Lecture-2024

The Group of Seven was formed with the aim of creating a distinctively Canadian art based on the country’s natural landscape. The original members first came together in 1913, and first exhibited as a group in 1920. This lecture will explore examples of their work, which continue to hold great sway in relation to both Canadian art history and national identity. We will also consider their influences, the work of some of their forerunners – including Tom Thomson – and contemporaries, and ask whether they achieved their aims.

We look at the rich art, architecture and history of Sicily - the largest island of the ancient Mediterranean and, in the ancient world, the wealthiest.
First we see the Carthaginians, the first major invaders of Sicily and their distinctive, enigmatic culture, still visible on the small island of Motya. Afterwards come the Greeks, with beautiful cities such as Agrigento, and Syracuse and Segesta, filled with theatres and temples to the gods.
Then we see Roman Sicily, peaceful and prosperous, with cities such as Syracuse and Taormina, and the sumptuous ‘mosaic villa’ of Piazza Armerina. After Rome, and the new Rome of Constantinople, comes the invasion of the Arabs with their revolution in society and agriculture, and then Norman Sicily - an extraordinary artistic flourishing, culminating in the mosaics of the magnificent Norman basilicas.

Harry Venning graduated from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth with a BA in history, formed a touring theatre company bringing new plays to audiences in rural Wales, was then employed for a year as an actor/writer with the Channel Theatre Company in Ramsgate, Kent, before giving up acting and becoming a cartoonist instead.
He has had work published in the UK and abroad, including the strip Clare in the Community which has been a weekly feature in The Guardian since 1996. In 2016 he was awarded Strip Cartoonist of the Year by the UK Cartoon Trust. Harry is also a Sony Award winning writer of radio comedy.
For the last ten years he has been performing his cartoon workshop Release Your Inner Cartoonist in its many different guises, to audiences as diverse as schoolchildren, business executives and festival goers.

From July to September 2024 Paris will host the Olympic and Paralympic Games. But whilst most onlookers will focus on sport, art and design will also play a part, as they have since the games began at Olympia nearly three thousand years ago. Greek art is replete with representations of athletes on vases, plates and bronzes. Every four years modern day hosts unveil dazzling new architecture, in the form of stadia, arenas, velodromes and swimming pools. The athletes themselves act as torch bearers for ever changing ideals of physical perfection. From nudity to Nike, from sand to synthetics, the Olympic story offers art lovers pure gold.

One man’s quest to see a favourite painting at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge led to the remarkable project, now known as ‘Art UK’ (and online), which has catalogued over 210,000 thousand oil paintings in UK public ownership since 2003. The project now moves on to sculpture.
Cataloguers hunted down paintings in damp stores, clambered up dodgy ladders, unrolled masterpieces and sad tatters of canvas. Amanda knows! She was one of them. An extraordinary record has been created, which benefits from public interaction online and has become a wonderful resource for education and pleasure.

Holland was a special phenomenon in the 17th century: A world power with a booming economy which created a wealthy burger class who were proud of what they had achieved and who wanted their portraits painted.
Never before were so many portraits produced. There was an explosion of portraits, large, small, men, women, children, groups.
It is estimated that more than 5,000,000 paintings were produced in the 17th century. Dutch artists captured these people and these works have become masterpieces – just think of the Night Watch.
We will take a look at their diversity, creativity and quality.
Due to the exhibition at the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, 12th July - 3rd November 2024, we will give special attention to Frans Hals, and this talk will be an introduction to portraiture in 17th century Holland and Frans Hals’ contribution to it.

Many art historians and critics have compared the work of Stubbs to that of Leonardo da Vinci, one even christening him the ‘Leonardo of Liverpool’ to reflect his humble origins as the son of a Liverpool leatherworker. The comparison can seem hubristic until one considers the intense scientific method and investigation that lay behind the production by Stubbs of his world-famous Anatomy of the Horse published in 1766 – a work which revolutionised the understanding and depiction of equine subjects. This lecture looks at the life and work of this country’s greatest animal painter, putting Stubbs in the context of British sporting artists of the eighteenth century more generally. It focusses on his depiction of equestrian subjects such as the National Gallery’s Whistlejacket but also looks at the broader themes he addressed.

Staatliches Bauhaus was an art school founded under Weimar Republic by the architect Walter Gropius. From 1919 to 1933 its tutors combined crafts and the fine arts in a radical new approach to design education.
Less well known is the influence of the Bauhaus and other German design schools on design and art education in Britain in this period. As the impact of the economic ‘Slump’ of c.1929-34 hit British manufacturing sales, many in local and national government took the view that Britain’s struggling industrial base could be improved if moves were made to provide for better design education. This lecture looks at some of the work of the key artists involved in improving British design in this period – including Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry; and at Unit One – formed by Paul Nash in 1933 to promote modern art, architecture and design.

Far from being a ruin, Cardiff Castle is one of the most remarkable houses in Britain. Dating from the time of the Romans, centuries of change culminated in the complete transformation undertaken in the 1870s by the Marquess of Bute and his eccentric genius architect William Burges. They created a ‘Feudal extravaganza’ in fifteen highly imaginative interiors, including an Arab room, a Pompeian roof garden and rooms with an astrological theme. The lecture examines this wonderful building and the personalities of those involved.