Gauguin’s Discovery of the “Primitive”

Gauguin the painter was in flight from urban society.  From the mid 1880’s he sought somewhere “unspoilt” by modern civilization, and this search would take him to Brittany,  Martinique and the South Pacific.  This lecture concentrates on the work Gauguin produced in Brittany in the late 1880s and early 1890s, most notably The Vision after the Sermon.  Making comparisons with other artists working in Brittany during this period, we will consider how Gauguin turned his escape from the city into an aggressive rejection of modernity, setting up the “primitive” as alternative ideal in art, and adopting a new, bold pictorial language to express his vision of a simple and unspoilt way of life. 

Kathy McLauchlan

A lecturer specialising in 19th-century art history, she is currently a course director at the Victoria & Albert Museum, organising courses and study days on the history of art and design.  She teaches at several institutions, including Art Pursuits.  She is a graduate of Oxford University and the Courtauld Institute, with a PhD on French 19th-century painters in Rome.  Kathy is available for both individual lectures and study days.  The subjects she can cover include: 'Sketch and Finish in 19th-century French Painting', 'Montmartre fin de siècle', 'Mucha and the Slav Epic' and 'America and the Sublime Landscape'.

Mary Cassatt's Uncoventional Women

In 1913, the impressionist Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) was declared to be “the painter of mothers and children”, a title that would redefine her once provocative career as sentimental.  Since then, the art of her quite radical feminist has been repeatedly miscast as maudlin.  This lecture uses current research into Cassatt that reclaims her rebelliousness and it looks the actual lives of the women and children she painted rather than what nostalgia imagines them to be.  There will be an overview of Cassatt’s life and career, why she intentionally chose unconventional subjects and how she was received by her peers, the Independents (aka the Impressionists).  As we look at Cassatt we will also learn about the lives of middle class women in late 19th century Paris, giving fresh insight into impressionist art and how it challenged the conventional appearance of women at the time. 

Sarah Jaffray

Sarah is an art historian, educator, curator and writer based in London. 

Before her current position as head of art history at City Lit, London's largest adult education college, Sarah was a curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. For six years, she was the lead educator for the Bridget Riley Art Foundation and has also worked at Wellcome Collection exploring the connections of art, medicine and human experience. Prior to relocating to London for family, she was as a tenured professor of Art History based in Los Angeles. Sarah has been an art history lecturer since 2003.

“Harp & Holly” – Its History, Design and Music with a Seasonal Flavour

Join Margaret for a seasonal hour of Christmas bygones and entertainment as she brings to life the joy of music through the ages at this time of year.  She will be delving into the history of the harp and it’s incredible pedal mechanism and exploring some of the old Christmas Carols and their origins.   Margaret will play a selection of festive favourites to get you in the mood for Christmas.   

Margaret Watson

A highly experienced harpist, Margaret has performed for Royalty, the BBC and at many prestigious venues. She gives bedside concerts for patients in hospitals, specialist care centres and in nursing homes and is an accredited lecturer on the history and lore of the harp for the Arts Society. With her very varied repertoire and often resplendent costumes, Margaret has delighted numerous audiences throughout the UK.

Frank Matcham Theatres

Frank Matcham was one of - if not the - most prolific theatre designers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Even today sources vary as to how many buildings he was associated with: 120? 150? even 200? 

Often ignored by the more formal archtectual profession, Alison Rae will look at Matcham's work and legacy in this talk about 'Mr Matcham'.

Alison Rae

Former Head of Tours at the Royal National Theatre Alison Rae gives regular tours and talks about London and theatre history. A graduate of Open City's Urban Guiding Academy and an accredited Lambeth Tour Guide she is also Co Director of the Become A Lambeth Tour Guide course at Morley College. She was Chair of the Channel Route of Historic Theatres until earlier this year.

The Imperial Easter Eggs of Carl Faberge - After the Revolution

This lecture follows the story of the Faberge Imperial Easter Eggs from their disappearance in the Revolution and subsequent deep unfashionability to their current status as one of the world’s great collectables.  

Between 1885 and 1916, Carl Faberge made fifty jewelled eggs – Easter presents from Russia’s last two emperors to their wives.  Since the brutal murder of the last tsar and his family in a Siberian basement, these eggs have become the most famous surviving symbols of the Romanov Empire: both supreme examples of the jeweller’s art and the vulgar playthings of a decadent court.

Seven eggs remain missing. What prospect is there that they will ever emerge, and if they do, will anyone believe that they are genuine?

Toby Faber

Toby Faber has been a banker, management consultant and publisher. He remains on the board of the company founded by his grandfather 'Faber and Faber' and is Chairman of its sister company 'Faber Music', and is a lecturer for the Arts Society.

His books include three works of narrative non-fiction - 'Stradivarius', which was very briefly a New York Times bestseller,  'Fabergé’s Eggs', and 'Faber & Faber: The Untold Story', and also a novel 'Close to the Edge'. Of these only the obvious one was published by the family firm.

ART DECO: Celebrating the Centenary of the 1925 PARIS EXPO

In 1925, 16 million visitors witnessed Paris's EXPO – The International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts. What would we have seen in this landmark exhibition, if we had been one of those visitors? What drew the crowds? And how did this seminal exhibition play a fundamental role in giving rise to a new international and truly GLOBAL  style that we have come to know as ART DECO?

We will also spend some time focusing on the stately Grand Salon of the Hotel du Collectionneur that was a principal feature at this 1925 exhibition and showcased stunning examples of objets d’art, furniture, crystal and fine art.   

Come and join the Art Deco celebrations and learn about the 1925 PARIS EXPO.    

Pamela Campbell-Johnson

MA Hons Art History, St Andrew’s University.

Over 30 years of lecturing experience to undergraduates, adult groups, and to Friends and Patrons of the Royal Academy of Arts as part of the RA’s Adult Education Department. Also conducted numerous guided tours, residential trips and focused gallery talks on individual works of art.  

Specialises in British Domestic Architecture and Modern British Art – with a particular love for the 1920s and 1930s. A permanent career at Royal Academy of Arts for 12 years.  

Work experience also undertaken at Bonhams, Art Loss Register and National Trust.

Now a freelance art consultant and lecturer.  Recently curated a collection for the Lansdowne Club.  

Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars.

Painting Kent: Picturing a County from Tudor Knole to Tracy Emin's Margate

The county of Kent has been irresistibly attractive to artists from the earliest times. Depictions of Kent have been at the forefront of new artistic movements through the centuries and have been pivotal to the development of English art. This talk takes a pictorial journey through paintings of the county to uncover what attracted painters to Kent and how they chose to depict its places.   

Dr Lydia Goodson

Lydia is an art historian specialising in the art and material culture of the Italian Renaissance. Her research interests extend beyond painting to include the production and trade of the decorative arts such as textiles, tableware and home furnishings as well as the lived experience in the Italian Renaissance town. Lydia is passionate about the benefits of life-long learning and hugely enjoys writing and delivering art history lectures and courses for audiences of all ages.

Lydia holds an MA in Art History from the University of Sussex and a BA in Renaissance History from the University of Warwick, and has completed her PhD at The Warburg Institute in London.

Michelangelo - 'A Troubled Genius'

To his contemporaries, Michelangelo was the living embodiment of artistic genius. He was a sculptor, painter, architect and poet, a man of immense energy and fiery temper, dedicated, solitary and single minded, both tormented and possessed by his ambition.  In his long life he painted the Sistine Chapel, designed the dome of St Peter’s, created the Medici Chapel and carved Moses, the Pieta, and the towering figure of David.  And yet that was only a fraction of what he set out to produce.  This lecture looks at this tempestuous genius whose work at first fulfilled the ideal of the High Renaissance and then went on to alter it forever.   

Douglas Skeggs

Douglas read Fine Art at Magdalene College Cambridge and has been a lecturer on paintings since 1980. In that time he has given over 8000 lectures to universities, colleges and art societies. He was the director of The New Academy of Art Studies for three years and is presently a regular lecturer at The Study Centre, Christie’s course “The History of Art Studies” and other London courses. Among his more improbable venues for lectures are the bar on the QE2, M15 headquarters, the Captain’s Room at Lloyd’s, and an aircraft hangar in a German NATO base. 

Overseas he has lectured in Belgium, France, Germany and Spain, and has taken numerous tours around Europe. Three one-man exhibitions of his paintings have been held in England and Switzerland. Douglas has published five novels, which have been translated into 8 foreign languages. His book on Monet, River of Light has sold 30,000 copies in England, America and France.

Sixty Year On: Life in Britain as seen in 1960s films

There are four elements to this lecture.  The first is a look at the emergence of the North in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Room at the Top, A Taste of Honey, This Sporting Life etc.  Second would be a look at Swinging Britain – Julie Christie in Darling, Michael Caine in Alfie, the Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night and the James Bond movies.  Third would be a look at the last days of Empire as seen in Tony Richardson’s Charge of the Light Brigade, Zulu and, comically, Carry on Up the Khyber. Finally a drastic change in the depiction of sex from Dirk Bogarde in Victim (1961) to Alan Bates and Oliver Reed famously wrestling nude in Women in Love (1969).

Colin Shindler

Colin Shindler is an author, screenwriter, television producer and university lecturer. He has been writing on American and British social and cultural history for over 30 years. He has published books on Hollywood history, football and cricket and written five novels.  His childhood memoir 'Manchester United Ruined My Life' was one of three of his books to be featured on the Sunday Times bestseller list. He hosts a weekly podcast on old football called 'Football Ruined My Life'.

Everything Stops for Tea! - A Social History of Drinking Tea

It was during the 18th century that the rituals of tea drinking were established. Tea drinking was both a private and public affair.  The painter William Hogarth, famous for recording middle class life, shows us exactly how tea was drunk at the time.  In the 19th century the paraphernalia associated with tea drinking mushroomed, from infusers to strainers and drip-catchers. Manufacturers had to cater for a mass market. The café boom of the late 19th century resulted in Miss Cranston’s Teashops in Glasgow, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Lyons Corner houses. All the large department stores had tearooms.  At seaside resorts one enjoyed the tea-dance, while the great transatlantic passenger liners were floating palaces, where everything stopped for tea at 4pm.

This lecture combines social history with fashion and interior decorating. A wonderful selection of images will demonstrate the elegance of taking tea from the 18th century to the 1950s.

Anne Anderson

With a first degree in archaeology and a PhD in English, Anne was a senior lecturer in Art and Design History at Southampton Solent University for 14 years. She has curated four national exhibitions. Her book on The Perseus Series accompanied the Edward Burne-Jones exhibition (2018 Tate Britain). 

Anne has also published over a hundred academic papers. She has held several prestigious fellowships including Fellow of the Huntington Library CA (2008-2009 and 2018-2019) and Fellow of the Henry Francis DuPont Winterthur Library and Museum (2009/10).

Currently a guide and lecturer, Anne specialises in Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts art tours. Her career as an international speaker has taken her all over the world.  She undertook her sixth lecture tour for ADFAS/ArtsNational Australia in 2024.