Venue: GREETHAM VALLEY GOLF CLUB

John Ruskin, the leading critic and aesthete, wrote in the 1850s that photography could never be Art. This lecture traces the struggle to overturn that view, beginning with the Pictorialist school of Victorian photographers and closing with the recent emergence of photographic art inspired by digital technology. Along the way we examine the contested virtues of colour images and the present revival of old-fashioned film cameras.

I Wait. Model is Rachel Gurney. Albumen print, 327 x 254mm (12 7/8 x 10"). Photo: Julia Margaret Cameron.   Public domain

Venue: REETHAM VALLEY GOLF CLUB

Lecture starts 10:30

This lecture looks at the art of Banksy and Jean-Michel Basquiat. What binds them together is ‘street’ or ‘graffiti’ art?  Banksy is British, out of Bristol, and emerged in the 1990s with a stencil-based approach to street art. His work pops up in the most surprising places. Most memorable are large rodents, girls with balloons and flower-throwing freedom fighters. Some see Banksy as a prankster but with increasingly serious cultural or socio-political points to make. The picture that shredded itself at Sotheby’s in 2018 is a good example. Banksy remains, anonymous despite his popularity. Born in Brooklyn in 1960, Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the neo-expressionism movement. He died in 1988.

Venue: RUTLAND COUNTY MUSEUM  

(a change from the previous date of June 25th)

From Greek Mosaics in the second century, through weddings in the Bible, Renaissance allegories of refinement and excess, sixteenth century peasant parties out of doors, eighteenth century harlequins, to the celebratory styles of twentieth century painters, the depiction of parties has always been popular in the history of Western Art.  

Alice Foster traces the variety of merrymaking, banqueting, dances and music in a feast of colour.

Venue: RUTLAND COUNTY MUSEUM

This talk informs people about my artist process and what was involved in making this public work of art. I will start the talk with an introduction to my artistic practise, then go on to describe how I won the national competition to be artist in residence for Women’s Suffrage in Parliament. I go on to talk about the brief and how I came up with the concept for the monument and how the artwork was created. I will end with a video showing the piece being unveiled for the first time to the public.

The great Venetian artist Canaletto spent ten years living in London producing wonderful landscapes of the city and its surrounds. In this lecture, we explore his time in the capital and look at how his style changed during his long visit.  

We look at some of the work he produced and explore how the views he captured have changed over the centuries.

The great Venetian artist Canaletto spent ten years living in London producing wonderful landscapes of the city and its surrounds. In this lecture, we explore his time in the capital and look at how his style changed during his long visit.  We look at some of the work he produced and explore how the views he captured have changed over the centuries.

Immortalised in Cole Porter’s lyrics “You’re the top! You’re a Waldorf salad”, the Waldorf Astoria hotel, New York was ‘home in New York to the stars’, international  celebrities and world leaders.  Built at the height of the Depression and famous before it opened, its glittering Jazz  Age interiors were created by leading European designers, artists and sculptors.

Immortalised in Cole Porter’s lyrics “You’re the top! You’re a Waldorf salad”, the Waldorf Astoria hotel, New York was ‘home in New York to the stars’, international celebrities and world leaders. Built at the height of the Depression and famous before it opened, its glittering Jazz Age interiors were created by leading European designers, artists and sculptors.

The Impressionists were an innovative and radical group of artists whose took Paris  by storm in the 1870s. Using new colours and techniques, they created paintings of  modern life which shocked and horrified the art establishment.  From the start the group included women artists but their contribution to  Impressionism has often been overshadowed by their male contemporaries. Marie  Bracquemond, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt all exhibited regularly at the  Impressionist exhibitions alongside artists such as Monet, Renoir and Degas.

The Impressionists were an innovative and radical group of artists whose took Paris  by storm in the 1870s. Using new colours and techniques, they created paintings of  modern life which shocked and horrified the art establishment.  From the start the group included women artists but their contribution to  Impressionism has often been overshadowed by their male contemporaries. Marie  Bracquemond, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt all exhibited regularly at the  Impressionist exhibitions alongside artists such as Monet, Renoir and Degas.

At the Museum in Catmos Street, Oakham

This is a talk about just one building. It has 60 million bricks, four chimneys and an  amazing story to tell.   Planned in the 1920s, the massive  power station operated for fifty years  but was then abandoned for the next  forty years while dozens of ideas were  proposed for its use.  It is now a Grade 2* listed building and  has been brilliantly converted into a  landmark development including  residential, retail, offices and leisure  which all still reflect its industrial  heritage.  In this sumptuously illustrated talk, Ian will take us on an armchair tour of this famous  site.

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in America,  explore 25 iconic works including Grant Wood’s ‘American Gothic,’ Dorothea Lange’s  ‘Migrant Mother,’ Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks,’ of American art.

Preceded by the AGM

 I write only for fame… 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.

What makes a genuine Rembrandt?  This question has dogged museums and art historians since the great Dutch master’s  reputation soared to prominence at the end of the 19th century. The Rembrandt  Research Project tried for nearly five decades to pare down the painter’s oeuvre,  using the latest technology and a barrage of experts. But a backlash in the 1990s  cause many disavowed Rembrandts to be put back on the list.  This lecture charts the ebb and flow of Rembrandt attribution and tries to answer the  question: who decides? Science or the subjective eye of the connoisseur.

A king's favourite who amassed a great art collection.George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, was the favourite of King James I - who addressed him as ‘my sweet child and wife’ - and subsequently chief minister to King Charles I. Buckingham was a beauty, and he surrounded himself with beautiful things. He enjoyed exquisite clothes, like the fabulous white silk suit encrusted with diamonds that he wore to visit the Queen of France. He was a superb dancer. When he cut capers during a court masque King James startled visiting ambassadors by shouting out ‘By God, George, I love you!’

Many people are familiar with the national designers of the 19th century Arts and Crafts Movement such as William Morris and Charles Ashbee. But the Midlands made a huge contribution to the movement as well. Designers at The Bromsgrove Guild of Handicrafts for example produced the exquisite wrought iron gates for Buckingham Palace. This lecture sets the work of these Midlands designers in the context of the national Arts and Crafts Movement using examples of jewellery made by Arthur and Georgina Gaskin, stained glass by Florence Camm, ceramics from the Ruskin Pottery and more.

 The Frick Collection, New York, is one of the finest-quality museums in the world. It  belongs largely to the Gilded Age of American connoisseurship of the early years of  the 20th century and is a testament to the taste of its founder, steel magnate, Henry  Clay Frick. He died on the eve of WWI after being able to collect some of the best  pieces available in Europe and America. His agents were really effective and the  result is a first rate collection of fine French furniture, enamels, porcelain, paintings by  Bellini, Van Eyck, Holbein, Titian, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Dyck, Rubens, El Greco,  Velázquez, Fragonard, Ingres, Renoir, JMW Turner, Constable, Whistler and many  others. These are all set within an outstanding mansion in Manhattan. The Wallace Collection, in Hertford House, London, is a Pandora’s box of francophile  taste in the late 18th and 19th centuries. It was amassed by the Marquess of Hertford  and his natural son, Sir Richard Wallace and his French wife, Lady Wallace, who, on  her death in 1897, bequeathed the collection to the nation. It is stunning in its quality.  Fine French furniture, Renaissance bronzes, Sevres porcelain, European paintings  from Titian, Van Dyck and Rubens to Ruisdael, Gainsborough and Lawrence, adorn a  sumptuous interior dripping with many pieces actually made for French Royal  interiors, including Versailles. 

The Alhambra of Granada, the Great Mosque of Cordoba and the Alcazar of Seville  are the three most impressive monuments to the architectural creativity of the Moors  in Spain, but there are many other examples worthy of mention too.  The classical origins that influenced the Moorish style are less well-known, but  fascinating to explore, as too is the unique interior decorative style developed by the  Moors, which gives their architecture its beauty and exotic appeal – an appeal so  strong that the Christians sometimes copied it, even as they slowly reconquered the  territory from its Islamic rulers.

 Art touches human emotions which machines cannot feel. Art of all kinds can touch us and make us respond, often beyond the expectation of  the artist. Happiness, sadness, pity, compassion, a spiritual uplifting, curiosity, all  human emotions which even the most sophisticated digital programming will never  match.  Justin demonstrates how art arises from human imagination to feed our emotions,  and discusses the difference between mere imitation of the physical world – which  even robots can be taught to do – and the creation of truly human art which enhances  our lives.

In his book ‘Historic Building Mythbusting’ the archaeologist James Wright, a resident  of Nottinghamshire, has used many case studies from the county to articulate some  of the tales which are told about ancient architecture. These include stories of secret passages underneath Wollaton, ship timbers in  Worksop, strange sculptures at Laxton parish church, stones used by archers to  sharpen arrows in Wilford, and yarns about Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem being the  oldest inn in England… but are any of these stories true?

In 1882 Gertrude Jekyll wrote a short but seminal article in The Garden in which she urged the readers to “remember that in a garden we are painting a picture”. As an accomplished watercolour artist, Miss Jekyll was familiar with the principles of using colours, but she felt that in gardens these principles “had been greatly neglected”. This talk looks at how to apply these principles in designing a border, but it also looks at the ways in which a border is different from a painting. However, it goes further than this and looks at how contemporary work of the likes of Turner, Monet, Rothko, Jackson Pollack evolved in parallel with ideas about what a garden or border should show.