about Henrietta. 

The Zoom link was included in the email sent to members 24 January  

Please come and join us at our first lecture at Kenwood House since before lockdown.  We are delighted to be able to return there and look forward to seeing you at our popular venue  

PLEASE NOTE that we can only accommodate 60 people so come early to ensure a place.  

Our first lecture of 2023, Mad Men and Artists is given by Tony Rawlins 

Advertisements which show art tend to use a soft sell approach and promote prestigious goods with some over-representation of cultural establishments, cosmetics, fashion apparel and furniture. The predominant artistic style in these ads is Renaissance. The representation of modern art is significantly lower, and non-western art is hardly represented.

Why have these biases arisen in this industry?

Tony was educated at Highgate School, starting his career in advertising in 1965 as a mail boy in J.Walter Thompson. He graduated through the training system there to become an account director and subsequently worked in a number of agencies before setting up on his own in 1985. There he handled primarily Guinness advertising in Africa and the Caribbean, where he produced many commercials and print ads for them over a period of 15 years. He remains active as a consultant in the industry, but now concentrates on more philanthropic projects - producing a film in the rural villages of Nigeria for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. More recently he has completed a sanitation project in Haiti after it was devastated by Hurricane Matthew in 2016.  He has been a member of the Arts Society for many years and has lectured to Arts Societies in the UK and Europe 

IMPORTANT NOTICE 

In view of the bad weather and icy road conditions, the Committee have decided that, in the interests of safety, the lecture by Christopher Bradley on Coffee – From Arabia to the Coffee House

due to take place at Lauderdale House and on Zoom at 10.45 will ONLY BE OFFERED ON ZOOM 

I am sorry we will not have the chance to meet at our final Lauderdale House visit but the combination of cold weather and icy roads means that a decision was made to limit the lecture to Zoom only. 

You will be able to enjoy the lecture by logging on to the Zoom link below  at 10.45 am on 15th December. 

https://theartssociety-org.zoom.us/j/8679549366?pwd=K0pLMktQZHU5NjhHZVdmcG9nU1RTZz09

Meeting ID: 867 954 9366
Passcode: TASHH

All the Committee regret this decision but we have our members’ safety as a prime concern 

Long before cappuccinos and skinny lattes, all the world’s coffee traded through the tiny port of Mokha in Yemen. Popularised in Constantinople, Vienna and Amsterdam, the first English coffee house opened in the 1650’s and by 1700 there were 500 in London alone 

Beginning as ‘sobering meeting places’ they were frequented by artists, authors and politicians where the debating of literary and political ideas was encouraged, as seen in early prints and lithographs. The marketing of coffee went through distinctive art noueau, and art deco periods and we see it included in works of the major French Impressionists

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

We ask that you put your full name into Zoom so that we can accurately record attendance. Thank you. 

 Please be aware when you log into Zoom, that if your microphone is on, the audience can hear everything you say, private conversations and all your background noise, etc. If you don't wish this to be heard, please switch off your microphone. The moderator will  mute all attendees before the lecture starts, but we do appreciate that you may want to say hello to your friends before the lecture begins.

 Please note that we are unable to record this lecture, so it is only possible to watch it live on Zoom.

THIS LECTURE WAS POSTPONED FROM SEPTEMBER AND WILL BE ZOOM ONLY

Ever since the late C19th, seduced by its intense light and sensual colours, visual artists (most of them from the north) have been irresistibly drawn to the Mediterranean coast of France. Claude Monet painted in Antibes in 1888; while in the same year, van Gogh, dreaming of setting up a “Studio of the South”, persuaded Gauguin – with disastrous results – to join him in Arles. Cézanne’s roots, of course, lay in his beloved Midi, to which he returned for good in 1899. Meanwhile, in 1892, Paul Signac sailed into the unspoilt port of St.Tropez, settling there and attracting large numbers of younger artists to the area – among them, his Neo-Impressionist disciples and members of the future Fauve group. In the early 20th century, Renoir would make the Midi his home, as would Bonnard and Matisse. And after the Second World War, so too would Picasso and Chagall.

London-based freelance lecturer, writer and exhibition organizer, Monica Bohm-Duchen Has lectured for Tate, the National Gallery, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Open University, Sotheby’s Institute of Art and the Courtauld Institute of Art. Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck College since 2005, and has led many tours. Publications include Understanding Modern Art (1991), Chagall (1998/2001), The Private Life of a Masterpiece (2001),The Art and Life of Josef Herman (2009) and Art and the Second World War (2013). She is the initiator and Creative Director of the nationwide Insiders/Outsiders arts festival

Our next Lecture is given by Margaret Watson on Thursday 17th November 2022 at 10.45 am.  It will be held at Lauderdale House but, in case some of you prefer to hear the lecture in your homes, it will also be delivered by Zoom and the Zoom link is below.  Please come and join us if you feel able. Non members are welcome to attend in person at the usual fee of £10.

We will be enjoying a jam-packed hour of information and entertainment. Take a trip with Margaret as she delves into the 5000-year history, development, design, music, and lore of this fascinating instrument.

Boasting over 1400 working parts, you will learn how the complex pedal mechanism was introduced and perfected into the instrument played today together with slides of the extraordinary designs as the instrument developed over the centuries.

Indulge in the lavishly decorated Rococo harps made for Queen Marie Antoinette, the fashion statement that became associated with the instrument

Margaret studied under Sidonie Goossens at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She has played for the Princess Royal, Princess Alexandra and Prince Edward, has been featured on TV in the series 'The Supersizers Eat Medieval' and has played in such venues as Glyndebourne Opera House, the Ritz Hotel, the Savoy Hotel, the Garrick Club, Hever Castle, Clandon House and Polesden Lacey.

Our October Lecture is given by Caroline Rayman on Thursday 20thOctober 2022 at 10.30 am.  This lecture will take place at Lauderdale House but, in case some of you prefer to hear the lecture in your homes, it will also be delivered by Zoom and the Zoom link is below.  Please come and join us if you feel able and celebrate our return to live meetings where we can see one another.  

Caroline will be telling us the extraordinary story of Jan Van Eyck’s great altarpiece in Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent   In the roughly 800 years since it was painted, it has been stolen 13 times, the last time in 20thCentury by Adolf Hitler..  It was rescued by one astonishing piece of luck and enormous bravery on the part of many very different people.  It is an art historical thriller   

Caroline Rayman has lectured for many years to universities and art organisations in America as well as on cruise ships. Caroline was an official guide at the British Museum and has published articles on samplers.  Her lectures range from subjects as diverse as the role of the royal mistress in history to more scholarly lectures on Frederick the Great of Prussia 

Long before Karl Marx was buried in Highgate cemetery and the Russian Trade Delegation moved into Highgate West Hill, the village and its environs have been a magnet for generations of Russians. In this talk Julius Bryant, President of TASHH, Keeper Emeritus of the V&A and a past Curator of Kenwood, will introduce the dashing Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovitch, first cousin of Tsar Nicholas II, direct descendant of Catherine the Great and his glamorous wife Countess Sophie, who entertained high society and raised their two teenage daughters and son at Kenwood between 1910 and 1917

We are delighted that our President Julius Bryant, is giving the Presidential Lecture this year and will tell us about Grand Duke Mikhail Mikhailivitch and his time at Kenwood House.  We are only offering this talk live at Lauderdale House as it will be the first time our President has had the opportunity to speak to us live for a considerable period of time.   This lecture will be in person only and not on Zoom.  Now that COVID is a memory, we hope that as many of you as possible will attend to show our appreciation for the support our President has given us over the years.  It promises to be a fascinating talk  

The cost of the lecture is £15 per person 

ALL PROFITS FROM THIS LECTURE WILL BE PAID TO MAGIC LANTERN

To attend this lecture , or to just make a donation to Magic Lantern, please click here.

TASHH is offering you a special extra Zoom lecture at 8 pm on 28thJuly.  Simon Goodman wrote The Orpheus Clock: My search for my family’s art treasures stolen by the Nazis - a mesmerizing account of the efforts he made to recover his family’s art collection stolen in World War II.  Simon’s grandparents came from a German Jewish banking family called Gutman.  The family amassed huge wealth and a world class collection of art, including Degas, Renoir, Botticelli amongst other great names.  They also collected objets d’art including the Orpheus Clock after which the book is titled.  All of these were stolen or the subject of forced sales to the Nazis at a fraction of their value during the war. Much of their collection had passed directly into the hands of Hitler and Goering. 

Simon has kindly agreed to talk to us about his family, the loss of their treasures and his quest to recover these and other treasures.   It has not been an easy task and he has faced obstacles in his search as well as successes.

Since Simon lives in California, the time difference means that it is only possible to offer you this opportunity in the evening, so we are pleased to offer our first ever evening lecture.  It promises to be a fascinating story and we are very fortunate in having Simon agree to speak to us. 

The cost of the talk is £8.00 per person £12.00 for non-members

 You will receive a link to join the tour nearer the time

For a booking form please click here

Our July Lecture is given by Steven Desmond on Thursday 21st July 2022 at 10.45 am.  This lecture will again be held at Lauderdale House but, in case some of you prefer to hear the lecture in your homes, it will also be delivered by Zoom and the Zoom link will be sent to you.  The risk of COVID is smaller now and we would love to see you in person.  So please come and join us if you feel able and celebrate our return to live meetings. 

Down the ages many artists have combined their achievements on canvas with an equal interest in making and cultivating a garden. This talk looks at a number of outstanding artist-gardeners in the 19th and 20th centuries, finishing with the incomparable Claude Monet who said himself that he was good for two things — painting and gardening.

Steven Desmond is a Professional Associate of the Royal Horticultural Society. He is a landscape consultant specializing in the conservation and management of historic gardens, and regularly writes for journals including Country Life Magazine. Steven is the author of Gardens of the Italian Lakes, published in 2016, leads specialist tours, and is a regular lecturer with the Arts Society.

Thursday 16th June 2022 at 10.45 am

  At Lauderdale House, Waterlow Park Highgate Hill N6 5HG

AND in addition, on Zoom 

Our June Lecture is given by Alexandra Epps on Thursday 16th June 2022 at 10.45 am.  Our first “live” lecture on 19th May was well attended.  This lecture will again be held at Lauderdale House but, in case some of you prefer to hear the lecture in your homes, it will also be delivered by Zoom and the Zoom link is below.  Please come and join us if you feel able and celebrate our return to live meetings where we can see one another. It should be a happy occasion.  

 Angela will be describing the scandal of the painting of Madame X to the trials, tribulations and triumph of ‘Carnation, Lily,Lily, Rose’ She will describe the rise, the fall and rise again of John Singer Sargent, the leading portrait painter of his age – the age of elegance.

 Angela Epps is an Official Guide and Lecturer at Tate Modern, Tate Britain and Guildhall Art Gallery. Qualified Guide to the City of London, offering lectures and walks about many aspects of the arts for societies, corporations and private individuals. Member of the City of London Guide Lecturers Association. Co-author of the book Lord Mayor's Portraits 1983-2014 (2015). Alexandra’s background is in design having practised as a graphic designer running her own design consultancy for many years. BA Saint Martin’s School of Art, MA London College of Print.

TASHH members will be sent Zoom login details

Our May Lecture is given by Angela Findlay Thursday 19th May 2022 at 10.45 am.  It is very exciting as this is our first lecture “live” following lockdown.  It will be held at Lauderdale House but, in case some of you prefer to hear the lecture in your homes, it will also be delivered by Zoom and the Zoom link is below.  Please come and join us if you feel able and celebrate our return to live meetings where we can see one another. It should be a happy occasion.  Linda Green has given travel directions in a separate e-mail.  

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

This talk casts light onto areas of our society where the Arts not only are visual, decorative, or commercial, but absolutely vital, hugely relevant and potentially life changing. 

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

 Angela Findlay is a professional artist, writer and freelance lecturer with a long-standing interest in the role the arts can play in bringing about changes, on a personal level or within societies. Her long career of teaching art in prisons and Young Offender Institutions in Germany and England, followed by her role as the former Arts Coordinator of the Koestler Trust in London, gave her many insights into the huge impact the arts can have in terms of rehabilitation. In 2016 she was invited to the Ministry of Justice to present the case for the arts to be included in their new rehabilitation and education policies.

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

This lecture will be delivered at Lauderdale House, but can also be viewed via a Zoom link which is mailed to members separately

Our April lecture is given by Brian Stater on Thursday 28th April 2022 at 10.45 am following the TASHH AGM at 10.15. You will receive the link in advance, and it will be the same for the AGM and the lecture

The April lecture will be given by Brian Stater and the subject is photography in the 1960s.  There is no charge for our monthly lectures. 

 British photography enjoyed a golden age in the 1960s. Young, talented newcomers broke out of the conventional studio to revolutionise perceptions of fashion, portraiture and popular culture. This lecture looks at a range of superb images from photographers such as David Bailey, Terence Donovan, Lewis Morley, Tony Ray ­Jones and Jane Bown and Brian will give us an insight into this exciting period. 

 Brian Stater's chief interests lie in photography, architecture and history and he combines all three in his lecturing career. 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.

For instructions on joining via Zoom, please click here

Best known for his outlandish appearances dressed as his feminine alter ego, Claire, Grayson Perry is now a core part of the art establishment, a Turner Prize winner, Royal Academician, popular broadcaster and colourful character. He’s possibly one of the world’s best-known contemporary artists. His works of ceramics, textiles, tapestries and prints are highly sought after. Often controversial, he tackles difficult subjects in a poignant yet witty way and holds a mirror up to society. 

Ian’s talk will examine Grayson Perry’s work, his exciting and thought-provoking exhibitions, and the unique character inside the flamboyant frocks. 

Ian Swankie is a Londoner, born and bred, and has a particular interest in art and architecture.  As well as being a guide and lecturer, Ian is a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars.

The light-filled canvases of Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot capture the pleasures of modernity: fashionable ballgowns, afternoons spent boating on a lake, children playing. Yet, her contemporaries perceived a connection with the eighteenth century. Renoir declared her ‘the last elegant and ‘feminine’ artist that we have had since Fragonard.’ Surveying the 1896 posthumous retrospective of her oeuvre, Paul Girard declared ‘it is the eighteenth century modernised.’ Eighteenth-century art fell from favour following the French Revolution, but was rediscovered in the mid-nineteenth century by collectors including Louis La Caze and Hippolyte Walferdin. Morisot copied works by Boucher; she experimented with red chalk, a technique closely associated with Rococo drawings; she also admired the English painters Gainsborough, Reynolds and Romney, whose work she first encountered on honeymoon in the Isle of Wight and London. This lecture traces Morisot’s engagement with eighteenth-century art and culture, and highlights what set her work apart from that of her predecessors.

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

Paula is going to talk about the art of Pieter Brueghel the Elder (c. 1525/30-1569).  He is a byword for the depiction of genre subjects and landscapes. This lecture explores his work and its meanings, from his beginnings to the development of a highly original art that offered an alternative to the Italianate art then in vogue. Working for an elite circle of connoisseurs, at the end of his short life he produced some of his greatest masterpieces, including the Peasant Dance and Peasant Wedding, and the lyrical Months of the Year, which rank amongst the greatest achievements of Netherlandish painting.

 Paula Nuttall gained her BA and PhD from the Courtauld, writing her doctoral thesis on the reception of Netherlandish painting in fifteenth-century Florence. She is Director of the V&A’s Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Year Course, and she lectures for a range of other institutions including the National Gallery, Christie’s Education and The Arts Society.

The Zoom log in details will be emailed to members in time for the lecture

The buildings of the British Raj have a fascinating history and Anthony will explore the most impressive and unusual buildings of Madras (Chennai), Mumbai (Bombay), Kolkata (Calcutta). There will also be a brief look at the grandest of imperial buildings (William Emmerson’s Victoria Memorial in Calcutta and Edwin Lutyens’s Viceroy’s House, New Delhi) and conclude with the efforts being made to preserve the buildings of the British Raj.

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

Zoom log-in details will be sent to members before the date.

  The Glasgow Boys, the Glasgow Girls, the Scottish Colourists and the French connection

In the 1880s and 1890s Europe and America saw the rise of artistic colonies, such as the Newlyn School, practising a form of painting known as “naturalism”. Another such colony, the Glasgow boys, seized the mantle of Bastien-Lepage and their paintings became the toast of Europe. The Glasgow Girls were their contemporaries. Painters such as Bessie MacNicol and designers, such as Margaret and Frances Macdonald, influenced the development of the Glasgow Style and achieved international recognition, contributing to the development of the modern movement. The Scottish Colourists had direct contact with French Post-Impressionism, particularly Matisse and the Fauves. As a result their paintings are considered some of the most progressive in British art of the early 20th century. During his talk, Harry will discuss the lives, the times and the work of these artists. 

Harry Fletcher is a successful portrait painter and practising artist. He has worked previously as Head of Art and Design in a large Comprehensive School and as an A-level examiner and an Open University tutor. He is now a freelance lecturer and leads art appreciation courses throughout the UK and across Europe.

This is a Zoom lecture, joining links will have been sent to members in good time.

Please note that we are unable to record this lecture, so it is only possible to watch it live

Thursday 19th August 2021 10:30am for 10:45am

On Zoom

You are invited to enjoy an exclusive visit to The International Exhibition of Art and Industry, the Great Exhibition, and the first World Fair, which took place 170 years ago this summer in 1851 at the first Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. You will be taken on a personal guided tour of the international displays, stopping to admire the most popular and extraordinary works of art and industry. You will be introduced to the royal driving force behind the project, Prince Albert, and to his vision for its immediate legacy, London’s first cultural quarter, South Kensington, home to his flagship institution, the Victoria and Albert Museum. There will also be a chance to tour south London’s rival legacy, the second Crystal Palace in Sydenham, and to fly through the great tradition of Expos that continue to this day. 

Our TASHH President, Dr Julius Bryant, Keeper of Word and Image at the V&A, is leading this tour.

There is no cost again this year for the President’s Lecture, but we invite you to make a donation should you wish to do so, and all donations will be sent afterwards to Magic Lantern. 

Login details for this lecture as well as bank account details for your contributions were circulated to members and associates on the 2nd July

This lecture covers surprising attempts to create some graphic unity and some cohesion between the different operating companies during the expansion of the Underground from the 1860s. Mark discusses: Leslie Green's architecture; the Arts & Crafts movement; Frank Pick; Edward Johnston's typeface; Charles Holden's architecture; the Streamline Moderne/Art Deco movement; the New Works Programme; post-war austerity/design; the Victoria Line; the loss of Johnston & rescue by Kono; the architecture of the Jubilee Line Extension; thecreation of TfL; recent schemes and future works including the Elizabeth Line/Northern Line extension to Battersea etc

The lecture will examine the work of leading twentieth century photographers who played a central role in breaking down barriers concerning photography as a field within fine art practice. We shall look at a range of international photographers whose work has impacted on our perceptions of culture. 

The recent exhibitions of work by Cindy Sherman at the National Portrait Gallery, as well as that of Martin Parr, William Eggleston and Man Ray bear witness to the significance photography within fine art institutions

Cloaked for months of the year in snow or mist, it is only in summer that the more benign character of Norway, Denmark and Sweden is revealed, providing the inspiration behind the ravishing paintings of artists such as Kitty Kieland, Anders Zorn, Elif Petersson and Peder Krøyer to name just a few. Often working in small communes, such as in the north Danish coastal village of Skagen, these artists adapted the style of impressionism to the limpid light of the Nordic climate, a light which is hauntingly beautiful in the long hours of summer and especially at twilight. Midnight bonfires, moonlit promenades and the midsummer dance are all favourite subjects of these artists who depicted a world of summer stillness and tradition just as it was about to be shattered by the firestorm of World War I.

In 1882 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 evolved in parallel with ideas about what a garden or border should look like.

From 1912 Tom Thomson and  the ‘Group of Seven’  revolutionised Canadian painting. Some were war artists who went on to  produce  wonderful portraits and  townscapes  but all were  inspired by the Canadian landscape and the wilderness to the ‘north’. The early focus was on Algonquin Park near Toronto – into which Tom Thompson mysteriously disappeared in 1917. The others continued throughout the 1920s and 1930 ‘and moulded the way Canadians looked at their land’.  The talk will discuss the main artists within the group  (including FH  Varley, Lawren Harris and AY Jackson ) and show many of their defining paintings.

Our speaker completed an MA in Canada in Development Studies, and a PhD from Trinity College, Dublin in History and Political Science. His career as an academic and as a political and institutional analyst in the field of International Development has enabled him to travel widely in Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He has 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.

The Italian Renaissance is a roll call of famous men, But what was it like to be born female in those heady days? Best selling author Sarah Dunant has researched and written a number of novels on exactly that question. Join her on a journey to meet the women who found their own way into history.

The cost of the lexture is £12

You will receive the Zoom link nearer the time.

For a booking form or bank transfer details, please click here

From 1998 to 2002 our speaker was Assistant Director of the British School at Rome and since 2004 has been Associate Professor at the University of L’Aquila. He was also a Fellow at Harvard University's Villa I Tatti in Florence in 2003-2004, and in 2009 was the Paul Mellon Senior Visiting Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. 

Andrew writes about his subject: 

What other family in the twentieth century managed to amass such extraordinary art collections, and design or purchase such astounding buildings to display their collections? Compared to the Frick and Gulbenkian, individual collections displayed in single museums, the Guggenheim name was transformed in the late twentieth century into a brand, some would say a chain. With celebrated museums in New York, with the flagship Solomon R. Guggenheim landmark on Fifth Avenue, together with the Peggy Guggenheim Collection on the Grand Canal in Venice, the family foundation did not stop there. They commissioned the celebrated building by Frank Gehry in Bilbao, which opened in 1997, and which is now considered a masterpiece of modern architecture and design. Other expansion plans have not fared so well, with outposts in Las Vegas and Berlin closing after some years, and new building projects in Vilnius and Helsinki have been abandoned after opposition by residents, who were not persuaded they needed a Guggenheim in their city. This lecture looks at the beginning of both Solomon’s and Peggy’s collections in New York City, with artists they acquired such as Kandinsky and Pollock, and traces the development and expansion of their collections over more than half a century, by which time the Guggenheim name had become synonymous with some of the most inspiring art and museums in the world.

Please note that we are unable to record this lecture, so it is only possible to watch it live

Two hundred and fifty years after Antonio Stradivari’s death, his violins and cellos remain the most highly prized instruments in the world. Loved by great musicians and capable of fetching fabulous sums when sold, their tone and beauty are legendary. Every subsequent violin-maker has tried to match them. Not one has succeeded. How can that be? This lecture explores that central mystery by following some of Stradivari’s instruments from his workshop to the present day. It is a story that travels from the salons of Vienna to the concert halls of New York, and from the breakthroughs of Beethoven’s last quartets to the first phonographic recordings. Toby Faber’s book Stradivarius: Five violins, one cello and a genius, was described in The New York Times as ‘more enthralling, earthy and illuminating than any fiction could be.’ The lecture is illustrated with pictures of violins and of key individuals and locations, as well as with some short musical recordings

(preceded by an address by Florian Schweizer, Chief Executive of The Arts Society, and followed by virtual drinks)

On Thursday 17th December Andrew Prince will be speaking to us by Zoom on Royal Jewels and the American Heiress. 

Tamara is hosting the lecture. We would ask you to log in earlier than usual, and by 10:30am, so that you can hear Florian’s address before the lecture itself begins at 10:45am. 

It will be Andrew’s first time lecturing to our Society. His consuming passion for jewels can be traced back to him swallowing one of his mother’s pearl earrings as a 3-year-old. His exquisite jewels have adorned celebrities including Michael Jackson, Miss Piggy, and the stars of Downton Abbey. His entertaining and informative lectures on the history of jewellery and fashion have delighted audiences around the world. Andrew writes about the lecture he is giving us: 

Following the turbulent political period between 1870 and 1929, and the collapse of the Russian and European monarchies, many glorious art and jewel collections were looted or sold. But as the great families of Russia and Europe foundered, the power and wealth of America soared. Its new millionaires were intent on creating palaces of their own, filling them with the finest art and furniture, and weighing down their wives and daughters with the most opulent royal jewels.

These fabulously wealthy heiresses married into the British aristocracy, bringing many of their newly acquired treasures with them. This lecture explains how, with the decline of aristocratic power in Europe, the legendary jewels have once again been sold off.

Our last lecture of the year is normally an opportunity for us all to join together at Kenwood afterwards for a seasonal drink and nibbles.  We are sadly unable to do that this year, but if you can, we would still like you afterwards to raise a glass of your favourite “tipple” with us in your home to wish everyone a healthier and peaceful 2021.

We do hope you will join us. Please note that we are unable to record this lecture. 

The committee is very pleased to invite you to attend an additional Zoom lecture given by Tamara Rabin, our  Visits Secretary.

The subject is  Marianne North (24 October 1830 – 30 August 1890). Marianne was a prolific English Victorian biologist and botanical artist.  She travelled extensively in order to find and paint exotic plants.  She was responsible for demonstrating the huge variety of plants throughout the world.  She was able to create the Marianne North Gallery at Kew Gardens where her paintings are displayed.  She was a true pioneer at a time when women were not expected to travel the world.

Although Lucrezia is relatively newly accredited to the Arts Society, she is extremely experienced guide, teacher and lecturer. She lectures regularly at the National Gallery, both in front of the paintings and in the lecture theatre. For the Tate Gallery's Development department she speaks to their corporate sponsors in their offices, and at their private receptions. She teaches US undergraduates on their Study Abroad semesters in London. She was Lay Canon for the Visual Arts at St Paul's Cathedral from 2010 until 2014. 

I know from personal experience how much you will enjoy listening to Lucrezia. 

She writes of her topic: 

  The paintings of Australian Impressionists Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, and Charles Conder came to epitomise a growing sense of national identity as Australia approached Federation in 1901. Paintings of the rapidly teeming cities of Melbourne and Sydney and the dazzling landscapes of coast and bushland are closely related to yet entirely distinct from European impressionism. John Russell, by contrast, was an Australian expatriate who spent almost his entire career in France, counting Van Gogh, Monet, and Matisse among his friends. Like fellow artists in Australia, Russell embraced plain air painting to capture the fleeting effects of light in the landscape but became increasingly experimental in his use of colour.This lecture invites us to reconsider how Impressionism was understood at the time, as an international phenomenon which transformed itself as it travelled the globe.

Cathy is again the Lecture Moderator and she has issued the instructions below on how to access the lecture, and ask any questions you may have for the Q&A session afterwards.  

We do hope you will join us. Please note that we will not be recording this lecture. 

Instructions to access Zoom for the lecture

Note: If you have Zoom installed on your computer, please update it before the lecture. Open the Zoom programme, and follow the instructions to update. However, you do not need Zoom installed in order to access the lecture.

To access the lecture on Zoom, please click on the following link after 10:30am, and before 10:45am, and follow the instructions on screen. 

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3647188796?pwd=WnY2UG9YU3Y5MHBXU3VUeEhuODJpUT09 

If the program asks questions, for example about using a web browser to connect, or turning on video, say 'yes' to all.

You will be connected to the lecture.  This may take several minutes. If you are asked for a password, please type in TASHH.

All audience members will be muted for the duration of the lecture and Q&A session. Please do not unmute during the lecture.

Sound: If you are having problems with the level of sound during the lecture, increase the volume on your computer.  Sound controls vary from machine to machine, so it is not possible to give more precise instructions here.

Q&A:At the end of the lecture, there will be a short question and answer session. 

If you wish to ask a question, please use the Chat function, at the bottom of the Zoom screen. Please type in your question, click return, and it will be sent to the lecture moderator, who will pass it on to Tamara to answer. 

If you wish to leave the lecture before the end, please click the END button on your screen.

Enjoy the lecture. 

To be held as a virtual event via Zoom

(Replaces a Study Day on the same subject)

Winnie-the-Pooh:   Exploring a Classic    

Prostitutes have been used as muses and models by artists throughout art history. In 16th century Venice courtesans were frequently depicted as luscious nudes reclining as Venuses or scantily clad Floras, serving as early advertisements for the most successful courtesans of Europe. In 19th century Paris, prostitutes were a key subject for artists, painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgas Degas and most famously, by Manet. This talk looks at the many different depictions of prostitution, from Titian’s seductive women, to Ingres’ sensual odalisques, to Egon Schiele’s erotically charged sketches and examines how the role of prostitution has been idealised, glamorised and brought to public attention. 

Stella Grace Lyons gained her BA in the History of Art with a 1st class in her dissertation from the University of Bristol, and her MA in History of Art at the University of Warwick. She spent a year studying Renaissance art in Italy at the British Institute of Florence, and three months studying Venetian art in Venice. In addition, she attended drawing classes at the prestigious Charles H. Cecil studios in Florence. In 2017, Stella was selected by The Arts Society to lecture at the launch of ‘Drawing Room Discussions’ in association with ROSL ARTS, hosted by Guardian arts correspondent Maev Kennedy. Stella runs her own art history courses and she is also a regular lecturer in the UK and Europe for The Arts Society, National Trust, Contemporary Arts Society Wales (CASW), Classical Education Forum, WEA, and several travel companies. Stella also works as an artist’s model for the internationally renowned figurative artist, Harry Holland 

Cloaked for months of the year in snow or mist, it is only in summer that the more benign character of Norway, Denmark and Sweden is revealed, providing the inspiration behind the ravishing paintings of artists such as Kitty Kieland, Anders Zorn, Elif Petersson and Peder Krøyer to name just a few. Often working in small communes, such as at the north Danish coastal village of Skagen these artists adapted the style of impressionism to the limpid light of the Nordic climate, a light which is hauntingly beautiful in the long hours of summer and especially at twilight. Midnight bonfires, moonlit promenades and the midsummer dance are all favourite subjects of these artists who depicted a world of summer stillness and tradition just as it was about to be shattered by the firestorm of World War 1.

A senior modern languages teacher in an independent grammar school for many years, Brian Healey also enjoyed a successful parallel career since the 1980s as a professional artist and interior designer. Since 2006 he has been regularly appointed to a number of prestigious ocean and river cruise lines, either as resident artist, guest lecturer on art history or as destination speaker for more than forty countries. Most recently this work has successfully extended to art guiding through important towns and museums in France, Belgium, Holland and Spain. 

Anyone who has been to Barcelona will know the extraordinary buildings of this great Catalonian architect, who spent his life working there at the turn of the 20th century. Undulating and raking forms, coloured ceramic tiles and intricate wrought ironwork all feature in Gaudi’s highly unusual designs, which he created for patrons who were prospering at the time of Barcelona’s industrial expansion.This lecture would make an excellent introduction for those planning to visit Barcelona to see for themselves the realisation of Gaudi’s outstandingly imaginative designs in this vibrant Catalonian city.

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

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

Chief Executive of the Royal School of Needlework, based at Hampton Court Palace, Dr Kay-Williams is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. She has a longstanding interest in textiles, especially colour, and published her first book The Story of Colour in Textiles in 2013.

Fine art has provided advertisers and their agencies with a great deal of material to use in their creative campaigns. Tony describes some of the processes by which these advertisements have been created and why the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo have been a particularly rich source. From the Renaissance through to the present day fine art continues to provide opportunities to enhance Brand imagery with admiration, humour, satire and irony. In an entertaining and informative lecture Tony uses a wide range of visuals and video to show examples of the original works, the creative process and the (not always entirely successful) advertisements that are the end result.

Tony Rawlins was educated at Highgate School, starting his career in advertising in 1965 as a mail boy in J.Walter Thompson. He graduated through the training system there to become an account director and subsequently worked in a number of agencies before setting up on his own in 1985. There he handled primarily Guinness advertising in Africa and the Caribbean, where he produced many commercials and print ads for them over a period of 15 years. He remains active as a consultant in the industry, but now concentrates on more philanthropic projects - producing a film in the rural villages of Nigeria for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. More recently he has completed a sanitation project in Haiti after it was devastated by Hurricane Matthew in 2016.  

He has been a member of The Arts Society for many years. His earlier lecturing experience includes presenting to client groups, sales conferences and students of creative advertising in the UK and overseas. More recently he has been lecturing to Arts Societies in the UK and Europe.

This story has a plot worthy of Agatha Christie. The cast includes Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Laszlo Moholy Nagy, refugees from the Bauhaus in Germany, Henry Moore the sculptor, the writers Nicholas Monsarrat and Agatha Christie as well as numerous other writers, intellectuals and civil servants.

The setting is The Lawn Road Flats, a startling Modernist block in a leafy road in North London. It offered a radical new housing concept for young professionals: small serviced flats with a communal restaurant and popular club. But was there a darker side to this lively bohemian environment? It was in fact also home to a nest of Soviet spies, including the recruiter and controller of the Cambridge 5.

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

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

Raoul Dufy (1877-1953) was a key player in early twentieth century avant garde art, design and literary/theatrical circles in Paris. As a widely travelled polymath, Dufy's charismatic personality, wit and curiosity about the world was infectious.

His imagination and technical virtuosity - across a range of media including painting and lithography, posters, book illustration, theatrical set design, textiles and fashion, ceramics and large murals - cut across all conventional boundaries. Whether a small intricate woodcut illustrating a love poem, or the truly gigantic 1937 world fair murals depicting the role of electricity in the modern age, the effect is mesmerising.

Dufy defies categorisation, constantly innovating and experimenting with new materials and effects. His analysis of the visual world is sophisticated and joyous in equal measure. Perhaps this goes some way to explain why some later critics fail to grasp its complexity and pigeonhole him a 'decorative artist', or misunderstand the irony in his witty yet gentle caricatures of elegant social life.

*******************************************************************************

Mary has thirty years' experience as a lecturer, with a BA in History and History of Art and a MA with distinction in History of Art from University College London. Her experience includes public lectures in museums, tutoring for the Open University, visiting lecturer at Christie's Education in London, museum curator at Platt Hall, the Gallery of Costume, Manchester. Now a freelance lecturer to various arts, heritage and antiquarian societies, she also worked in Pentagram design consultancy in London and New York, organising conferences and special events. Author of various articles on design and visual awareness issues, her background combines an unusual blend of academic and visual communications skills.

******************************************************************

Lecture will be followed by Xmas drinks and nibbles.

In 1917 Norman Wilkinson, a first-rate painter and poster designer, invented Dazzle ‘camouflage’. Thousands of British and Allied ships were painted with vivid and violently contrasting patterns of colour to deter U-boat attacks. Discover the life and work of Wilkinson and his Dazzle scheme that continues to inspire art and design. Was it really inspired by Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism? 

************************************************************************

James Taylor studied at the Universities of St Andrews and Manchester, and is a former curator of paintings, drawings and prints, and co-ordinator of various exhibitions and galleries, at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

This lecture is based on Colin Davies’s book ‘A New History of Modern Architecture’ published in August 2017. Major themes in 20th and 21st century architecture, such as the rise of Modernism, the Postmodernist reaction, the survival of Classicism, and the effects of digital culture on the architecture of the new century, are introduced and explained in jargon-free terms. The aim is to foster a fuller understanding Modern architecture and thereby encourage the enjoyment of its rich variety.

****************************************************************************

Prof of Architectural Theory. Former editor Architects Journal and contrib to mags worldwide. Books: Thinking About Architecture, Key Houses of the Twentieth Century,The Prefab Home, High Tech Architecture, A New History of Modern Architecture (published by Laurence King) and monographs on work of Foster, Hopkins, Grimshaw.

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/study day sets them head-to-head and examines their differences, their similarities, their battles and their shared triumphs. But who will ultimately be crowned star painter? As well as giving an overview of Turner and Constable, the subject provides an enjoyable overview of the British art world during the nineteenth century.

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

This is an additional lecture for which there will be a £15 charge which we will give to charity

Born in the years between the Wars, Romantic Modernism continues to inspire 21st century designers and painters like Mark Hearld and Emily Sutton. This lecture offers a vibrant alternative vision of Modernist art, from an English perspective. 

Suzanne Cooper studied History at Oxford University and Art History at the Courtauld Institute, and at Christie's Education. She was a Curator and Research Fellow at the V&A Museum for 12 years, and is now a Visiting Fellow at the University of York. She has lectured extensively for museums and on Cunard liners, and undertaken broadcasts and consultancies for the BBC and Channel Four. Historical Consultant to Ralph Fiennes for The Invisible Woman, a film about Charles Dickens, and the BBC drama, The Living and the Dead. Publications include Pre-Raphaelite Art in the Victoria and Albert Museum (2003), The Victorian Woman (2001), and Effie Gray, a biography of the Scottish wife of John Ruskin and John Everett Millais. A film based on her life, starring Emma Thompson, was released in 2014. Currently Research Curator at York Art Gallery, workingon an exhibition Turner, Ruskin and the Storm Cloud opening in Spring 2019.

The reign of Queen Victoria witnessed a spectacular rise in the visibility, wealth, and prestige of English artists and designers. Leading this resurgence was a group of artists who established their studios in and around the new, fashionable district of London's Holland Park.

The circle was formed around G.F. Watts,  the handsome and accomplished Frederic Leighton; and Valentine Prinsep.The artists who followed included Luke Fildes, Hamo Thornycroft, William Burges, Marcus Stone and William Holman Hunt. Their studio-houses, designed by prominent architects of the era were featured in architectural journals and society magazines and several of them still stand today. This lecture tells the fascinating story of their lives, works, and influence on society.

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

Music was a constant theme in Manet’s life and art. His wife Suzanne Leenhoff was a gifted pianist, and regular musical soirées were held at the Manet family home. His pictures of musicians and their audiences range from major early canvases depicting itinerant gypsy musicians and Spanish dancers, through to paintings encompassing the full range of Parisian musical culture, from private performances to street entertainment, café concerts and the Paris Opera. Bringing together Manet’s art and the music that inspired him (including Spanish flamenco, Haydn string quartets, Wagner piano reductions, café songs, and opera highlights) this lecture immerses you in Manet’s world.

Dr Lois Oliver studied English Literature at Cambridge University, and History of Art at the Courtauld Institute, completing an MA in Venetian Renaissance Art and writing her doctoral thesis on The Image of the Artist, Paris 1815-1855. She worked at the Harvard University Art Museums before joining the curatorial team at the V&A and then the National Gallery where she co-curated the major exhibition Rebels and Martyrs: the image of the artist in the nineteenth century (2006) and a series of touring exhibitions. Currently Assistant Professor in History of Art at the University of Notre Dame in London, and a Visiting Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute, she writes audio and multimedia tours for clients including the National Gallery, National Maritime Museum, Royal Academy and Tate, and has appeared on TV programmes for the BBC and Channel 5, as well as broadcasting on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. Also a keen violinist, she plays regularly with orchestras including the Endellion Festival Orchestra.

Sarah Stopford is a member of our society, TASHH. She is a guide and lecturer at Tate Britain and Tate Modern.  She studied art history as part of her first degree at Harvard.  After studying and teaching English literature,  she returned to the world of art history where her special interests are in British and post-1900 art, as well as the connections between literature and the visual arts. 

During his lifetime Joshua Reynolds was amongst the most celebrated artists in Western Europe. He was a brilliant portraitist, impressario, a skilled networker and a master of spin. Through his paintings, his friendships and the manipulation of the media, Reynolds was - as this lecture will reveal - a driving force in the creation of the cult of celebrity which is so familiar to us today. 

Linda Smith has lectured to our society on several occasions, including her excellent Special Interest Day in 2015 on Sculpture in the 20th Century. 

She is a well-qualified art historian with a broad range of knowledge and a special interest in British Art and the art of the 20th Century. 

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

Note the Tate's Exhibition, Edward Burne-Jones, ends on the 24th February 2019

Fagence Cooper received a BA in history from Oxford University and spent 12 years as a curator of the Victorian collections at the V&A where she co-curated The Victorian Vision exhibition in 2001. She is an honorary visiting fellow of the Universty of York

As well as writing, Fagence Cooper is a design consultant and has worked with the BBC and Channel 4 and was a historical consultant for the 2013 film The Invisible Woman.

Instead of commemorating their own losses, German artists looked to creating art forms that would respond to questions of apology and atonement: How does a nation of former persecutors mourn its victims? Angela Findlay is a professional artist, writer and freelance lecturer with a long-standing interest in the role the arts and the creative process can play in bringing about changes, on a personal level or within societies.

Drinks and nibbles witll follow this Lecture

This year is (nearly) the 500th anniversay of Tintoretto's birth..

Why were foreigner painters preferred by the aristocracy in London to native-born English painters, why did foreigners come in the first place, what was their motivation, and what was the impact of foreigners in London on English art and art practise? The lecture will look at the various formats and uses of art, tracing foreign artists from the Tudor period through to the Renaissance and Baroque, looking at their origins and how they came to work in England. It will examine the contributions of artists such as Holbein, Gerrit van Honthorst, Marcus Gheeraerts the younger, Lucas and Susanna Horenbout, Isaac Oliver, Paulus van Somer, van Dyck, Peter Lely, and Rubens. This lecture will look at how these artists influenced the British School of painting and assess their legacy.

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

Murder, poison, corruption and incest: all perfect ingredients for sensational popular culture. But in an age known for its brutality and church corruption were the Borgias really so bad? This lecture reveals the real family that dominated the Papacy and Italian politics during the last decade of the 15th century: the charismatic figure of Pope Alexander VI, living inside his sumptuously decorated apartments, the career of his son, Cesare, cardinal, general, employer of Da Vinci and the model for Machiavelli’s The Prince, and the journey of Lucrezia Borgia from “the greatest whore in Rome” to a devout and treasured duchess of the city Ferrara. Sometimes truth is more intoxicating than myth.

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

Julius Bryant has served as President of The Arts Society Hampstead Heath since it was founded (as HHDFAS) at Kenwood in 1991. He joined The Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood in 1983 as Assistant Curator and was promoted six years later as the first Director of English Heritage’s London Region of Historic Properties, while remaining based at Kenwood. Julius’s present position is as Keeper of Word and Image at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

In this special lecture he will reflect on over 21 years of working with Kenwood, sharing vivid memories of his adventures, from rediscovering lost masterpieces to buy for the museum, creating exhibitions, devising interior decorative schemes and restoring the overgrown landscape garden, while living at Kenwood with his family. Fond memories include giving H. M. Queen Elizabeth a personal tour of the Iveagh Bequest prior to a lake-side concert, sitting down to dinner with the present heads of Kenwood’s two past owner families, Lord Iveagh and Lord Mansfield, and showing Robert Adam around the house designed by his ancestor. 

Other, more salacious, confessions may arise during the lecture!

Members are reminded that a charge is made for the August lecture and proceeds go to Magic Lantern Art, the charity that takes art into schools and which we have supported for many years. Your committee, therefore, would urge you to attend what we are sure will be an informative and entertaining lecture.

We are also using this occasion to mark the 50thanniversary of NADFAS (as was). Drinks and nibbles will be served immediately following the lecture.

You will never forgive yourself if you miss this major cultural and social event.

Please click here for a booking form

When Capability Brown refused a fee of £1,000 to work in Ireland because “he had not yet finished England”, it marked the high tide of the English Landscape Movement. His birth in 1716 signalled the end of the Baroque age and his death in 1783 heralded all the excesses of Romanticism. The intervening years witnessed the greatest contribution Britain has made to Art.

The death of formality and the decline of baroque architecture went hand in hand with a change in the political climate following the deaths of Queen Anne in 1714 and Louis XIV in 1715. This is the age of the Grand Tour and the Whig party, of Lord Burlington, William Kent and Neo-Palladianism.  It was the Augustan Age, with Britain, almost unconsciously, trembling on the edge of Empire.

Brown’s important years as head gardener at Stowe, where he learnt from both Cobham and Kent formed the basis of his subsequent independent practise based in Hammersmith. From here Brown surveyed and transformed England from Milton Abbey to Alnwick Castle.

The change in taste and mood, driven by the increasing fondness for Gothick architecture and Romantic wildness and disorder in landscaping, caused Brown’s work to fall from favour as dull and formulaic. Landscapers like Repton ushered in a revival of formalism and so the wheel turned full circle.

James Bolton, a graduate of the  Inchbald School of Design 1990, was Head Gardener, Old Rectory Farnborough, and Faculty Director, Design History, Inchbald School of Design. Garden Designer 1992-. A lecturer for The Arts Society since 1995, he organises The Arts Society's garden study days and tours in UK and Europe including tours to the best private gardens in the UK, Italy, France and South Africa. He is the author of 'Garden Mania', a book on garden ornaments, published in 2000.

To mark the centenary of women first getting the vote which falls in 2018, this lecture will explore the story of the suffragettes through portrayals in art and their own artistic productions, and will look at how contemporary artists choose to portray female politicians in our own time and the controversies surrounding these depictions. 

Caroline Shenton is an archivist, historian and author. She was formerly Director of the Parliamentary Archives at Westminster and a senior archivist at The National Archives at Kew. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Historical Society and has appeared on national TV and radio and reviews books for The Spectator. Her first popular history book, The Day Parliament Burned Down, won the Political Book of the Year Award in 2013.

The Hindu temple complex of Angkor in Cambodia is the greatest archaeological site in Asia. Within an area of 400 square kilometres there are dozens of temples, many covered in jungle, but the most important of them all is Angkor Wat. Built in the 12th century, Angkor Wat is the biggest religious monument in the world and measures a square mile. This mystical temple is a recreation on earth of the Hindu cosmos, brilliantly constructed to align with the sun and moon and covered with exquisite carvings. This illustrated lecture will focus on the artistic heritage and religious symbolism of Angkor. It will reveal the historical background and show the evolution of the Khmer empire and its flowering of sculptural art which was dedicated to religious building. Other temples will be highlighted, such as the Bayon, swathed in mystery, and Banteay Srei, with scenes of the Hindu epics delicately carved in pink sandstone. It concludes with contemporary Cambodia and the role of Angkor today and the revival of the living arts, especially the classical Khmer ballet performed at the temples in celebration of the gods. Gorgeous dancers in shimmering silk costumes re-enact scenes from the Ramayana as the sun sets. As the last rays touch the sandstone, it turns gold and red, before darkness finally falls and the magnificent structure once more becomes part of the jungle. 

Denise Heywood is an art historian, author, lecturer, photographer and journalist. Worked in Cambodia in the 1990s and has been a scholar of Southeast Asian art ever since. Her books include one on the Buddhist temples of Laos, Ancient Luang Prabang and Laos, also in French, and Cambodian Dance Celebration of the Gods, with a foreword by the daughter of King Sihanouk.

Joseph Wright of Derby was an English landscape and portrait painter. He has been acclaimed as the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution. He is notable for his use of chiaroscuro effect, which emphasises the contrast of light and dark, and for his paintings of candle-lit subjects. His paintings of the birth of science out of alchemy, often based on the meetings of the Lunar Society, a group of scientists and industrialists living in the English Midlands, are a significant record of the struggle of science against religious values in the period known as the Age of enlightenment.

Many of Wright's paintings and drawings are owned by Derby city Council, and are on display at the Derby Museum and Art Gallery.

Our lecturer, Valerie Woodgate, is a lecturer and guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern and also at many other London galleries, for the National Trust, for Tate on P&O cruises and for the Arts Society throughout Britain. She is a former member of the teaching team at the Dulwich picture Gallery. She has lectured to our society on many occasions. 

(Image: Vesuvius in Eruption 1776)

Elizabeth has a humanities degree in Modern Art  from the Open University.  Recruited as a Guide when Tate Modern opened in 2000, she has since worked at both Tate Modern and Tate Britain. She has also lectured on cruises.

Elizabeth will look at the art produced in response to 2 World Wars, the rise of Communism, the Spanish Civil War, (Dali, Picasso) racism in Britain (Offili) and South Africa (Kentridge),  the Aids epidemic (Derek Jarman), human rights in China (Ai Wei Wei) and other challenging subject matter.

Whatever one’s political view point, there is much to admire and much to agree – or disagree - with.

Gavin is a broadcaster and writer who has appeared on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and has contributed to the Independent on Sunday and the Guardian.  He has lectured widely on the culture of Central Europe during the 19th and 20th Centuries at many galleries including the National, the Tate, the Neue in New York, the British Museum , the V&A , the Southbank Centre as well as many art societies.  

At the turn of the last century Vienna was the capital of a vast empire and one of the most exciting artistic laboratories in the world. It produced painters such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, and also architects Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffman; the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, the composer Gustav Mahler and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Our lecturer Clyde Binfield describes himself as a man of Kent, a Cambridge graduate, cruise lecturer, Professor Emeritus of History at Sheffield University. His lecture on Mackintosh and Glasgow coincides with  the 150th anniversary of the birth of the Glasgow-born architect, designer and artist who is celebrated as one of the most creative figures of the 20th century. He is regarded as the father of Glasgow style and one of the city’s most famous sons. 

The moving image has been a powerful source for imagination from the first moment a magic lantern flickered into life in the 17th century.

In this lecture Geri will be looking at how the Motion Pictures industry first developed throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. How it then went on to change the face of entertainment and inspire the imagination of some of the greatest artists of the early 20th century.

Geri is a former Fleet Street journalist and film PR. She has been lecturing for the past ten years and now heads up the Visual Arts distance learning programme for Exeter University.

This is our special extra lecture, cost is £15 which is given to charity.

Valerie Woodgate will look at paintings from the 15th to the 20th centuries and examine the way in which artists have used signs and symbols in Christian art and in Greek Myths which can be read as Christian allergories; the use of signs and symbols in 17th century Dutch, in Hogarth's Moralities, in victorian art and in modern artists use of both traditional and personal symbols to produce some of the most powerful works of 20th cntury art.

To download a booking form, please click here

Douglas is an art historian, artist, television presenter and lecturer on painting techniques, as well as the author of several art crime mysteries.

For thousands of years, the mystery of the Golden Section has inspired thinkers from all disciplines. Discover the secrets of its sacred geometry and beauty within creations from classical to contemporary. 

Alexandra’s background is in design and she is now a lecturer at many galleries including the Guildhall, the Tate Modern and Tate Britain. 

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

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

In the quietness of an enclosed garden filled with symbolic plants, or glimpsed inside a sturdy house, a young woman reads quietly, blissfully unaware that her life is about to change. Not just her life, but that of the western world and beyond. Approaching her, almost unwilling to interrupt her thoughts, an angel is poised to break the news, to make the great announcement. Whatever your personal beliefs, it’s hard to deny the impact Christianity would have on the world so the Annunciation by Gabriel to Mary, telling her that she was to bear a son was one of the most popular images of the Middle Ages, more popular indeed than the Nativity itself. This lecture reveals the key players in the story, dissects the symbolism of Mary and the Annunciation and examines the world-changing importance of that particular moment. It is richly illustrated with gorgeous images from the fourth to the sixteenth century. 

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

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

This talk combines the lives of the Astors, the Sackville Wests and the Rothschilds and their family history with the story of the gardens they have all created, despite their very different backgrounds, here in the English countryside. 

Caroline Rayman has lectured for many years to universities and art organisations in America and on cruise boats. She was an official guide at the British Museum and has published articles on samplers. Her lectures range from the role of the royal mistress in history to more scholarly lectures on Frederick the Great of Prussia.

Formerly Head of Geography, Downe House School Newbury, Christopher Rogers became interested in country house architecture whilst at Oxford and has lectured on the subject ever since.

Salisbury Cathedral, formally known as the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is an Anglican cathedral in Salisbury, England, and one of the leading examples of Early English architecture.[1] The main body of the cathedral was completed in only 38 years, from 1220 to 1258.

The art of the Victorian era gives us a wonderful insight into the life of the era; the tragedy of millions forced to emigrate; the thrill they experienced when using modern transport; their attitudes to the 'fallen woman', divorce, and equality; their obsession with sickness and mortality, childhood, homelessness and much, much more.

There is a charge for this additional lecture, proceeds go to our sponsored charity, Magic Lantern. For a booking form please click here.

The Great Fire of London of 1666, which came only months after the Great Plague, devastated most of the City of London. 13,500 houses, 87 churches and 44 livery halls, as well as many public buildings, were destroyed within four days. This lecture examines the devastation wrought by the fire, looks at the inspirational plans put forward for the rebuilding of the City and explains how the reconstruction which followed changed the face of London for ever. The lecture can be linked to a guided walk following the path of the Fire, from its starting point in Pudding Lane to Pie Corner where it was eventually checked. Old drinking houses hidden in narrow lanes, delightful churches built by Sir Christopher Wren after the Fire, the Guildhall and St. Paul’s Cathedral are some of the features along the route. 

Barbara Askew is a historian and has been a London Blue Badge Guide since 1988. Lecturer, Examiner and Course Director on Blue Badge Guide Training Courses and an acknowledged expert on Windsor Castle. A rota guide for the Albert Memorial, British Museum and Houses of Parliament. She has conducted tours for American museums and alumni groups for the past 25 years.

Tricha Passes took her BA (Hons) at London’s Courtauld Institute in Art History and her MA in Visual Culture at Bath Spa University in 2000. She teaches at the Department of Creative Arts at Bristol UWE, the Department for Continuing Education at Oxford University and in the Art History Department at Bristol University as well as on American Studies Programmes. In 2009 she won the Teaching and Learning Prize for the Faculty of Arts at the University of Bristol.

This talk gives an account of developments in British painting (and the occasional sculpture) from the days of the Pre-Raphaelites to the aftermath of World War Two. This was a particularly fertile period in the history of art, and the talk pays particular attention to the way in which developments in Paris were received by the London art world; and how British artists contributed to the exciting exchange of new ideas.

Some of the artists mentioned and/or discussed (but always subject to change): Augustus Egg, The Pre-Raphaelites, James Tissot, Albert Moore, James McNeil Whistler, Gwen John, Augustus John, Walter Sickert, The Bloomsbury Group, The Vorticists, Paul Nash, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Stanley Spencer, Francis Bacon. 

Linda Smith holds two first-class degrees in Art History. She is an experienced guide and lecturer at Tate Britain, Tate Modern and the Dulwich Picture Gallery. 

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. 

Brian Duffy was educated at New College, Oxford, and formerly Senior Curator of the Wallace Collection where he had particular responsibility for exhibitions and nineteenth-century paintings. He has given countless tours of the Collection for visiting groups (including NADFAS) and many lectures on its art and other related subjects. His latest publication, The Discovery of Paris, is a book on early nineteenth-century watercolour views of Paris by major British artists.

Bosch’s world of devils, demons and deadly sins are truly unforgettable. At the same time, his extraordinary treatment of religious themes can be deeply moving. His works are among the most mysterious in the whole of European art, yet if we examine them in the context of contemporary politics and cultural sources we find that not only are they perfectly understandable, but they also provide an amazing insight into the society in which the artist lived. 

Making a welcome return to HHDFAS, Valerie Woodgate is a Lecturer and Guide in Tate Britain and Tate Modern, and for Tate on cruises. Lecturer in other major galleries, including the Dulwich Picture Gallery, and, on religious art, in churches and cathedrals. Script-writer for Living Paintings Trust (art for the blind and partially-sighted).

Botticelli is one of the best-loved artists of the Florentine renaissance. This lecture looks at his career and at the city that shaped his art, putting his paintings in their historical context, and showing how they reflect Botticelli’s world. From The Birth of Venus and Primavera, painted during the golden age of the Medici, to the Mystic Nativity, redolent of the religious fervour of Savonarola, who dominated Florence after the expulsion of the Medici in 1494, Botticelli’s paintings are not only stunning works of art, but visual testimony to one of the most eventful periods in Florentine history. 

Dr Paula  Nuttall is Director of V&A Medieval & Renaissance Year course. She is author of 'From Flanders to Florence: the Impact of Netherlandish Painting 1400-1500' (Yale, 2004). She also lectures for the Courtauld Institute, Christie's Education, the Art Fund and the National Gallery. Formerly lecturer at the British Institute of Florence.

The Camden Town Group was an innovative circle of painters united by the desire to paint works of a modern character. They combined the techniques and visions of European Post-Impressionism with the changing modernity of Edwardian London. This lecture introduces the core members of the group, led by Walter Richard Sickert, and tells the story of their brief but significant association. We will examine the key themes addressed within their work: urban life, popular entertainment and the lower social classes, as well as Sickert’s infamous series of paintings inspired by the notorious Camden Town murder. 

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

Toys form an intimate part of our own personal histories. Some toys are universal: rattles, balls, kites and dolls entertained children in ancient times. Others reflect modern concerns: clockwork toys have been superseded by battery-operated and electronic toys. The making and the design of toys parallel the evolution of materials and technologies, trade and marketing, cultural trends and ideas about childhood. Whatever changes affect the toys of the future, however, the relationship between creativity and play will surely remain central.

Toys teach children about the environment that surrounds them, while allowing them to explore the inner world of the imagination. 

Chloë is a specialist in the art and culture of Latin America. She is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute has carried out fieldwork, curated several exhibitions, and assisted on TV documentaries for BBC and Channel 4. 

This talk traces the important role of the arts in Spain in the development of Western Art. The masterworks of leading artists will be investigated: after El Greco came ‘The Golden Age of Spanish Painting’ with Velázquez, Zurbarán and Murillo. Goya’s work stood out during revolutionary times while the twentieth century saw the brilliant innovations of Dalí, Miró and, above all, Picasso. 

HHDFAS is pleased to welcome back Eveline who has lectured to us frequently and guided us on out tour last year to Dresden. Eveline is a  lecturer in Fine Arts and tour-guide  and is. Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Dresden Trust.

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. Finally, we look at the work of more recent exponents, such as Martin Parr and Andreas Gursky. 

Brian Stater has taught architectural history at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, since 1997 and has been a NADFAS lecturer since 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, among many others, his great hero Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Theodora Clarke is founder and editor of the online arts magazine Russian Art and Culture. She also set up Russian Art Week in London and publishes the bi-annual guide to this major event. She is an art historian, lecturer and critic specialising in Russian art and European modernism. Theodora lectures widely on twentieth-century avant-garde painting and sculpture to audiences across the UK at museums, galleries, universities and associations, and conducts cultural tours to Russia. She  holds a BA in Art History from Newcastle University and an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art in Russian Art. 

This is an additional charity lecture in aid of Magic Lantern, and there will be a charge of £12/14 members/non members. All proceeds after payment of room hire will go to the charity.

The Celts were a series of tribes sharing a similar language and occupying parts of Europe from the 8th to the mid 1st century BC. Though Greek and Roman writers portrayed them as fearsome, barbaric warriors, their archaeological remains reveal an accomplished society whose metalwork shows a technical and artistic brilliance unsurpassed in prehistoric Europe.

This lecture is linked to The Celts exhibition in the British Museum in autumn 2015 

Barbara Askew is a historian and London Blue Badge Guide since 1988. She is a lecturer, examiner and course director on Blue Badge Guide Training Courses and an acknowledged expert on Windsor Castle.

Marking the precise bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, this lecture complements a major exhibition to be held at the Royal Academy in autumn 2015. The decisive allied victory over Napoleon brought to an end a series of wars that had convulsed Europe. Most people of the time experienced these conflicts not on the battlefield but through art. This lecture explores the contrasting views presented by British and French artists, including such masters as J. M. W. Turner and J.-L. David. We also consider the insatiable public appetite for rather less elevated art forms, ranging from ladies’ fans illustrated with the latest military news, to full re-enactments of naval battles played out on real water at Sadler’s Wells Theatre.

For those with an as yet unsatisfied appetite for Waterloo-ana, don't forget out visit next week to Stratfield Saye the Iron Duke's country home, see the Visits page for details

David Tovey is an independent art historian specialising in representational art in St Ives, Cornwall, from 1800 to 1950. He has published eight books, of which five have been major, ground-breaking surveys of St Ives art. His new research has demonstrated conclusively that St Ives should be considered Britain’s premier art colony and has highlighted the influence that the colony had internationally, particularly on artists from America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Leslie Primo studied at Birkbeck College and is a highly popular lecturer and tutor at the National Gallery, Reading University, the National Portrait Gallery and the City Literary and Bishopsgate Institutes in London, specialising in early Medieval and Renaissance art.

Graduating with an MA in the History of Art (Courtauld), Barry Venning has been an Associate lecturer for the Open University since 1986, teaching advanced courses on Modern Art, Italian Renaissance and “Art and its Histories”. He has written and lectured extensively on Turner, and he is the author of books on Constable (1992) and Turner (2003).

Frank is a Guide and lecturer at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, lecturer at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, for the National Trust, the Art Fund and other organisations. He is a lecturer for the Tate on P&O Cruises. He lectures to NADFAS (the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies) throughout Britain, and to related organisations in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. He is a script-writer for the Living Paintings Trust, which brings art to the blind and partially-sighted.

Malcolm Kenwood is a former specialist police detective investigating art and antique crime. Upon his retirement he directed lectures to educate Law Enforcement officers to combat art crime, in partnership with the Metropolitan Police Art and Antiques Unit at New Scotland Yard in London. In addition he was the Recoveries Director for the Art Loss Register which operates an international commercial database of stolen cultural property. He has lectured to police conferences, customs officers, auction house staff, museum employees, Interpol, FBI and specialist interest groups.

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. Stained glass or architectural glass work is used extensively in secular buildings as well as churches. The lecture focuses mainly on work in secular buildings - public buildings, offices, schools, hospitals, community centres etc, but also on how glass and windows are made. Examples of the lecturer's own work will be shown as well.

There is a £10 charge, the surplus going to MAGIC LANTERN. Non members are welcome. Please use the booking form at the bottom of the attached flier you can find on the 'Documents' tab on the About Us' page

Val Woodgate is a Lecturer and Guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, also at many other London Galleries, for the National Trust and other organisations. She is a member of the teaching team at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, and a script-writer for the Living Paintings Trust, which brings art to the blind and partially-sighted.

An expert in the history and culture of the Middle East and North Africa, Christopher Bradley is a professional tour guide and lecturer. He has written extensively on Arabia and is the author of The Discovery Guide to Yemen, Insight Guide to the Silk Road and Berlitz Guides to Libya; The Red Sea; Cairo; Abu Dhabi and Nile Cruising. As a film producer and cameraman he has made documentaries for the BBC, National Geographic TV and Channel 4.

Alexandra is a visiting lecturer to art colleges and art centres. Since 2004 she has been an accredited lecturer for NADFAS. In 2007 and 2012 she undertook a lecture tour of Australia.

Ancient Egyptian society was male-dominated with the pharaoh at the apex of the social pyramid, but some of the most stunning images in ancient Egyptian art are of women, It is fascinating to examine these representations to gain some understanding of the ancient attitudes towards women. The role of women in ancient Egyptian society was crucial. This lecture looks at a wealth of imagery to determine the variety of occupations performed by ancient Egyptian women of all social classes. the lecture attempts to redress the balance that is usually skewed towards the male pharaoh, priests and officials of ancient Egypt.

The success of Downton Abbey demonstrates our continuing fascination with 'the way we used to live', with the labours of 'those below stairs' arousing as much curiosity of the privileged. The Victorians transformed Christmas into the most important annual celebration, from inventing the greetings card to introducing the turkey. It became a family holiday; the preparation and eating of the feast, decorations and gift giving, singing carols and parlour games, all were essential to the celebrations. Many attribute this change to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who introduced the bedecked Christmas tree from his German homeland. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol espouse and popularised Victorian family values, charity and goodwill, peace and happiness, which encapsulate the spirit of Christmas. Using contemporary images, the lecture charts how our modern Christmas was invented by the Victorians.

This lecture examines the work of the Surrealists from the twenties onwards as revolutionary explorations of dreams and the unconscious.; the interest of the group in the writings of Freud and Jung; the role of eroticism in the work of Dali and Bellmer; and the contribution of women artists such as Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington and Frieda Kahlo to the essentially male-orientated world of Surrealism. The lecturer gives a personal slant on this fascinating subject having met Dali, Bellmer and Fini and having written major surveys of the life and work of both Bellmer and Fini.

This lecture looks at ordinary working people; skilled and unskilled workers in both urban and agricultural environments, craftsmen, artisans, shopkeepers, domestic servants, entertainers, prostitutes, beggars, paupers, slaves. Throughout the history of western art, they have always been there; for centuries as mute observers, background detail or comic relief. But as the world changes, art changes, and this talk will discuss the move of low-life subject matter from the despised and vulgar fringes of popular taste into the respectable mainstream and out again into political radicalism and avant-garde edginess. If you attended this lecture and would like to tell us what you though of it, please follow this link and complete the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZMPYW7V.

Sandro Botticelli is one of the most popular artists of the Renaissance. His most famous paintings, filled with elegant and ethereal figures have almost become a shorthand for a remarkable creative period - the Florence of Lorenzo the Magnificent. but as the fifteenth century drew to a close, the death of Lorenzo, foreign invasions, and the rise and fall of the preacher Girolamo Savanarola made Florence a tempestuous place to be. In this lecture we'll see now Botticelli's paintings reflect this turbulent world, filled with political rivalry, religious passion and deep personal conflict. If you attended this lecture, please let the Committee know what you thought of it by completing a short survey. Just copy this link and paste it into your web browser: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WCTN8FL

Hans Hobein the Younger 1497 - 1543 a look at Holbein, his life, what is known of it, and his work. Focussing particularly on his two extended stays in England, this lecture will explore the religious and political background of Holbein's times and the impact this had on his life and career as an artist, It will also look at Holbein's close links withe the court of Henry Vlll during his second visit to England and how his images of the king have done a great deal to establish a certain view of Henry in modern minds. Please give us your opinion of this lecture; just copy and paste this link into your browser to answer the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/873FCFZ

The horse is so rooted in the psyche of the Western imagination that it has maintained its symbolic power. The epitome of speed and strength, its productive force was taken as the measurement of mechanical power, hence 'horse-power'. Stubbs depicted the English thoroughbred as a lean, mean racing machine. Degas learned from sequential photography how to represent the mechanical movements of a galloping horse. Raymond Duchamp Villon's 'The Horse' (1914) fused equine and mechanical parts into a modern metaphor of horse power, compressed, piston-like, menacing. By contrast, Gauguin and the Blue Rider employed the horse to symbolise a spiritual rejection of modernity;the horse was innocence, to ride naked was to be at one with nature. For Munnings, the horse represented tradition, a defining image of Englishness. For the Fascists, and Nazis, the horse was a symbol of authority. Marino Marini undermined the image, he toppled the mounted figure from the horse. In Guernica (1937), the greatest protest painting of the twentieth century, Picasso employed an agonised horse in its death throes to evoke the destruction of the civilian population by the German condor Legion flying for Franco in the Spanish Civil war. The lecture concludes with a series of highly ambitious equestrian images by our leading contemporary artists. Mark Wallinger's gigantic 50 metre high horse was to tower over the kent countryside at Ebbsfleet in 2012 as a reminder of the continuing vitality of the image.

Tim Stimson's involvement in art began with the practical; he made his living for a number of years as a painter and ceramicist in Scotland and Wales, before returning to university to study literature and history of art and then training to teach adults. For the last fifteen years he has been a freelance cultural and art historian specialising in the 19th century and in 17th century art and society. He now lectures for the Universities of Hull, Cambridge and Nottingham, the WEA and NADFAS, and presents residential study courses in Britain and Europe.

Janusz Karczewski-Slowikowski is a researcher in English furniture and an antique dealer. He also has practical experience in the construction, decoration and restoration of furniture.