This event will be at The Haslemere Museum time 7.00 for 7.30 pm

Ticket cost £25.00 and will be a light- hearted look at seaside entertainment over the years.

This is a ticketed event and will include wine and refreshments.

Booking Opens at the May lecture,

Sir Alfred James Munnings, KCVO PRA RI is known as having been one of England's finest painters of horses, and as an outspoken critic of Modernism. Engaged by Lord Beaverbrook's Canadian War Memorials Fund after the Great War, he earned several prestigious commissions, which made him wealthy. 

Born: 8 October 1878, Mendham

Died: 17 July 1959 (age 80 years), Dedham

Spouse: Violet Munnings (m. 1920–1959), Florence Carter-Wood (m. 1912–1914)

Movement: Newlyn School  Known for: Painting

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, mononymously known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of Western art. 

Born: 15 July 1606, Leiden, Netherlands

Died: 4 October 1669 (age 63 years), Amsterdam, Netherlands

Periods: Baroque, Dutch Golden Age, Baroque painting

Spouse: Saskia van Uylenburgh (m. 1634–1642)

Influenced by: Caravaggio, Titian, Hendrick ter Brugghen, Hercules Seghers

This lecture sets Rembrandt in the context of the Dutch Golden Age and the wealth and influence of Amsterdam. It shows the range of reasons why an artist makes self-portraits and how he used them to further his career.

Landseer was born in London, the son of the engraver John Landseer A.R.A and Jane Potts. He was something of a prodigy whose artistic talents were recognised early on. He studied under several artists, including his father, and the history painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, who encouraged the young Landseer to perform dissections in order to fully understand animal musculature and skeletal structure.[Landseer's life was entwined with the Royal Academy. At the age of just 13, in 1815, he exhibited works there as an “Honorary Exhibitor”. He was elected an Associate at the minimum age of 24, and an Academician five years later in 1831

In huge demand socially, Edwin Landseer taught Queen Victoria and Prince albert to etch.  Eventually he became stressed, drunk and mad, comparing himself to one of his own hunted stags.

Alice Ernestine Prin (2 October 1901 – 29 April 1953), nicknamed the Queen of Montparnasse and often known as Kiki de Montparnasse, was a French model, chanteuse, memoirist and painter during the Jazz Age. She flourished in, and helped define, the liberated culture of Paris in the so-called Années folles ("crazy years" in French). She became one of the most famous models of the 20th century and in the history of avant-garde art.

The lecture looks at the creation of the BBC and explores how radio was first used as a form of mass communication

Since 1988 Nick  lived in London and worked for the BBC in Television and Radio. During his time working for the Corporation, he have helped cover some of the great events of History, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the terrible events of 9/11, from the fall of the Thatcher Government to the celebrations of the Queen's Dimond Jubilee. He is a blue badge guide and takes tours around London.

Richard Whincop is a UK figurative artist, designer and lecturer.​He combines skills in traditional painting and contemporary design to produce visually arresting works that are rich in meaning. He also uses the latest design software to create innovative artworks tailored to unique architectural spaces.

An experienced Art History lecturer, Richard lives in Chichester, West Sussex, and works and exhibits worldwide.

The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, with over 1000 years of art in Europe, and at certain periods in Western Asia and Northern Africa. It includes major art movements and periods, national and regional art, genres, revivals, the artists' crafts, and the artists themselves.

Art historians attempt to classify medieval art into major periods and styles, often with some difficulty. A generally accepted scheme includes the later phases of Early Christian art, Migration Period art, Byzantine art, Insular art, Pre-Romanesque, Romanesque art, and Gothic art, as well as many other periods within these central styles. In addition, each region, mostly during the period in the process of becoming nations or cultures, had its own distinct artistic style, such as Anglo-Saxon art or Viking art.

An amusing lecture.  Tyler will talk about the seemingly happy world of professional family pantomime and what it’s really like.  He’ll look at famous names, the greatest Dames and the old routines that we all remember.  This is a revealing look at professional panto from someone who was born into it.

Known by all for his use of light in his paintings and a complex man who gave his works to the nation. This lecture juxtaposes his paintings with masterpieces that inspired him.The Fighting Temeraire, a painting so revered it was chosen as the subject of the new £20 bank note, reflecting its status as a national icon and masterpiece. Turner was a man who painted subjects which were very relevant to the events of the time like slavery and the Napolionic wars

The Ottoman Empire was at the peak of its power during the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent. Money was pouring into the Ottoman capital and being invested in architecture, ceramics, textiles and manuscripts. This lecture introduces some of the treasures of this period and Süleyman’s importance as a patron.

Antonia Cevizi gave a wonderful study day lecture earlier in 2025.

Not just an amazing piece of needlework and so much more than the story of Hastings.  Rupert unravels some of its mysteries, places it  in the context of its age and establishes it as landmark in the history of Western Art.

Celebrate the Roaring Twenties with an interdisciplinary exploration of the arts of the era’s protaganists.

This is a ticketed event to be held at the Haslemere Museum.

7.00 for7.30 pm Cost £25.00 per person

When Jane Austen declared that she wrote ‘only for fame’, she was, of course, being ironic: she published anonymously; there is no record on her gravestone that she was a writer; and her books fell out of print shortly after her death.  But now, Jane Austen is one of our best loved authors, with legions of adoring fans throughout the world.  Her novels have inspired countless stage and screen adaptations, and even provided solace to soldiers in the trenches.  She is the face of the £10 banknote, and she adorns tea towels and fridge magnets everywhere.  Jane Austen is now very famous indeed. 

But how did it all happen?  This lecture will chart Jane Austen’s rise to fame; it will explore the making of a literary celebrity and examine Austen’s legacy, 250 years after her birth.

Whether drawing Duchesses or portraying princes. John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was high society’s  leading portraitist.  Flaunting a consummate technique, his luxurious canvases mirrored his subject’s wealth.  Yet beneath the dazzling works lurks a much rawer world by far.  This talk charts his life and prolific output showing that, like the era he came to represent, Sargent was always on the cusp of seismic change.

Despite the acclaim and commercial success of his portraits, Sargent experienced a sense of disillusionment with the genre. He expressed dissatisfaction with the superficiality of societal portraiture, which often prioritized appearance over depth and character.

Ths lecture is part of the Haslemere Festival so bring all your friends. There will be a tea and cake afterwards afterwards

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

Dr Conlin is a historian of British cultural history from c.1750 to the present, with a particular interest in the history of museums. He is The National Gallery’s authorised historian.

‘There is nothing which has been yet contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn’ Samuel Johnson

Pubs and their signs are a fundamental part of our history and cultural heritage.

There are some 17,000 different pub names but why are there so many pubs called the ‘Red Lion’, the ‘Crown’ or ‘White Hart’? Come to this lecture to find the answer.

The extraordinary story of the nine weeks that Van Gogh and Gauguin spent together in Arles in southern France in 1888 is one of the most famous in the whole history of art. So many powerful emotions are swept up in it while of course it also led to some of the most celebrated paintings of early modern art. The encounter between these two tempestuous characters, including new research on the episode of Van Gogh cutting off his ear, forms the fascinating subject of this lecture which also places the artists' stay in Arles in the context of their careers and within the wider history of late nineteenth-century painting.  No lecture could have a more glorious range of dazzling paintings.

The American artist who has become synonomous with the isolation experienced by many in the Covid era.  We will look at Hopper's unique contribution to American art in the 20th century with his haunting images of loneliness in the midst of urban life.

For the officers of the British empire, “no quarters in the world were as delightful as Quebec” and it was in winter that the Canadian social season sprang to life. Crisp, moonlit nights provided a perfect backdrop for midnight sleigh rides between country taverns ladling out hot punch; torch-lit walks on snow-shoes to picnics under frozen waterfalls; balls and champagne-suppers on ice; daring toboggan runs; and, faux battles fought with fireworks between ice castles lit up by fire. Arrayed in rich furs and the bright colours associated with the trappers of the ancien regime, the men and women of the middle classes lived "in splendid style and were fond in the extreme of convivial amusements”. In tandem with the officers, they laid on, “large parties every night, dancing till four of five in the morning,” prompting one English lady to remark, “the restlessness of the city astonished me very much”. Through art and anecdotes, we’ll take a nostalgic look back at when winter was wonderful.  

This lecture explores the fascinating story of how dyes were discovered, made and used, focusing on some of the social implications of colour at different times in history. The lecture takes us from pre-historic man to the middle of the 19th century and geographically from Europe to the Middle East, India, Turkey, north America, Mexico and Peru. It is a story of exploration, invention, war, the church, money, power and sex.

The Arts and Crafts gardens created, in particular by Sir Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll, set a standard against which English gardens would be measured for the next 60 years. Sissinghurst, created and gardened by Vita Sackville-West, novelist, poet and garden writer, and her husband, Harold Nicholson, from 1930 to her death in 1962, is the perfect example of this style; wonderful plantsmanship set within a framework of hedges and vistas.

Sissinghurst is the child of Knole, the sprawling Elizabethan house that Vita did not inherit, described by her as having “an inward gaiety of an aging woman who has had many lovers and seen many generations come and go.” The Nicholsons acquired a ruin and, to their intense surprised, created, along with Lawrence Johnston’s Hidcote, the quintessential twentieth century English garden.

This lecture looks at the life of Vita Sackville-West and the extraordinary garden that she created which nearly 60 years after her death continues to charm and delight

There is no name more evocative of Bohemian life: of high spirits, decadence, poverty, and revolutionary art in Paris, than Montmartre. In reality it was little more than a rundown suburb overlooking the city, bristling with windmills. But the garden cafes, the dancehalls and cabarets, and the ramshackled studios that spilled down the hillside of Montmartre would become the inspiration and home to some of France’s greatest artists.

From the Moulin de la Galette where Renoir painted Parisians dancing in the afternoon sunlight, to Toulouse Lautrec’s vivid images of the Moulin Rouge, the smoke filled cabaret where the can-can was danced to Offenbach’s music, to the shabby garrets of the Bateau Lavoir where a group of artists headed by Picasso would paint canvases that would shake the foundations of Western art, this lecture charts the course of this extraordinary artistic life.

JULY EVENING 6.15 pm for 7.15pm at the Haslemere Museum.This is a ticketed event and will cost £25.00 per person. Booking will open at the May lecture.

Carriges at 8.30pm

"This talk is on how magicians have appeared in art throughout the centuries, whether in paintings, satirical prints or cartoons. Early artists used the magician to symbolise the mysterious and the unknown, associating them with astrology. In the 16th century, Pieter Bruegel and Hieronymus Bosch produced two of the most famous and striking pictures of the conjurer performing the Cups and Balls trick. The 18th and 19th century saw a proliferation in engravings and lithographs showing the magician both indoors and on the streets. Bringing it right up to date there are examples of how cartoonists and satirists delight in linking politicians with skulduggery with images of them featuring Sawing a Woman in Half, Vanishing illusions or pulling a Rabbit out of the Hat."

 Some of the tricks talked about are performed by Ian.Ian Keable gained a First Class degree from Oxford University, qualified as a Chartered Accountant and then became a Professional Magician. He is a Member of The Inner Magic Circle. In 2014 he published Charles Dickens Magician: Conjuring in Life, Letters & Literature. He now divides his time between performing magic, giving talks and researching and writing. 

This lecture is in celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the birth in 1874 of Gustav Holst.

“The Planets” by Gustav Holst is one of the most popular and most recorded work in English music.  Yet, apart from the tunes for the hymn “I Vow to Thee, My Country” and the carol “In the Bleak Midwinter”, most of Holst’s other music is neglected, unjustly so.  Holst was an unconventional man who led something of a double life.  He was a vegetarian and spent most of his working life as Director of Music in a girls’ school, but he embraced Hindu philosophy and taught himself Sanskrit.  One holiday he lived in a street of brothels in Algiers and cycled into the Sahara Desert.  He believed that music should be available for everyone and was appointed conductor of a Socialist choir and Director of Music in Morley College, an institution set up for the educational benefit of working men and women.  He championed the amateur musician and famously said, “If something is worth doing, it is worth doing badly”.  In fact he was a talented conductor and produced performances of real quality. After the success of “The Planets”, first performed in 1917, he never wrote a similar orchestral work, and dedicated himself mainly to vocal and choral music, much of which was based on Sanskrit texts for which he provided his own translation. He was also working at a time when musicians were beginning to wake up to the huge wealth of English folk music, and many of his compositions are imbued with that folk-song quality which gives them great charm. 

This lecture will examine Holst’s life, the creation of “The Planets” and will explore many of his other works, including his ‘Oriental’ suite “Beni Mora” which was inspired by hearing a flute-player in Algiers, his “Choral Symphony”, a marvellous piece which sets poetry by Keats, and the settings of the Rig Veda, some of the most important Hindu texts.  His so-called serious orchestral works do not follow convention.  For example, his concerto for oboe and flute suddenly breaks into a nursery rhyme. It will be a surprising and revealing lecture, which is richly illustrated with musical examples. 

Murillo is an artist often labelled as 'cute' and 'saccharine'. This lecture will show a different side to him by exploring his brilliant art in the context of 17th century Seville. Seville was the ‘Gateway to the World’, a trading hub full of treasures from the New World. It was also a centre of Catholic ideas that would be exported around Spain’s great empire. By looking at Murillo’s greatest works we will see how Murillo’s art blends faith and empire, from his grand cycle in Santa Maria la Blanca to his small works painted of imported Aztec mirrors.

Frans Hals' paintings demonstrate how, through bold poses, masterly brushstrokes, and emotional connections with his sitter, this virtuoso revolutionised portraiture into something entirely fresh and novel.Praised for his ability to paint likenesses that seem to ‘live and breathe’, Hals is one of the artists who tells us most vividly about the 17th century Dutch Republic and its Harlem citizens. The cultural flourishing, enrichment and self-confidence of its elite was associated with requests for depictions of status and success. A growing middle and merchant class wanted to celebrate their services to the state and their exceptional accomplishments, with posterity for themselves, their family, and their social group.

Delving deeper, however, the pictorial representation of these achievements and economic prosperity also had disturbing connections to the Dutch East India Company, the transatlantic slave trade, and the ruthless regime in the colonies.In anticipation of a major exhibition at the National Gallery in Sept '23, this talk will be adjusted to fit the content of this exhibition.

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

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

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. 

Discover where they dined, what they ate and how much they were willing to pay.

"Georgians of all classes dined out in pubs, coaching inns, French ordinaries’, and confectioners. They also ate all kinds of street food and had an almost insatiable appetite for buns. On a journey through London we will discover the early morning drinks consumed on the street before dawn, ‘nunchions’ served at coaching inns, Billingsgate dinners, confectioners’ cakes, syllabubs and ices, the proverbially thin ham dished up to diners at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, as well as the Jewish takeaway foods of the East End and even London’s first ‘Indian’ restaurant. Our journey will be illustrated from prints, paintings and broadsides of the period, some long neglected as a source for a forgotten but fascinating part of our Georgian ancestors’ way of life”.

But when first the ice fell on the lake, and the whole lake was frozen…O my God!  What sublime scenery have I beheld.

                                                                                                                                            Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1799

During the Romantic period, there was a surge of artistic interest in the season of winter. 

The coldest months of the year inspired a number of writers and artists; the poet William Cowper wrote pleasurably about the season from the warmth of his fireside; Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Caspar David Friedrich were both inspired by the sublimity of the winter landscape; while William Wordsworth and Henry Raeburn created iconic ice-skating scenes in verse and painting.

The lecture was an intriguing and very engaging lecture with Annalie Talent, who explored why so many Romantic writers, poets and artists were so inspired by “the frosty season of Winter. 

Annalie’s lively lecture focussed on certain aspects of Romantic and Victorian literature and she used her knowledge and personal experience of literary houses – and their collections – to offer a unique perspective on famous writers and their works.  Annalie is particularly interested in the material culture of writer’s lives, including the quirky and amusing – from the collar worn by Emily Bronte’s dog, “Keeper,” to William Wordsworth’s ice skates!   Following a career in teaching, Annalie spent several years working on education programmes at museums and literary houses across the UK, including the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere; Wordsworth House in Cockermouth; Jane Austen’s House in Hampshire and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.  At Jane Austen’s House, Annalie won 2 Sandford Awards for Excellence in Heritage Education and she also worked with the British Library, the Bodleian Library and Chawton House Library in promoting Austen’s work to young people.   

This lecture will explore the life and work of Marie Bracquemond 

Together with Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt they exhobited alongside artists such as Monet, Renoir and Degas

Marie Bracquemond (1 December 1840 – 17 January 1916) was a French Impressionist artist. 

She  studied art under Auguste Vassort and later with Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. She later became a copyist at the Louvre where she met Felix Bracquemond, a painter and engraver. She was one of four women artists to exhibit in the Impressionist exhibitions, in 1879, 1880, and 1886.

Estonia may not be famous for its Renaissance artists, but Michael Sittow was considered one of the great masters of his era specialising mainly in small devotional works and portraits, which sometimes projected a melancholy mood.  He trained in Bruges in the tradition of Early Netherlandish painting and, for most of his life, worked as a court portrait painter for Isabelle of Castille and her Habsburg relatives in Spain and The Netherlands and was the highest-paid painter in the Queen’s Court, receiving a salary of 50,000 maravedis a year!   After Isabelle’s death in 1504, Sittow then travelled around Europe before eventually returning home to Tallinn. His work was greatly admired by Durer.

Bramshill, Hampshire: the mystery of its historic gardens and botanical paintings

​Bramshill House, in north-east Hampshire, is one of the largest, surviving Jacobean mansions in England. A house from the 1350s was largely demolished by Edward la Zouche, 11th Baron Zouche (a favourite of James I) in 1605 when he began to build the Bramshill House of today. Its design shows the influence of the Italian Renaissance. The formal gardens and parkland were also first laid out by Edward la Zouche in the early 1600s. This lecture traces the creation of those beautiful gardens and designed landscapes. Their subsequent modifications, including the significance of Edward as a horticulturalist and creator of a botanic garden  ̶  and employer of the eminent Flemish botanist, Matthias De L’Obel  ̶  are also covered. One room overlooking the walled garden at Bramshill is entirely lined with panelling containing unique botanical paintings; Ann presents her exciting new research on identifying the date and source of these images.

 Bio

Dr Ann Benson is a writer and lecturer on Garden and Architectural History specializing in the Tudor and Stuart periods within the United Kingdom. After a teaching and academic career in science, she took early retirement to focus on her love of historical research. She has since won Leverhulme Foundation funding for her research and published several books. She is a  Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. As a Beaufort Visiting Fellow at St John’s College, University of Cambridge her current research is on the designed landscape history of the medieval and Tudor colleges of the University.

A Summer evening event at the Haslemere Museum.

7.00 for 7.30 pm. This is aticketed event. Booking opens in May.

 and take a trip with Maragret as she delves into the 5000 year history, developement,design,music  and lore of the harp.

The Art Society Haslemere’s June lecture was a most interesting talk by Andrew Jackson about jewellery and particularly how different items appear in portraits made over the years. Andrew Prince can place his enthusiasm for the subject back to the time when, at the age of three, he swallowed one of his mother’s pearl earrings having found her jewel box hidden from him in a cupboard. This was followed in his adult years with different apprenticeships for making jewellery. The Romans loved pearls and one of the reasons the Romans came to England was because Scotland had wonderful white freshwater pearls. The Roman ladies would have their portraits painted with all their jewellery and this picture was then attached to their mummified bodies upon their death showing them as people of status. Later at the time of the Renaissance the explorers were surprised to see pearls washed up on the beaches of Mexico and Panama. These were brought back to Europe and made into wonderful pieces and worn by Kings and Queens and the aristocracy. Sometimes these jewels were sold to finance wars or given on marriage and the so the jewellery found its way into other countries and other wearers and could be identified in their portraits. In more modern times the Americans acquired some of the large items such as the Saucy diamond and were given as wedding presents to their brides like Nancy Astor or in the case of the Krupp diamond purchased by Richard Burton for Elizabeth Taylor. In 2005, Andrew was asked to make tiaras and jewellery for Mrs Henderson Presents starring Judy Dench. In 2009, pieces were commissioned for The Young Victoria starring Emily Blunt and Miranda Richardson. In 2012, he was chosen by the creators of Downton Abbey to supply a large collection of jewellery for the third series. The characters played by Maggie Smith, Shirley MacLaine, Elizabeth McGovern and Michelle Dockery were all adorned with elegant tiaras, combs, earrings and necklaces designed and created by Andrew Prince.

Mary Alexander gave a most interesting lecture on the Ashcan Painters – Founders of New York Realism. An exploration of an extraordinary group of artists who exhibited paintings, shared ideas and created vivid and stunningly beautiful images of New York City at the beginning of the 20th century.

Known for its gritty urban subject matter, dark palette, and gestural brushwork, the Ashcan School was a loosely knit group of artists based in New York City who were inspired by the painter Robert Henri. This group believed in the worthiness of immigrant and working-class life as artistic subject matter and in an art that depicted the real rather than an elitist ideal. Prior to the arrival of the Ashcan School, American Impressionism, with its pleasing and luscious displays of the feminine and peaceful idylls, was popular. While their subject matter was revolutionary, their manner of painting finds precedents in the Realism of 17th-century Spanish and Dutch art, and also with 19th-century French painting. After the Ashcan School, more artists focused on modernity and their own expressive reactions to what they encountered.

With the passing of time the paintings themselves are now a record of a New York skyline which no longer exists. Mary Alexander, herself had lived in New York and could give first hand accounts of the changes which have occurred.

The short life of the twentieth century artist Eric Ravilious who was born on 22 July 1903 in Acton London, the son of Frank Ravilious and who moved with his family to Eastbourne where he ran an antiques shop. In 1919 Ravilious won a scholarship to Eastbourne School of Art and in 1922 another to study at the Design School at the Royal college of Art. There, he became a close and lifelong friend of Edward Bawden and studied under Paul Nash. Nash, an enthusiast for wood engraving, encouraged him in the technique, and helped him to obtain commissions. In 1925 Ravilious received a travelling scholarship to Italy and on his return he began teaching part-time at the Eastbourne School of Art, and from 1930 also taught at the Royal College of Art. In the same year he married Tirzah Garwood, also an artist and engraver. They had three children: John Ravilious (1935–2014); the photographer James Ravilious (1939–1999); and Anne Ullmann, née Ravilious (1941), editor of books on her parents and their work. In 1928 Ravilious painted a series of murals at Morley College in south London. The work was described "sharp in detail, clean in colour, with an odd humour in their marionette-like figures" and "a striking departure from the conventions of mural painting at that time", but was destroyed by bombing in 1941. Bawden rented Brick House in Great Bardfield and when he married his father bought it for him as a wedding present. Ravilious and Garwood lodged in Brick House with the Bawdens until 1934. From here Ravilious explored the Essex countryside and painted many water colours. He was painting at the time of the surrealists and although not a member of this group his paintings had a dream like quality. In 1933 Ravilious and his wife painted murals at the Midland Hotel in Morecombe but mainly because the English weather is not suitable for murals with the damp climate the murals of Ravilious have not survived. During 1939, Ravilious painted a series of watercolours of chalk hill figures in the English landscape many of which are now in public galleries. Unfortunately for Ravilious the war put an end to his quiet reflective and soft water colour paintings and Ravilious joined the ranks of Paul and John Nash as a war artists. Their job was to record parts of England which might be destroyed by the war and to record various battles and scenes of war. Ravilious was sent to Norway and painted many scenes of war ships under fire. On 2 September 1942, a plane on a search-and-rescue mission off the coast of Iceland crashed into the sea, killing its pilot and 39-year-old passenger. The passenger was Eric Ravilious, whose final letter to his wife, three days earlier, had extolled the deep shadows and leaflike cracks of the subarctic landscape. He was one of three hundred artists hired by the War Artists Advisory Committee to cover the second world war, and the first to die on active service. A tragic end to an extraordinarily talented artist

 Many people will not know the name  Margaret Calvert, but will see evidence of her work on a daily basis. Margaret was born in South Africa in 1936, moving to England at the age of fourteen, educated at St Paul’s Girl’s School  and then found her way to the Chelsea College of Art. There she met Jock Kinneir and so began their long collaboration.

Jock Kinnear, an outstanding graphic designer, who mentored Calvert at Chelsea and when Kinneir received a prestigious project of designing the signs for the new Gatwick Airport. he requested her assistance on the project. This was the start of a long association between the two of them. To this day all airport runway signs are unified by the designs of Margaret with their significant yellow backgrounds.

 Margaret continued to work at Kinneir’s office in Knightsbridge and developed a considerable interest in lettering. Being commissioned by clients, such as the Milk Marketing Board and P&O, sharpened her skills. The Anderson Committee commissioned their firm to design a road sign system for the new motorways. The signs were to be designed for driver’s guidance, and hence were supposed to deliver concise information that could be read at speed.

Working together, they developed a typeface, Transport that displayed both upper and lower-case sans-serif lettering. Notwithstanding the fact that their sign system had full support of the Anderson Committee, Colin Forbes and modernist Herbert Spencer, it was heavily attacked by the traditionalists. Eventually, the road signs were placed on the Preston Bypass for testing, in 1958.

Margaret also provided signage programmes for British rail, motorways, and the all-purpose roads among other things. She is easily recognised today by the signs incorporating small figures, for example a school or the men at work sign showing what has been referred to as a man opening an umbrella. Up until the time of Margaret and Kinneir there was no common design factor and no attention paid to the lettering or the ease to read the information. Margaret was awarded an OBE and the Royal Designers for Industry award in recognition of all her considerable work and influence which has only been touched upon here.

This lecture was given by Steven Barrett and entitled Walter Sickert and The Camden Town Murders. The initial dark self portrait of Sickert showed that he painted in a very limited palette which were always muted colours creating an unsettling  background often with the faces slightly hidden to the viewer.

Sickert was born in Munich to a Danish father and English Mother in 1860 and in 1868 the family moved to England.  Sickert had a good education and studied until he was 18, tried being an actor with a few small parts. He went on to study at the Slade School, before becoming a pupil of ‘Whistler’ within the year. His earliest paintings were small tonal studies of nature and in 1883 he travelled to Paris and met Edgar Degas whose use of pictorial space and emphasis on drawing would have a powerful effect on Sickert’s work. Degas was a counterweight to Whistler which was eventually to prove the more significant in Sickert’s development.

During the late 1880s Sickert spent much time in Dieppe, with his family, painting the local scenes.

In 1888 Sickert joined the New English Art Club and his first major works were portrayals of scenes at Music Halls.  Some were considered vulgar, ugly and too tawdry for art as the performers were morally akin to prostitutes.

Sickert developed an interest in the sensational case of Jack the Ripper and there were those who believed that he was the infamous murderer. This was later dismissed, but Sickert also developed an interest in the Camden Town Murder. Many married women had to work in the sex industry to make money and one woman,  Emily Dimmock had her throat slit whilst asleep after cheating on her partner.  Sickert had often painted nude women on a bed but after the murder he painted four paintings depicting nude women with the  inclusion of a male figure. These came to be known as the Camden Town Murder paintings but their original titles were much sadder with such titles as “What shall we do for the rent” The paintings did not portray the violence of murder but the gritty portrayal of life for many people.

Sickert returned to Dieppe and a few years later went onto Venice where he did try to lighten and his painting from his natural dark colourings. His painting style was always of urban architecture and surroundings and everyday people.  Sickert was introduced to Winston Churchill and painted an informal painting of him and the two got on so well that he helped Sir Winston with his painting.

He died in January 1942 aged 81 in Bath.

Caravaggio was a man out of step with his time. He took his models from the streets and scorned
idealised interpretation of religious subjects, taking his models from the streets.  His use of light was revolutionary.

This lecture examines the life and works of this enigmatic man.

Advent appears to be a tradition that started in the late 5th century and has attracted many customs and traditions.

This lecture includes music,petry and prose.

This lecture tells the story of the Moorish invasion and the Christian reconquest, through an introduction to the surviving architecture and other areas of the material culture, such as silk textiles, carved ivory caskets, bronze sculptures and refined ceramics.

 The Arts Society Haslemere were treated to a most interesting lecture from Ian Cockburn on the history and culture of al -Andalus beginning with the conquest by the Muslims in 711 until the surrender of Grenada in 1492. The Muslims, following the death of Mohammed, spread from the Arab lands through to North Africa and from there launched an invasion into Gibraltar. The Visigoths had become weak and the invasion of this area spread quickly due in part to the fact that the invaders allowed the inhabitants to continue their own way of life and their Christian religion thus enabling the conquerors to move speedily from place to place and occupy large amounts of the land. Indeed, they reached as far as Tour in France but retreated quickly back to the Iberian peninsular once they met with serious resistance. The Muslims were much more advanced with their administration, use of money, building and organisation than the Visigoths and set about building a wonderful mosque in Cordoba. The Arabs copied the form of building from the Romans using columns with three aisles, a pattern followed in the Christian cathedrals as well, including the use of bricks and plaster with initially the roman arch which eventually became more horseshoe in shape. The maximum Umayyad power in al-Andalus came with the proclamation in 912 of the Caliphate of Córdoba by Abderramán III, who proclaimed himself caliph, consummating the rupture of religious dependence on the East. The Alhambra in Grenada was built with beautiful gardens and intricate plaster work covering the walls and was the last place that the Muslims retreated to as their power diminished until Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain led their armies to recapture al- Andalus and the eventual surrender of Grenada. After that all Muslims and Jews had to leave the country and the time of the Spanish Inquisition began. 

The October lecture for the Art Society Haslemere was given by Sarah Cove who is an accredited painting conservator. Her lecture was called Restoring the Arte – intentionally an “e” -of Kent and dealt mainly with paintings in the twenty first century from the Kentish Art Collection.

Sarah explained how present conservation has changed considerably from the work carried out in former times. All work done now to paintings is such that it can be removed in the future without harm to the painting. Gone is the heavy painting over to disguise missing paint and holes in the canvas.

Often the painting must have a new backing and the excellent slides which Sarah had, showed in detail this incredibly careful process that had to done. Again this can now involve removing previous replacement backings with unsuitable glue and materials. Nowadays there are x-rays of painting and scans which can reveal the faults which need to be repaired.

Rochester Bridge Trust has a diverse collection of paintings of the local area and over the years Sarah has been involved with their restoration. She also has many private clients who have sort her help with the cleaning and renovation of their paintings in their homes.

Sarah has also been on the TV show Fake or Fortune with Phillip Mould and Fiona Bruce and her research and scientific work contributed to attributing the painting in question as a genuine painting by John Constable of Willy Lott’s Cottage.

Piero della Francesca's fresco depicting the Resurrection of Christ was made for his home town of Sansepolcro.

Over 550 years later the painting comes to dominate the Palazzo dei Conservatori.

Forgotten and abandoned for many years ,it was nearly destroyed forever in the Second World War.

This  is a special summer Friday evening event and will be ticketed

Booking at the May lecture

Venue The Haslemere Museum at 7.00pm for 7.30pm

Looking at the historyof wine through the medium of drinking vessels, painting and literature that all 

contributes to the story

Pheidippides epic run from the battlefield of Marathon to his native Athens is one of the world's most popular athletic

events. The lecture will recreate the background and the battle itself n thrilling detail and will look at the various

ways in which ancient Athens has influenced out art.

Marc Chagall lived between 1887 and 1985 and the lecture will trace his long and colourful career.

Through his work Marc Chagall remained deeply loyal to his humble Russian- Jewish roots and

yet he also wished his art to have a universal appeal

By the close of the 16th century, the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph 11 had amassed one of the most impressive collections of art,naturel artifacts and scientific instruments in Europe. This lecture will explore the nature of this collection

Members might be interested in a program by Malcolm Bragg -In Our Time- on the court of Rudolph 11and which can be listened to on BBC sounds and which discusses the many interests of Rudolph.

Have you ever wondered how the Sadlers Wells Theatre came by its name? Nigel Bates gave members a fascinating lecture on the history of this famous theatre.

Starting with early drawings of the 17th century wooden building constructed by Thomas Sadler as Musick House. Nigel then went on to explain that the area became famous for the medicinal wells and springs which surrounded the area in Clerkenwell.  A new river was created which has now become The Rosebery Avenue. Water played an important part in many of the theatre’s productions.  Indeed 6000 litres of water were used in 2021 in the musical Singing in the Rain!

The Musick House hosted dramas of real events and pantomimes some lasting 5 hours long with much alcohol consumed in the process. In 1745 it was closed down but reopened again in 1765 after restoration costs of £4225 as an Opera house and beer garden. It continued to evolve to include Pony Races and in 1803 as Aquatic Theatre dramatizing the Battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo with miniaturised battleships and children playing sailors.

The celebrated Joey the Clown, Joseph Grimaldi, first performed at Sadler’s Wells as a child and went on to star in pantomimes such Harlequin and Mother goose until his final performance in 1828.  Samuel Phelps then acquired the theatre in 1844 and turned it from pantomime to straight dramas and Shakespearean plays but it did not thrive and in 1875 the theatre closed.  At one time it was used as a Pickle Factory.

In 1878 after major restoration, Mrs Frances Bateman arranged to reopen the theatre for legitimate drama, removing the pony track and roller-skating rink.  However, after her death her daughter Isabel was so daunted by the responsibility she fled to Holy Orders.  The theatre declined and was again closed. The river was covered over and became Rosebery Avenue. The building became Ye Olde Music Hall and later a Cinema until it closed in 1915.

In 1925 Sadler’s Wells was saved for the Nation by a charity set up by Lilian Baylis, known as The Lady, which raised £60,000 for the Freehold.  It was then completely demolished and rebuilt. It opened on 6th January 1931 with a performance of Twelfth Night.  Nigel showed film of Queen Mary arriving at the Theatre with crowds of children who had been given a day off school.  Productions were run in conjunction with The Old Vic as Miss Baylis had arranged for the stages to be the same size and often players were confused about which building, they would be playing in that night.  Sets would be taken from one theatre to another across the river. In 1934 a full production of Swan Lake was performed and later for the 1st time, The Nutcracker. By 1935 the theatre was used primarily for Opera and Ballet, under the leadership of Ninette de Valois and the Sadlers Wells Ballet School was established.  In 1939 the Sadler’s Wells and Old Vic theatres separated.  Nigel treated us to a short film of Margot Fonteyn dancing in Giselle.

The Theatre closed during the war and the opera and ballet companies toured at home and abroad under the Sadler’s Wells Company name.  On 7th June1945 the Theatre reopened with a production of Peter Grimes attended by the writer Benjamin Britten and it was determined that all operas would be sung in English.   However, it became obvious that the productions were outgrowing the theatre and in 1996 the last ever performance was given in the old theatre.

In 1996 a grant of £36,00000 was given by the National Lottery towards the rebuilding of a new Sadler’s Wells Theatre, the 6th , which opened in 1998.  The new light and airy theatre can seat 1568 people and has a pit for 80 musicians, an area that Nigel is very familiar with as on leaving the Band of the Royal Scots Guards he joined the Orchestra of the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet as a percussionist.  The newest theatre was constructed so that there is access to the original Sadler’s Wells and bore hole.

Members were then treated to some footage of the all-male Matthew Bourne’s Swann Lake.  Also pictured was a race horse named Sadler’s Wells and a bulk carrier with the same name.  The lecture concluded with footage of the ballet La Sylphide with dancers John Field and Alicia Markova and the orchestra conducted by Robert Irving.  The lecturer received loud applause for this most interesting account of The Mothership.

An excellent lecture by Chris Aslan Alexander who began by saying that this was not a lecture in the usual way but a story, his story, and entitled A Carpet Ride to Khiva.  Khiva, in Uzbekistan, lies west of the Amu Darya (ancient Oxus River) on the Palvan Canal, and it is bounded on the south by the Karakum Desert and on the northeast by the Kyzylkum desert.

Christopher was born in Turkey and grew up in war-torn Beirut. After university he moved to Central Asia and while writing a guidebook about the walled city of Khiva, he fell in love with this desert oasis boasting the most homogenous example of Islamic architecture in the world and stayed. He arrived in Khiva with very little and found a kind Uzbeki family who gave him a room where he set about finding ways to improve the lives of the people in Khiva. He found that children with disabilities were either hidden away or cast out.

New workshops were opened with apprentices who went to school in the morning and worked in the afternoon making wooden goods.  Chris took these goods to Tashkent and especially near Christmas he found a market for them and sold them all.  He also found that in Khiva they were making Kilim rugs but these were of poor quality.  The projects he was running came to the attention of UNESCO and the Project Manager in Uzbekistan wanted to create more refined rugs which involved the use of silk. Chris established a UNESCO workshop reviving 15th century carpet designs and embroideries and became the largest non-government employer in Khiva. 

 Chris gave a detailed description of the silkworms and how the silk was produced and Uzbekistan was the world’s third largest producer of silk.   He explained how the eggs had to held in cold storage and then warmed up and they were very fussy and did like disturbance and loud music but with the right conditions the eggs produced long fine silk. The workshop for the silk rugs was established and the men handmade the looms and the girls worked on making the rugs. The silk of course had to be dyed before it could be woven and they only used natural dyes like indigo, madder (from Afghanistan), walnut extracts and pomegranate.   Once a carpet was finished it had to be hand washed to soften it. Chris in partnership with UNESCO created a thriving town where disabled children were allowed to work and be part of the community and employment was there for all.

Arslanbob, Kyrgyzstan; a place with his name on it is nestled between soaring mountains and the world’s largest natural walnut forest. Alexander the Great’s army is reputed to have made it this far East, bringing Arslanbob’s walnuts back with them and introducing the walnut to Europe.

 Chris often travelled to Tashkent  to sell the goods made in Khiva but the final time he was not allowed back and so he returned eventually to the UK and to Cambridge to write his book about the carpet makers and his life in Khiva. Happily he is now able to return and does so with groups giving them guided tours and special insights into life in Khiva.

Follow your desire,allow the heart to forget,so sang the ancient Egyptian harpist as he encouraged partygoers to relax and have agood time.This lecture will explore the depiction of celebration in Egyptian art.

  This was a fascinating and enthusiastic lecture by Lucia Gahlin on Celebration in Egyptian Art from the 14th century BC specifically.  The New Kingdom, which lasted from around 1520 BC to 1069 BC and was the golden age of the civilization of Ancient Egypt. It was a time of wealth, prosperity, and power and many artifacts of this period can be viewed at the British Museum.   

Art on tomb walls was a style of purity for the afterlife and this art was for the elite but it shows what was important to the people both during their lifetime and as necessities thereafter. The majority of the people could not afford tombs or mummification. If someone was depicted sitting on a chair it was considered that they were from the top wealthy people and the art was a good representation of their life with all it messages.

These families were bedecked with jewellery and fine clothing and more so for the men.  Stone masons were the top artists of the time.  Flax, wheat and barley were the staple crops but flax was important for linens which were also a sign of wealth.   

Wigs, which were made of human hair were not only for status but they were considered erotic and if a wig was worn it was considered sexy. In scenes of celebration in ancient Egyptian art real flowers are depicted especially water lilies because these open and close and were considered important for the afterlife.

Eye makeup was a daily prerequisite for both men and women and was very elaborate and used as early as 4000 B.C. Eye makeup equipment (palettes, grinders, applicators) have been found among the earliest burials of the pre-dynastic period and seem to have been essential items for the afterlife. The smoky kohl liner served both practical and ritualistic purposes. It was thick enough to repel flies, protect the eyes from the Sun's rays and ward off infection. Makeup helped to imitate the looks of the gods. Favourite eye makeup colours were black and green and outlining the eyes with pigment was deliberately done to create an almond or feline shape.

Eye makeup provided psychic protection as well. The Egyptian word for eye-palette seems to derive from their word for "protect." An unadorned and thus unprotected eye was believed vulnerable to the Evil Eye. Outlining the eyes thus became a personal protective amulet drawn right upon the skin; an amulet that once applied could not be lost or misplaced. Makeup was believed to have magical healing powers. Ancient Egyptians used a variety of cosmetics in addition to eye make- up to include rouge and perfumed oils that softened the skin and prevented burning in the sun and damage from the sandy winds. Galena powder possesses disinfectant and fly-deterrent properties.

Ancient Egyptians also mastered the process of winemaking and made different wines from both red and white grape varieties, as well as from dates, figs, and pomegranates. It was primarily a drink of the elite and was depicted on their tombs together with pictures of their drinking vessels so that they could enjoy wine in the afterlife. Beer of that time was thick and had to be imbibed through a long bent straw but never enough to get drunk.  More alcohol than food was depicted in Egyptian Art and dancing took place at Royal parties with women playing instruments in groups but men played instruments on their own, often harps. For the leisured classes this was certainly a time of enjoyment and indulgence and not so different from today.

The December lecture for the Arts Society Haslemere was Christmas at Covent Garden -Backstage at the Royal Opera House and was given by Sarah Lenton. Members were given an interesting glimpse of the exits and entrances via trap doors and the wings to the stage which performers have to make. The Nutcracker ballet which is often performed at Christmas was an example of the all the work which goes on backstage to create the magical experience. 

Christmas in the Royal Opera House – 12 Toscas, 31 Nutcrackers, The Wolf Witch for kids – it’s full-on… Using audio-clips, photos, and interviews this talk takes you on a virtual reality trip round our theatre as the festive season swings into action.

What nicer treat could there be before Christmas than to be led through the backstage secrets of The Royal

Opera House Covent Garden and explore the history behind its Christmas shows? Sarah Lenton, is an archivist,

writer and theatre historian.

On 16th November the Arts Society Haslemere were treated to an excellent lecture by Ian Swankie on the English contemporary artist, writer, architect and broadcaster Grayson Perry CBE RA. He was born on 24 March 1960 to working class parents living in Essex and is known for his ceramic vases, tapestries and cross dressing as his alter-ego, Claire, as well as his observations of the contemporary arts scene, and for dissecting British "prejudices, fashions and foibles".

Perry's vases have classical forms and are decorated in bright colours, depicting subjects at odds with their attractive appearance. Perry was four years old when his father left home after discovering his mother was having an affair with a milkman, whom she later married and who Perry has claimed was violent. Subsequently, he spent an unhappy childhood moving between his parents and created a fantasy world based around his teddy bear in order to cope with his sense of anxiety. There is a strong autobiographical element in his work, in which images of Perry as "Claire", and "Alan Measles", his childhood teddy, often appear.

Initially destined to enter the army, but following the encouragement of his art teacher, Perry decided to study art with an art foundation course, a short period of school life at King Edward V! Grammar School and then studying for a BA in fine art and design and graduating in 1982. As of 2010 he lives in north London with his wife, the author and psychotherapist Phillipa Perry and he is a keen mountain biker and motorcyclist.  They have one daughter, Florence, born in 1992

From an early age he liked to dress in women's clothes and in his teens realised that he was a transvestite.  At the age of 15 he moved in with his father's family in Chelmsford, where he began to go out dressed as a woman. When he was discovered by his father he said he would stop but his stepmother told everyone about it and a few months later threw him out. He returned to his mother and stepfather in Essex but subsequently had to leave there and live in a squat in London. Perry has designed many of Claire's outfits himself. Also, fashion students at Central Saint Marin’s art college in London take part in an annual competition to design new dresses for Claire.

The extent of his different works are considerable from a number of documentary television programmes and curated exhibitions. He has published two autobiographies, Grayson Perry: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl (2007) and The Descent of Man (2016), written and illustrated a graphic novel, Cycle of Violence (2012), written a book about art, Playing to the Gallery (2014), and published his illustrated Sketchbooks (2016). He was awarded the Turner Prize in 2003 and in 2013 he delivered the BBC Reith Lectures.

All his work has an underlying comment of what is going on around him and Perry is a consummate watcher of people and their reactions. A life long member of the labour party Perry has no problem in poking fun at the people who purchase with large sums of money art works in the art market. He has a vivid imagination which is shown is the stories depicted in his tapestries and also in the house he designed called a House for Essex or Julie’s House in which the lecturer had had the opportunity to stay. All Perry’s works from ceramics to the sewn motifs on “Claire’s” dresses have to be looked at in great detail to understand the full meaning of what Grayson Perry is telling the world.

On October 19th The Haslemere Arts Society enjoyed an outstanding lecture entitled ‘The National Interest – Art, The Sun King and the Academic Revolution’.  Richard Whincop kindly stood in at the last minute, due to a late cancellation and gave a lecture that was so detailed and given so passionately that it is not possible to give it full justice in a short space. 

 Inside the walls of the opulent Palace of Versailles, France’s King Louis XIV died of gangrene on September 1, 1715, just four days short of his 77th birthday. Known as the “Sun King,” Louis XIV centralized power in the monarchy and reigned over a period of unprecedented prosperity in which France became the dominant power in Europe and a leader in the arts and sciences. 

King Louis XIV came to the throne at the age of 4 and once he attained his majority he wanted France to be a centre of excellence of visual art which previously was centred in Rome.  A Royal Academy was instituted with specific rules and regulations for artists so that in fact the King was in control.   Other academies for the sciences and architecture were also established which gave the King power over all the visual arts and its origins and philosophy was led by the Court painter Charles le Brun and was developed into the most influential art institution in Europe.  In effect this was a Department of the State. During the king’s long reign many Royal Academies were created in numerous other countries including England and are still existing today.  

Following the French Revolution artists in particular rebelled against the official proscriptions for great art culminating in the impressionists’ attempts to break the monopoly of the official state-sanction Salon exhibitions. This resulted in The Salon des Refusees of 1863.

 The speaker,  Alexandra Epps  gave a very warm and fascinating insight to the life of Peggy Guggenheim.  This was an excellent and detailed lecture of which the brief resume below can only give a flavour of this modern woman for the age. Peggy Guggenheim collected Art and Artists.

Born into a life of wealth and luxury in New York and despite her privileged upbringing was very lonely.   The Guggenheim brothers were very wealthy her father being Benjamin Guggenheim and her uncle was Solomon R. Guggenheim who established the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.  Her father sadly went down with the Titanic but his valet and mistress survived which would not have gone down well with the family.  Devastated by the loss of her father, at 21 she inherited $2.5million dollars and used some of it to travel widely. She was deemed the ugly duckling of the family and decided to have cosmetic surgery to improve her nose but it went wrong and ended up worse than before.  At the end of her travels she finished in Paris where her interest in art took off.  She met and married Laurence Vail, a Dada sculptor and writer with whom she had two children but he was a violent alcoholic and she later divorces him and meets an Englishman John Holms and has an affair with him but he unfortunately he died having surgery for a broken wrist. 

Peggy had many affairs and was asked how many husbands she had had and she replied ‘do you mean mine or other peoples’.  She had a brief affair with Samuel Becket who encouraged her to turn to modern art and her second husband was Max Ernst who she married in 1941 and divorced in 1946.  She met Marcel Duchamp and Cubist artist who encouraged her to seek out various artists to build up her collection of modern art.  She opened a gallery in London called Guggenheim Juene.  She got on well with Duchamp but not his associate but she listened to his knowledge and became a catalyst for modern art.  She opened a gallery in Cork Street in London and held many exhibitions and enlarged her collection by buying one piece of art from each artist.  Herbert Reed was the man to help her open a Museum of Modern Art rather than a gallery and together they devised a list of artists from whom she could add to her collection.  She went back to the USA and opened a Museum on East 54th Street in Manhatten and closed Guggenheim Juene with a farewell party in 1939   In 1939 she left for Paris to negotiate loans of artworks for her first exhibition in NY and armed with a list from Herbert Reed she bought 10 Picassos, 8 Miros, 4 Magrittes,  Ferrens and 3 Man Rays all with the threat of the Nazis heading to Paris and with new plans she rented a space at Place Vendome as a new home for her Museum.

Shortly before the Germans entered Paris she had to abandon plans for a Museum and shipped her art to the US hidden in crates of household objects.  The following year she opened a new gallery which was also part Museum at 30 West 57th Street called The Art of The Century which included three galleries which were dedicated to Cubist, Abstract and Surrealist and Kinetic Art and the fourth gallery being commercial.

Following the war she closed The Art of this Century and returned to Europe and deciding to live in Venice and she was invited to exhibit her collection at a disused Greek Pavilion in Venice Biennale and in 1969 established herself in the Palazzo Venire dei Leoni on the Grand Canal.  The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is one of the most important museums in Italy for European and American modern art and her collection embraces the four aspects of modern art from very many of the modern artists.  She lived in Venice with her small dogs until her death in 1979 where her ashes were laid to rest in her garden alongside those of her dogs.

On Tuesday 15th June 2021 The Arts Society Haslemere held their first live lecture since March 2020 when the pandemic started.   The lecture was entitled The Lute within Old Masters and the speaker was Dr. Adam Busiakiewicz.  This was a most uplifting and inspiring lecture on The Queen of Instruments.  Adam introduced the Lute as the primary instrument in the middle ages together with the voice as an instrument. The Lute was so popular during the 15th century it began to appear in a number of paintings and during the 16th century the Lute had become an accomplishment of educated aristocrats and Henry VIII was described as a phenomenal lutenist, which the Venetians considered to be his important attribute. 

 During his talk Adam compared arts works with music and at a time when artists were also musicians the Lute and other musical instruments became prominent in many paintings.   Adam’s question was ‘What does that painting sound like’ and then Adam played three short pieces of music contemporary to the times which were considered melancholic and fashionable.  

 The Lute originated in the Middle East but it was the Europeans who popularised it and they were not only popular musical instruments but pieces of great beauty.  They were decorated with ivory panels and ebony fretwork which could look like stained glass and Adam produced wonderful pictures of some of the more exquisite Lutes.   Originally the Lute was played with a plectrum of feathers but eventually moved on to be played with the fingers.  As the Lute is a quiet instruments the Italians felt it wasn’t loud enough for the needs of the performance and in order to overcome this a new Lute was designed called a Theorgo with a very long neck and again Adam had one to demonstrate.  This made much more sound as it had many more strings than the 18 on a conventional Lute but it was too large and difficult to transport so too few people played it and by the 18th century it had gone completely out of fashion and it began to disappear.  Sadly only five of the beautiful Lutes made by Hans Fry, the Stradivarius of the Lute world, actually survived until recent times and the modern instrument makers have to refer to the detailed images in the paintings in order to make them today.

Adam did start his lecture saying he felt as though he had come to the soul of the Lute because of the Dolmetsch family of Haslemere who revived early music in the 20th century and repopularised the Lute.T he guitarist Julian Bream also loved the play the Lute.  Adam showed an early photograph of the Dometsch family which included the Lute.

On 18th May David Worthington gave The Arts Society Haslemere a most interesting lecture on the French sculptor Auguste Rodin who probably is known to many for creating several iconic works, including 'The Age of Bronze,' 'The Thinker,' 'The Kiss' and 'The Burghers of Calais.

 Rodin was born François-Auguste-René Rodin on November 12, 1840, in Paris, to mother Marie Cheffer and father Jean-Baptiste Rodin, a police inspector. Rodin had one sibling, a sister two years his senior, Maria.

Attending the Petite École, he was unable to see figures drawn on the blackboard and, subsequently, struggled to follow complicated lessons in his math and science courses. Rodin found comfort in drawing—an activity that allowed the youngster to clearly see his progress as he practiced on drawing paper.

Sculptors had traditionally drawn their inspiration from the classical world which was reflected in their sculptured figures. Rodin looked at real people and showed this in his sculptures by kneading the clay into lumps and bumps to portray real faces. His first completed sculpture "Mask of the Man With the Broken Nose" (1863-64) was rejected twice by the Paris Salon due to the realism of the portrait, which departed from classic notions of beauty and featured the face of a local handyman.

Following the death of his beloved sister, Marie, Rodin thought of entering the church and then later worked in the decorative arts for nearly two decades which provided him with an income. Rodin later worked under fellow sculptor Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse and took on a major project assigned to him in Brussels, Belgium. A fateful trip to Italy in 1875 with an eye on Michelangelo's work further stirred Rodin's inner artist, enlightening him to new kinds of possibilities; he returned to Paris inspired to design and create. 

Auguste Rodin was a sculptor whose work had a huge influence on modern art. Unlike many famous artists, Rodin did not become widely established until he was in his 40s. He eventually sculpted the controversial piece "The Vanquished" (renamed "The Age of Bronze"), exhibited in 1877. Among Rodin's most lauded works is "The Gates of Hell," a monument of various sculpted figures that includes "The Thinker" (1880) and "The Kiss" (1882). Rodin did not live to finish the intricate piece; he died on November 17, 1917, in Meudon, France.

Rodin died on November 17, 1917, in Meudon, France, passing away months after the death of his partner Rose Beuret. Garnering acclaim for more than a century, Rodin is widely regarded as the pioneer of modern sculpture. With samples of his work found around the world, his legacy continues to be studied and deeply admired by fellow artists, experts, scholars and art connoisseurs, as well as those with an untrained eye. 

The Industrial Revolution in England gave rise to a new class of people being the rich factory and mine owners who moved to the towns, but what they wanted to adorn their substantial properties which they built were paintings of the countryside which they had left behind.

Among the artists of the period, John Constable painted the Suffolk skies with the mill at Dedham that his father owned, and Samuel Palmer painted “The Gleaning Fields” and “The Waterfall” depicting cascading water in a golden glow of light and beautiful countryside. Turner showed magnificent countryside bathed in amazing colours.

The lecture given to the Arts Society Haslemere by Felicity Herring in April contrasted the hardship and extreme poverty of the people living in the countryside, where wages were half that of the town’s folk, and usually the children were malnourished and ill shod, with the scenes of fields, mountains and babbling rivers seen on the artist’s canvasses. The former was not the countryside that the newly rich wished to be re-minded of and many of the successful artists were themselves from good families and lived in the towns and had no idea of the real living conditions and the hovels that families inhabited. To them and to their patrons the countryside was picturesque, peaceful, and idyllic.

William Mc Taggart, a Scottish painter, did depict children without shoes and having to work in the fields with no time to admire the pastoral setting revealed in many well -known Victorian works.

William Collins was another artist painting starving children living in abject poverty. After the death of his sister, who had worked as a governess, he was appalled at the conditions women had to work in and earning again half what a man’s wages would have been. His painting “the Sempstress” shows a woman working far into the night to earn enough to eat, her face drawn and tired and lit by candle light.

No wonder that conditions led to The Tolpuddle Martyrs and other similar unrest. None of this is portrayed in the paintings of Helen Allingham, a friend of Gertrude Jekylll, and who painted in the area around Haslemere. Her quaint thatched cottages with flowers in their gardens and cherubic young children were not painted from the countryside itself but included models from London and her own child.

This was the England where one child in ten died before their first birthday and the average life in Surrey was 47 years, but this was longer than in London or Liverpool. Thomas Wade did paint pictures showing “The Poachers Home” and “Home and the Homeless” showing in their faces the longing of those people for food and warmth.

No wonder that this was the age of migration. Not only for the Irish because of the potato famine but eleven million people emigrated from Victorian England to try and find a better life. Ford Maddox Brown painted the “Emigration” and Richard Redgrave who had previously painted pastoral scenes painted the picture “The Emigrants Last Sight of Home “showing a family as it was about to depart from England.

 Perhaps when you admire the “Haywain” or a similar painting it is a wonderful depiction by the artist of his talent of painting, craft and expertise but as a representation of the real world to those who inhabited it -perhaps not.

The Industrial Revolution in England gave rise to a new class of people being the rich factory and mine owners who moved to the towns, but what they wanted to adorn their substantial properties which they built were paintings of the countryside which they had left behind.

Among the artists of the period, John Constable painted the Suffolk skies with the mill at Dedham that his father owned, and Samuel Palmer painted “The Gleaning Fields” and “The Waterfall” depicting cascading water in a golden glow of light and beautiful countryside. Turner showed magnificent countryside bathed in amazing colours.

The lecture given to the Arts Society Haslemere by Felicity Herring in April contrasted the hardship and extreme poverty of the people living in the countryside, where wages were half that of the town’s folk, and usually the children were malnourished and ill shod, with the scenes of fields, mountains and babbling rivers seen on the artist’s canvasses. The former was not the countryside that the newly rich wished to be re-minded of and many of the successful artists were themselves from good families and lived in the towns and had no idea of the real living conditions and the hovels that families inhabited. To them and to their patrons the countryside was picturesque, peaceful, and idyllic.

William Mc Taggart, a Scottish painter, did depict children without shoes and having to work in the fields with no time to admire the pastoral setting revealed in many well -known Victorian works.

William Collins was another artist painting starving children living in abject poverty. After the death of his sister, who had worked as a governess, he was appalled at the conditions women had to work in and earning again half what a man’s wages would have been. His painting “the Sempstress” shows a woman working far into the night to earn enough to eat, her face drawn and tired and lit by candle light.

No wonder that conditions led to The Tolpuddle Martyrs and other similar unrest. None of this is portrayed in the paintings of Helen Allingham, a friend of Gertrude Jekylll, and who painted in the area around Haslemere. Her quaint thatched cottages with flowers in their gardens and cherubic young children were not painted from the countryside itself but included models from London and her own child.

This was the England where one child in ten died before their first birthday and the average life in Surrey was 47 years, but this was longer than in London or Liverpool. Thomas Wade did paint pictures showing “The Poachers Home” and “Home and the Homeless” showing in their faces the longing of those people for food and warmth.

No wonder that this was the age of migration. Not only for the Irish because of the potato famine but eleven million people emigrated from Victorian England to try and find a better life. Ford Maddox Brown painted the “Emigration” and Richard Redgrave who had previously painted pastoral scenes painted the picture “The Emigrants Last Sight of Home “showing a family as it was about to depart from England.

 Perhaps when you admire the “Haywain” or a similar painting it is a wonderful depiction by the artist of his talent of painting, craft and expertise but as a representation of the real world to those who inhabited it -perhaps not.

On Tuesday 16th March The Arts Society Haslemere were given a lecture on the painter, Tamara de Lempicka who was born in Warsaw (then part of Russia) on 16th May 1898. Her father was a Russian-Jewish lawyer, and her mother a Polish socialite. As a child of a well-off family, she spent the summer with her grandmother in Italy, where she was introduced to the work of the great Italian painters, sparking a love of art that would inform the rest of her life.

Following her parents’ divorce Tamara went to live in St Petersburg where she met and married the dashing Tadeusz Lempicki from whom many years later she was divorced.

In 1917 the Russian Revolution began, and her husband was arrested by the Bolsheviks. After weeks of trying to locate her husband in prison by exploiting her social connections, charm, and attractive appearance, Tamara managed to arrange his release and shortly afterwards, the couple left the country and eventually settled in Paris. Ironically, her financial circumstances were somewhat dire as a result of her refugee status, so she determined to make money from her art.

 Tamara began studying diligently, enrolling at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière where she was taught by the Nabis painter, Maurice Denis and the Cubist André Lhote. Denis encouraged her to take inspiration from the graphic arts, an engagement that was to play a key role in the development of her signature style.

Her initial rough handling of paint matured into her style formed by classic renaissance art and a fresh modern style of bright colours and geometry. The flatness of her work with bold outline and a shooting perspective often achieved by the upward gaze of her subject, high quality craftsmanship and her figures with a twisting pose joined classicism with modernity. Nowadays her style would be referred to as Art Deco but that was term unknown until 1968. Her style at the time was considered very modern and totally different from impressionism of the 19th centuary

Tamara knew all the bohemian painters of her day and the lives they led with crossdressing and louche and often shocking personal lives as well as the similar lifestyles of the subjects she painted. She often made female sitters look powerful in their portraits and painted some of the aristocratic ladies dressed in men’s clothing. Tamara de Lempicka was a Polish painter who spent her working life in France and the USA. She is best known for her Art Deco portraits of aristocrats and the wealthy and for her highly stylized paintings of nudes .For a period her art fell out of favour but it is now fully back in fashion but found mainly in private collections.

In February members of The Arts Society Haslemere went back in time to the era of steam trains which provided a more relaxing and often luxurious way to travel. Charles Harris, who is a global-award winning Creative Director of international advertising agencies focused on the role of posters and poster artists in the history of advertising. He highlighted the different ways to design, illustrate and the photographic styles as they have influenced the way travel evolved with the birth of the railways. The colours and style of the different railway companies before nationalisation were reflected in their respective posters.

The Flying Scotsman, Golden Arrows, Belles and Pullmans; no wonder Betjeman still stands in awe at St Pancras. Covering the Golden Age of British Railways, the era of the Big Four 1923 – 1947, this lecture celebrated the most romantic period of our British travel history. The best travel posters connect with your heart and your mind and enticed you to step aboard to exciting destinations.

The Arts Society Haslemere had a most enlightening lecture by zoom given by Paul Chapman on Stanley Spencer. This artist was born in 1891 in Cookham, the idyllic Berkshire village in which he spent most of his life, and with which his work is intimately linked. Spencer was the penultimate of nine children and was taught at home by his music teacher father and elder sisters and then went on to study at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1908. He counted amongst his contemporaries and friends Paul Nash, Mark Gertler, Dora Carrington and Christopher R. W. Nevinson, Spencer quickly rose to prominence and Roger Fry included Spencer’s work in his Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in 1912. Spencer spent WWI working in the Royal Army Medical Corps, first in Bristol and then in Macedonia and the European Front Line. The horrors he saw during WWI had a profound effect upon Spencer's work and precipitated some of the acknowledged masterpieces of his career including the Sandham Memorial Chapel at Burghclere. Spencer married Hilda Carline in 1925, with whom he had two daughters and his second wife, Patricia Preece he married in 1937 although an unusual marriage on a personal level. However, both of his wives were of immense importance to Spencer's work, acting as both models and muses. During WWII, Spencer again worked as an Official War Artist, painting the shipbuilders on the Clyde in Glasgow. Spencer was knighted in 1959 and died at his home in Cookham in 1959.

 Stanley Spencer's unique, deeply original, visionary art combined the picturesque everyday of village life in rural Britain with poetic Biblical scenes and idiosyncratic, shockingly modern sexuality. The lecturer was invaluable in explaining the complexity of Spencer’s painting with the religious symbolism coupled with the harshness of the depicted war scenes.

Prolific in many genres, this artist is as much remembered for his devastatingly powerful war work as his depictions of bucolic English countryside, for his epic religious tableaux set in Cookham, his portraits of distinguished friends and patrons, the hyper-realistic, proto-Lucien Freud nude portraits of Hilda, Patricia and himself and his monumental projects including Sandham Memorial Chapel and the Shipbuilding on the Clyde cycle at the Imperial War Museum.  For a period of time between the wars Spencer’s work fell out of favour but in more recent years major retrospective exhibitions have been staged at many British Art Galleries and galleries abroad and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest British artists of his time.

A medieval Christmas is brought to life by the use of illustrations, literature and song.

Examining the life and most iconic works of Frida Kahlo, now recognised as one of the greatest female artists of the 20th century. 

Preceded by the AGM at 1.45pm

Before the rapid expansion of London in the 18th and 19th centuries, grand houses, now within Greater London, were once in outlying villages. Here we look at a selection of these houses, the well known and the not-so-well known.

Examining the role of the sunflower in art and how it has been depicted by artists from Van Dyck to Van Gogh.

This lecture will be delivered by Zoom details for which will be sent in September.

Looking at the history of wine through the medium of drinking vessels, paintings and literature that all contribute to the story.

Booking opens at May lecture.

The lute holds a special place in the history of art. This lecture looks at the instrument as a device to express various aspects of the human character throughout the ages.

Exploring Rodin's work, showing why he is one of the greatest sculptors ever and assessing his continued relevance.

A look at Grayson Perry, one of the best-known contemporary British artists - an examination of his work and the unique character inside the flamboyant frocks.

The poor-little-rich girl who changed the face of 20th-century art. She collected not just art, but the artists themselves, and her life was as radical as her collection.

The fascinating story of how painting and architecture went their separate ways, and the complex reasons behind their dramatic divorce.

The images illustrating this lecture are Vincent Van Gogh's painting 'Pipe and Chair', 1888, and a photograph of a chair created by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei which was placed in the center of a movie theater in Stockholm on November 5, 2013. The chair, inspired by classical Ming Dynasty design, stood empty to illustrate Ai Weiwei's involuntary absence in the jury of the Stockholm Film Festival.

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. She 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. Her long career of teaching art in prisons and Young Offender Institutions in Germany and England, followed by her role as the former Arts Coordinator of the Koestler Trust in London, gave her many insights into the huge impact the arts can have in terms of rehabilitation. She is currently advising the Ministry of Justice and presenting the case for the arts to be included in their new rehabilitation and education policies.

Gathering round the Christmas tree, pulling crackers, eating Christmas pudding and mince pies – these are what most of us think of as the traditional Christmas. But where did these traditions start? This lecture looks at their origins and how they were adopted.

Whether you are about to start preparing for the annual festive season or have already made the cake, bought the crackers, cards and presents, come and find out how and when we inherited the traditions that make up today's family Christmas.

Alan Read holds a masters and a first class honours degree in History of Art from Birkbeck College. He is a gallery guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain and National Portrait Gallery, and has lectured at the NPG, Penlee House (Penzance), Plymouth City Art Gallery, Croydon Clocktower and the Bridewell Institute. He is also a London Blue Badge Guide and City of London Guide and has conducted walking tours for the Twentieth Century Society, the National Trust and team London Bridge.

The lecture will be followed by Christmas Tea.
No booking required.

AGM 1.45pm
Followed by lecture

An overview of the poetry, theatre, literature and architecture of Calcutta and how this extraordinary city was affected by British rule.

Calcutta was the second city of the British Empire and a hub of cultural and artistic production throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This lecture looks at the arts and architecture of this extraordinary city, which was India’s capital until 1911. Calcutta played a central role in shaping the culture of modern India, as its artists sought to interpret India’s classical heritage in new ways, and to combine this heritage with Western cultural forms. We will examine how Calcutta became the epicentre of the ‘Bengal renaissance’ and how the city’s artists viewed (and were affected by) British rule.

John Stevens is a Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and a member of academic staff at the SOAS South Asia Institute. His PhD in History is from University College London. He teaches British Imperial history, Indian history and Bengali language, and is a regular visitor to India and Bangladesh. His biography of the Indian guru Keshab Chandra Sen was published in 2018. He appears regularly in the Indian media and was recently a guest on BBC Radio Four’s In Our Time.

Illuminating the lost meaning of symbols in Renaissance art – spiritual and secular, virginal and vulgar.

It is sometimes difficult for us to understand the full meaning of a painting from the past due to the wealth of symbolism it contains, much of it obscure to us today but instantly recognizable to contemporaries. This talk aims to peel back the layers of Renaissance art by deciphering the meaning of some of these symbols - spiritual and secular, virginal and vulgar and so enable us to read these paintings as had the people for whom they were intended.

Shirley Smith graduated from the University of East Anglia with a first class honours degree in the History of Art, specialising in the Italian and Northern Renaissance. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a part-time lecturer for the University of East Anglia and for the Department of Continuing Education of the University of Cambridge. Has run study days and certificate courses as well as residential weekend courses. Also lectures to the Art Fund and individual clubs and societies. She is particularly keen to set the art and architecture of the period in the context of the society for which it was produced.

Exploring the life and work of one of the 20th century’s most talented artists, who became known as "the last Bohemian".

Augustus John was only in his mid twenties when, in the early 1900s, he was widely acknowledged as probably the most talented and promising of young British artists – a Welsh rival, perhaps, to Gauguin or Picasso. When he died in 1961 he was described in The New York Times as ‘the grand old man of British painting and one of the greatest in British history.’ This lecture explores John’s extraordinary life, including his early achievements, his position as one of the most exciting and outrageous young British artists at work before the Great War, his slow decline after it, and his troubled status as ‘the last Bohemian’.

David Haycock is a freelance art historian, author, curator and lecturer. He read Modern History at St John’s College, Oxford, and has an MA in Art History from the University of Sussex and a PhD in History from the University of London. He specialises in British art of the early twentieth century and is the author of “A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War” and curated the Augustus John exhibition which opened at Poole Museum, Dorset, on 25 May 2018. His book 'Drawn from Life' was published to coincide with the opening of that exhibition.

A look at Da Vinci’s anatomical drawings and their extraordinary accuracy.

Leonardo da Vinci was not a physician so why did he study human anatomy? He believed that good art was based on scientific understanding of everything depicted. He also subscribed to the microcosm hypothesis: if the form and function of a man could be described then the secrets of the universe would be better understood. In this lecture Guy Rooker will explore the delineation of our anatomical knowledge through a world of art and specifically the remarkable contribution made to our understanding of the subject by Leonardo da Vinci.

Guy Rooker, recently retired from being a consultant orthopaedic surgeon in Cheltenham, comes to The Arts Society not with a background in the arts but from the world of science in general, and surgery in particular. He describes himself as a retired surgeon with a lifelong passion, fascination, and admiration for the work of Leonardo da Vinci: "I consider that the contribution he has made to both the world of art and the investigation of scientific concepts to be quite unique and extraordinary in the way that so many of his pioneering investigations have contributed to the understanding of our world today".   

OPEN LECTURE

A diverse range of arts and artefacts illustrates how the tiger became a symbol of power and protection in its Asian homeland.

Intriguing and beautiful, tigers are some of the most awe-inspiring and mysterious creatures on earth. Feared and revered in equal measures, they have inspired countless legends, beliefs and works of art. This lecture explores the significance of the tiger as a symbol of power and protection in its Asian homeland, illustrated by a diverse range of art and artefacts. The tiger is seen in early Chinese bronzes, Japanese netsukes, Indian paintings, Tibetan rugs and other Asian works of art. It will also comment on the current situation of the tiger and how this magnificent animal now faces the threat of extinction. Zara co-curated “The Tiger in Asian Art” for Asia House in 2010.

Zara Fleming is a freelance lecturer, art consultant and exhibition curator specialising in the art and culture of Tibet, the Himalayan areas and Mongolia. Initially based at the V & A, she has also worked with the Central Asian Department of Bonn University, the Orient Foundation, The Royal Academy, Tibet House, National Museums and Galleries both on Merseyside and in London. She has curated several exhibitions and has published many articles in the field of Buddhist Studies. 

How artists over the centuries have included glass objects in their paintings, taking delight in capturing the shadows and reflections seen within the glass.

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

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

A pioneer of modern art in America, Georgia O’Keeffe was one of the most original painters of her generation, with a unique blend of abstraction and representation.

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (1887-1986), the second of seven children, grew up on a farm near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905-1906 and the Art Students League in New York in 1907-1908. She became one of the most significant and intriguing artists of the twentieth century, known internationally for her magnified flowers, dramatic cityscapes, glowing landscapes and images of bones against the stark desert sky - iconic and original contributions to American Modernism.

Bernard Allan has a BA (Hons) in History and an MA in History of Art. Having taken early retirement, commenced a new career as an art history tutor for the WEA. Has taught French and British art of the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as women's art, for the past eight years. Lectured to various societies, and guided parties around galleries in London and Paris. In addition to teaching, he is currently researching artists working in Sussex in the 19th century, with a view to publication.

By 1918, hardly a building was left untouched in Ypres – and this lecture charts its rebuilding, with before and after images.

Despite the suggestion that the ruins of Ypres be retained as a memorial, already before the end of 1918 some of the local population were beginning to return from their places of refuge in neighbouring parts of Flanders and France. Every building the locals had known was shattered and in ruins. With hundreds of men, women and children returning to Ypres there was a pressing need to accommodate them in new housing, to provide schools, medical facilities, shops, the everyday facilities of a small town, and to rebuild the shattered infrastructure of drains, sewers and water systems.  The decision was made by 1920 to rebuild the city as a replica of its ancient image, restoring the buildings in the Flemish medieval and renaissance styles of the old city.

Christopher Chanter has been a lifelong collector and restorer of antique furniture. He has specialised in Church woodwork restoration: a major project of his concerned a group of four Flemish renaissance oak sculptures of the four Evangelists. He turned semi-professional in 1998 when he had the opportunity to buy the Stone’s beeswax furniture cream business which had been started in 1760 in Exeter. Christopher has led NADFAS lectures, study days and workshops for some eight years. He has written several articles on restoration and has been a restoration consultant to the Georgian Group. He chaired the Historic Buildings committee of the Somerset Archaeology and Natural History Society from 1999 to 2004. He is also a correspondent to the Council of British Archaeology.

A musically–illustrated exploration of the great composer’s love of opera and how he applied his genius to the form.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (7 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) once wrote to his father: ’Do not forget my wish to write operas! I am envious of every man who composes one’. The theatre was in Mozart’s blood, and during his career not only did he compose 21 works for the stage, but also modernised and perfected the whole approach to the writing of opera. The lecture will explore Mozart’s genius as an opera composer and examine some of the highlights in Mozart’s operas, drawing on The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute.

Peter Medhurst did his musical training at the Royal College of Music where he studied singing, organ and composition. In 1978, he won a scholarship from the Austrian government and studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. On his return he took harpsichord lessons with Ruth Dyson, who became his accompanist and fellow keyboard duettist. Over the years Peter Medhurst has lectured for the universities of Kent and Surrey, directed a wide range of choirs and instrumental groups, and adjudicated and given masterclasses for the British Federation of Music Festivals. He is director of ’The Classical Music Company’, an organisation that promotes musical events, creates films about the arts and organises specialist music tours to unusual locations at home and abroad. In his lectures, Peter Medhurst links the world of music with the visual arts, and in addition to digital and video graphics, performs live vocal and keyboard music to complement the theme of the talk.