Wednesday 2nd October 2024

Fashion, Feathers and Fury: Women’s Fight for Change

Lecturer: Tessa Boase

Tessa Boase delivered a fascinating lecture about the fashion for bird feathered hats and the consequences for the birds worldwide in the late 1800s.  We were introduced to the ladies who actually founded the now RSPB and their portraits now proudly hang at the RSPB headquarters.  At its height the plumage trade was huge and tons of birds and feathers would arrive at London Docks.  The lecture shone a light on the story of a time when every women of every class wore a hat, and of the brave eco-feminists who fought back on behalf of the birds. Tessa wrapped up the hour by informing us of the plaques, headstones and statues which now celebrate these incredible women.

Reading List for October Lecture:

Etta Lemon: The Woman Who Saved the Birds by Tessa Boase (Aurum
Press)

Kindred Nature: Victorian Women Embrace the Living World by Barbara T Gates (University of Chicago Press)

A Bird in the Bush: A Social History of Birdwatching by Stephen Moss
(Aurum Press)

Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce by Sarah Abrevaya Stein (Yale University Press)

Rebel Girls: How Votes for Women Changed Edwardian Lives by Jill
Liddington (Virago)

All our lectures are held in the Royal Spa Centre, Newbold Terrace, Leamington Spa CV32 4HN at 11:00m and 2:00pm.

Click here for next month’s lecture.

Wednesday 6th November 2024

A Crisis of Brilliance: Young British Artists 1908-1919

Lecturer: David Haycock

David Haycock gave a very interesting lecture on five of the Young British Artists 1908-1919. The Slate School was an extraordinary place to study and if you wanted to study art that was the place to be.  He began by introducing a photograph of 1912 of the Slade School of Art’s Summer Picnic.  They were a special group of young students with their hopes and dreams of a fulfilling future.  They didn’t know what was on the horizon – WW1. 

It was very dark times.  Some of them were pacifists but all were profoundly disturbed during the war, some came back and continued as artists and some of them sadly lost their lives. David brought each one to life. Paul Nash was a very dapper individual and became one of the most well-known war artists; Stanley Spencer served in the war and afterwards returned to finish the painting he was working on at the start of the war – Swan Upping, Cookham. He returned to his beloved Cookham a different man and finished the painting with angular shapes and dark colours. 

Mark Gentler painted a vivid colourful painting entitled ‘the Merry GoRound’ 1916.  Gertler was successful very early on and made money painting portraits. Richard Nevinson’s La Mitrailleuse of 1915 was the first modern painting of the War.  Dora Carrington was loved by both Nevinson and Gertler but she loved and lived with Lytton Strachey and she painted a stunning portrait of him in 1916.  Other players in the photograph were Henry Tonks, their drawing master and Roger Fry who lectured Renaissance Art. 

They all had to attend many Life Drawing classes. David also introduced us to a group of Italian artists who arrived on the scene in London known as the Futurists. It was a very informative and comprehensive view of these artists.

David Boyd Haycock is a freelance art historian and writer. A former curator at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, he is a specialist in British art and culture in the period 1860 to 1940.

Further Reading:

D B Haycock – ‘A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young Artists and the Great War’ (2009)

Alexandra Harris – ‘Romantic Moderns:English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper (2010)

Christopher Neve – ‘Unquiet Landscape: Places and Ideas in 20th-Century British Painting’ (2020)

Susan Owens – ‘Spirit of Place: Artists, Writers and British Landscape’ (2021)

Click here for the next lecture.

Wednesday 4th September 2024

Donatello: Renaissance Genius

Lecturer: Paula Nuttall

Paula Nuttall gave a very entertaining and informative talk on Donatello: Renaissance Genius.  He was one of the artistic giants of the Italian Renaissance.  Our own V&A in London has the best collection of Donatello’s work outside Italy. He had such creativity and versatility.  His father was a goldsmith and it was highly unusual at that time that he didn’t follow his father’s footsteps.  He wanted to become an artist. He did initially train as a goldsmith and this was a very useful skill for his art in later life.  He was able to work with confidence in metal, stone, marble and wood.  His subjects, in whichever medium, looked realistic and all his faces were individual. He showed a great sense of depth and perspective, and his sense of storytelling was evident in all his friezes. Donatello produced the first full sized bronze nude in the round. He explored and demonstrated a huge emotional range and was able to convey intense emotion. The lecture was supported by fabulous slides and Paula provided a reading list for us to take away.

Paula is a specialist in Italian and Northern European Renaissance art and has published widely, notably From Flanders to Florence: The Impact of Netherlandish Painting 1400-1500 (Yale, 2004). She has collaborated on major exhibitions, including Jan Eyck: an Optical Revolution (Ghent, 2020), is a former Director of the V&A Medieval and Renaissance Year course, and a lecturer at both the Courtauld Institute and the British Institute of Florence.

Click here for next month’s lecture.

Wednesday 6th September 2023

Edward Hopper: Painter of Loneliness

Speaker: Lydia Bauman

Lydia Bauman gave a very interesting lecture on the 20th Century American Artist, Edward Hopper, known as the Painter of Lonliness and who became the poster-boy of the Pandemic.  His dramatic paintings showing very few people compared to his contempories mirrors his character, he was a man of few words, uncomfortable in company and an outsider.  His wife, on the otherhand, was tiny, vivacous, talkative and a painter in her own right. She was his subject and muse throughout their marriage.  He endeavoured to capture the way sunlight falls on a building and sundown was his favourite time.

Wednesday 4th October 2023

Banksy: Fraud or Genius?

Pepe Martinez

This lecture traced the story of Banksy’s meteoric rise from a tagger on the streets of Bristol in the 1980s to one of the most recognisable names in the art world. It covered his early work, contemporaries, major exhibitions, and how the art worlds dramatic change of perspective shifted through time.

Since qualifying as a London blue badge tourist guide in 2011, Pepe has specialised in the graffiti and street art of East London. Prior to becoming a London blue badge guide he worked as a tour manager, travelling extensively all over the world.

Wednesday 1st November 2023

The Lewis Chessmen and What Happened to Them

Speaker: Irving Finkel

We finished our lecture season before breaking for Christmas on a high.  Irving Finkel gave us a very entertaining and funny personal account of his involvement with the Lewis Chessmen, which he has been passionate about for over 50 years. The pieces are carved out of walrus tusks and would have originated from Scandinavia in the 12th century. Further reading:

https://www.tasrls.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Lewis-Chessmen-further-reading.pdf

Wednesday 7th February 2024

Lilian Baylis: All Done on Ginger Beer

Speaker: Sarah Lenton

We were royally entertained at the Arts Society when Sarah Lenton gave a superb talk on ‘Lilian Baylis: All Done on Ginger Beer’.  Lilian was a formidable lady in the 20s and 30s and founded three of our National treasures – The National Theatre which started life at The Old Vic; English Opera at the London Coliseum and the National Ballet at Sadler’s Wells.  Sarah took us through the developmental of all three supported with fabulous photos and music.

Lilian had a strong sense of vocation and even though her actors and dancers received little money she encouraged them and they had very good training; many went on to be very familiar names.  Why Ginger Beer – her Aunt who owned the Old Vic also owned the cafe fronting the building and this was a coffee and ginger beer house.  The ginger beer crates were saved and used as all sorts of scenery.

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

Wednesday 6th March 2024

La Serenissima: The Golden Era of Music in Venice

Patrick Craig

Patrick concentrated on the 200 year period 1527 – 1741, the Golden Age of Music.  We were introduced to a number of lesser known composers and superb pictures and music to liven the talk. What later became Opera was known as Musica Venezia and the composers composed music for voices accompanied by the organs.  San Marco had two choir stalls each with their own organ known as no. 1 and n.2 and the musicians and choristers followed one large sheet music. Later was introduced a third choir stall in the Doge’s private chapel at the back of the cathedral. At this time Venice was the home of musical publishing. Patrick also sang to us.  It was a lively, colourful interesting lecture.

Patrick Craig is a Vicar Choral at St Paul’s Cathedral. For twenty years he sang with the renowned early music consort The Tallis Scholars. He founded and conducts the country’s leading all-female professional choir, Aurora Nova.

Wednesday 3rd April 2024

Marina Abramović

Speaker: Helen Oakden

Helen Oakden gave a fascinating, sensitive and comprehensive lecture introducing us to Marina Abramovic.  Marina was a pioneer of performance art. Over her 50 year career she developed her work to reflect her changing perceptions of the world.  Helen looked at the question of whether performance art can outlive the performance itself.  Marina had a very harsh and severe childhood in Yugoslavia under Tito’s regime.  For the rest of her life she wanted to prove how resilient she was and collected her energy from the audience – the audience flow.  She worked for a few years with her partner and lover, the German artist –  Ulay S’he on many of their installations. When their relationship finished she continued working all over the world on installations and it was over 30 years before she saw Ulay again. She won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Biannale. In her early works she was influenced by Marcel Duchamp. In 2023 the Royal Academy gave room for an exhibition of her work and it was the first time a female performance artist had been represented.

Helen was also the subject of ‘Desrt Island Disks’ in early 2024.

Here’s the link:
Desert Island Discs

Helen is the Head of the History of Art Department at St Mary’s School Ascot. She studied at Manchester University and achieved her Master’s Degree in architectural history from the Courtauld Institute of Art. Based in London, she has previously worked for the Royal Academy and National Gallery, as well as leading specialised art history courses across Italy.

Click here for details of next month’s lecture.

Wednesday 1st May 2024

How to read an English Country Church: Pre-Christian to the Anglo-Saxon

Nicholas Henderson

Nicholas Henderson brought to life the history of an English country church, entertaining us with fabulous images and facts.  His lecture  “How to read an English Country Church: pre-Christian to the Anglo-Saxon” certainly was not dry and boring and one of 3 lectures on this subject.  He interwove the history of early England and told us stories of the symbolism on churches. We learnt about fertility symbols and how the yew tree  in the churchyard was before the building of the church and how they grew in groves and known to be everlasting. He told us about the ‘Greenman’ decorating early churches up and down the country and our new King Charles who designed a green man at the bottom of his Coronation invitation.  The oldest part of these early churches is the tower and entrance arch. We learnt about Danelaw c878 and he finished his talk with a flourish introducing King Canute (1016 – 1035). 

A graduate of Selwyn College, Cambridge, Nicholas trained for the Anglican ministry at Ripon Hall, Oxford. He was formerly Bishop-elect for the Diocese of Lake Malawi in Central Africa (2005-2009) and undertook his doctorate on Lay Anglican Ecclesiology with the University of Wales, Lampeter. He lectures regularly and currently works as a parish priest in West London.