Past lectures

	Thursday 19 January 2017 Lecturer: Sarah Kelly Changing Faces: 700 Years of Portraiture Portraits are great survivors. Of all the art forms current in the fifteenth century, portraiture is the one that is stioll popular today. This lecture will focus on a range of portraits, some by
	Thursday 16 February 2017 Lecturer: Anne Sebba Les Parisiennes: How Women Lived, Loved and Died in Paris 1939-1949 Les Parisiennes is a story about women's lives during the dark years of Nazi occupation and beyond. It includes British and American women caught in Paris as well as native born resisters who were
	Thursday 16 March 2017 Lecturer: Janet Robinson Eight Great Frescoes: A Frescoholic Tour of Italy A whistle-stop tour of eight of the greatest fesco cycles in Italian art. We begin with the ground-breaking St Francis cycle in the Upper Church of San Francesco in Assisi, then travel to Padua, S
	40th Anniversary 2017 AGM on Wednesday 5 April at 10:30 in the presence of Lady Camoys, Henley DFAS President, and June Robinson, NADFAS National Chairman Lecturer: John Benjamin At the Sign of the Falcon: The Fascinating Life of Jazz Age Goldsmith Henry George Murphy Harry Murphy served his apprenticeship under Henry WIlson, probably Bitain's greatest designer goldsmith of the Arts & Crafts era. He worked from premises in Marylebone known as the Falcon Stu
	Thursday 20 April 2017 Lecturer: Caroline Rayman Three Great Families and their Gardens This is the story of three very different, but hugely successful families, the Sackville Wests, the Astors and the Rothschilds. The Sackville Wests have been part of the establishment since the Co
	Thursday 18 May 2017 Lecturer: Timothy Wilcox Paradise Regained: the Life and Art of Samuel Palmer The early watercolours and ink drawings of Samuel Palmer evoke a rural idyll, a vision of a secure village life seemingly far removed from the harsh realities of modern industrial Britain. But whi
	Thursday 15 June 2017 Lecturer: Anne Anderson Rene Lalique: Master of Art Nouveau Jewellery and Art Deco Glass Although Lalique is best known for his Art Deco glass of the inter-war years, his career began in the early 1890s as the designer of the finest Art Nouveau jewellery, creating stunning pieces from
	Thursday 21 September 2017 Lecturer: Catherine Wallace Dod Procter RA (1890-1972): A Forgotten Newlyn Painter Only the second woman after Laura Knight to be made a full Royal Academician in 1942 Dod Procter was famous in her day but has been sadly neglected and largely forgotten since. This lecture looks
	Thursday 19 October 2017 Lecturer: Simon Rees Art, Design and Opera - The Role of Art & Design in Opera Productions This lecture will look at the important part art and design has played in the staging of Opera over the last 400 years and how staging and settings have become key elements in productions of this u
	Thursday 16 November 2017 Lecturer: Christopher Bradley Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh This is one of the most famous legends used by storytellers and artists alike, with Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar becoming universal symbols and representations, such as the three ages and races o
	Thursday 18th January 2018 Lecturer: James Wright Historic Graffiti This fascinating lecture by the architectural historian James Wright looks at some of our ancient English Castles and Great Houses through the eyes of the artisans and stonemasons that built them.
	Thursday 15th February 2018 Lecturer: Peter Medhurst The Music and Life of Johann Sebastian Bach A much anticipated visit by a very popular speaker. Through the telling of Bach’s story and through the exploration of some of his finest music, Peter Medhurst attempts to unravel this most comp
	Thursday 15th March 2018 Lecturer: Marilyn Elm For the love of Flowers Flowers with their infinite variety of perfume, colour and form have always provided such joy for the human soul and an inspiration for art and design over the centuries.
	Wednesday 4th April 2018 – AGM Lecturer: James Taylor Brilliant British Humour in the forgotten Art of the Picture Postcard: Artist-drawn postcards were the most popular art form from the Edwardian era to the outbreak of World War II.
	Thursday 19th April 2018 Lecturer: Pamela Campbell-Johnston Celebrating the Royal Academy 1768 – 2018 Britain’s oldest fine arts institution will be celebrating its 250th Anniversary in 2018.
	Thursday 17th May 2018 Lecturer: John Ericson The Wind in the Willows Revisited through its illustrators The beauty of Kenneth Grahame’s prose is widely acknowledged but the story is so full of wonderful imagery that it almost demands to be illustrated – despite this, when first published in 1908 it
	Thursday 21st June 2018 Lecturer: Nicholas Henderson How to ‘read’ the English Country Church (Part 1) A summer’s afternoon walk, the typical country church. This lecture will help you look at the architecture outside and inside, the church furniture, those mysterious nooks and crannies, high and
	Thursday 20th September 2018 Lecturer: Leslie Primo The Sublime in the Everyday: Vermeer and the Delft school of painting This lecture will begin by tracing Vermeer’s origins, his early training and influences and how he came to the genre of painting domestic interiors.
	Thursday 18th October 2018 Lecturer: Tony Faber Indians, Buffalo & Storms – The American West in 19th Century Art Artists were never far behind the explorers who opened up the west of America in the C19th century and they have left us a powerful, if romanticized, record of the country and the people that the
	Thursday 15th November 2018 Lecturer: Claire Walsh Jane Austen’s Christmas Before the Victorians reinvented it, the traditional Christmas was a very different affair.