• Henley DFAS

Past lectures

Favourite Paintings: Masterpieces from the Barber Institute of Fine Arts - in the Context of the Image of Black People in Art Thursday 16th February 2023 at 10.45am and 2.15pm at The Henley Rugby Club

Lecturer: Leslie Primo


Favourite Paintings: Masterpieces from the Barber Institute of Fine Arts - in the Context of the Image of Black People in Art
This lecture will explore my personal favourite paintings from the rich and varied collection of paintings that make up The Barber Institute of Fine Arts Collection.
 
 
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William Bankes: The Exiled Collector and the Man behind the Creation of the English Country House Thursday 19th January 2023 at 10.45am and 2.15pm at The Henley Rugby Club

Lecturer: Anne Sebba


William Bankes: The Exiled Collector and the Man behind the Creation of the English Country House
 
 
William Bankes was a 19th century collector of ancient Egyptian artefacts and Spanish paintings intended for his ancestral home in Dorset, Kingston Lacy.
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Christmas in Bach’s Leipzig: The Christmas Oratorio of 1734/5 1st December 2022 at The Henley Rugby Club 10.45am, repeated at 2.15pm

Lecturer: Sandy Burnett


Christmas in Bach’s Leipzig: The Christmas Oratorio of 1734/5
Sandy Burnett’s close relationship with Bach’s music stretches back for decades; between 1997 and 2010 he directed a complete cycle of Bach’s sacred cantatas in West London.
 
Bach Haussmann
In this illustrated talk he explores how Bach brings the Christmas story alive in his Weihnachtsoratorium or Christmas Oratorio, written for Lutheran congregations in 1730s Leipzig.
 
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The Art of the Cartoonist Venue: The Kenton Theatre, Henley Wednesday 9th November AGM at 10.30am followed by lecture (morning lecture only)

Lecturer: Harry Venning


The Art of the Cartoonist
Harry Venning has been a professional cartoonist for thirty years, during which time he has provided cartoons for several high profile UK publications (The GuardianRadio Times) as well as for countless more obscure titles (British Journal Of Wound Care).
 
 
He was awarded UK Strip Cartoonist Of The Year for his Guardian strip Clare In The Community, which he adapted into a Radio 4 sitcom.
 
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River Thames: Theatre of Pageantry and Pleasure Thursday 20th October at Phyllis Court 10.45am repeated at 2.15pm

Lecturer: Joanna Mabbutt


River Thames: Theatre of Pageantry and Pleasure
London’s grandest thoroughfare for centuries, the Thames has hosted royal weddings and state funerals, fireworks and pyrotechnics, music and masques, coronations and Lord Mayors’ pageants, processions and civic festivities. Teaming with life and busy with shipping, the City’s life-blood has also been the playground of both royalty and the common man.
 
 
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The Mayan Civilisation of Central America Thursday 15th September at Phyllis Court 10.45am and 2.15pm

Lecturer: Dr Duncan Pring


The Mayan Civilisation of Central America
Whilst a great deal is known to many about the Greek, Roman and Egyptian civilisations, the great ancient civilisations of the New World (The Maya, the Aztecs and the Incas) are much less well known. This lecture's focus is on the Maya, arguably the greatest of the three.
 
A Late Classic Maya Vase from Nebaj in Guatemala
 
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Betrayal: The Story of Samson and Delilah in Art and Music Thursday 16th June at Phyllis Court 10.45am repeated at 2.15pm

Lecturer: Lois Oliver


Betrayal: The Story of Samson and Delilah in Art and Music
Erotic and exotic, the tale of the man who killed 1,000 Philistines armed only with  the jawbone of an ass but who was fatally unmanned by the wiles of Delilah has proved irresistible to artists and composers through the ages. Handel’s oratorio on the subject was an instant box-office smash, and later Saint-Saëns produced some of his most alluring and sensuous music for Delilah and the Dragon-worshipping revellers in his opera Samson et Dalila.
 
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The Era of Anything: Decoding Contemporary Art Thursday 19th May at Phyllis Court 10.45am repeated at 2.15pm

Lecturer: Jacky Klein


The Era of Anything: Decoding Contemporary Art
Many of us find contemporary art challenging, strange, provocative or downright silly. How are we meant to respond to and appreciate art that so often seems to provoke, to reference its own (sometimes arcane) histories, to shock or confound? This lecture helps to unravel the step changes in art that have taken place since the 1870s, exploring how we got from Impressionist paintings of light-dappled rivers that sought to reflect the realities of modern life in all its fleeting beauty to the interactive, immersive, ephemeral and ‘post-medium’ art of today.
 
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Identifying the Forgotten Gems of the Art World: A Conservator’s Experience Thursday 21st April 10.45am repeated 2.45pm

Lecturer: Julia Korner


Identifying the Forgotten Gems of the Art World: A Conservator’s Experience
Since 1997, when I left Christie’s Auctioneers after 20 years, I have been based beside the River Thames in Chiswick and have maintained full-time studios involved in the conservation of paintings, frames, and polychrome sculpture and the making of handmade frames & display cabinets.
 
I have been reminded repeatedly that an object of value, whether financial or sentimental, tends to have a history, even if unknown to the owner. As an art historian, conservator of oil paintings, and maker of handmade frames, I want – and am determined, so far as is possible - to find out the history of the work of art with which I have been entrusted.  So often that history is there for a skilled practitioner: in the image, in the pigment, and in other detail, underneath layers of dirt, opaque varnish and other discolouring. One has to look - and look again - as one sets out to establish how pictures looked in their original state.
 
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The Rise and Fall of Napoleon Bonaparte Thursday 17th March at Phyllis Court 10.45am repeated 2.15pm

Lecturer: Stephen Duffy


The Rise and Fall of Napoleon Bonaparte
Illustrated with many wonderful works of art, this lecture tells the extraordinary story of the rise of the son of a lawyer in Ajaccio, Corsica, to become Emperor of the French before finally being defeated and sent into exile on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic. It also attempts to explain the nature of his genius as an administrator and a military commander, assessing his achievements and his failures, his strengths and his weaknesses.
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Imperial Chinese Court Art and Portraiture: Emperors, Ancestors and Jesuits Thursday 17th February 2022 at 10.45am repeated at 2.15pm at Phyllis Court

Lecturer: David Rosier


Imperial Chinese Court Art and Portraiture: Emperors, Ancestors and Jesuits
This lecture explores the origins and evolution of the nature and function of paintings created under an Emperor's patronage by artists of the Imperial School of Art.
 
 
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Thursday 20th January 2022 at Phyllis Court 10.45 repeated at 2.15pm

Lecturer: Angela Findlay


Art Behind Bars: The Role of the Arts in Breaking the Cycle of Crime, Prison and Reoffending
Years of working as an artist within the Criminal Justice System in England and Germany have given Angela unique insights into the destructive and costly cycle of crime, prisons and re-offending.
 
 
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The Story of the Cook Sisters and How They Used Opera to Save Lives Thursday 18th November 2021 at Phyllis Court 10.45am and 2.15pm

Lecturer: Anne Sebba


The Story of the Cook Sisters and How They Used Opera to Save Lives
 
Ida and Louise Cook were destined never to marry after decimation of the men of their generation in World War One. When Ida became a successful Mills and Boon novelist they used their earnings to indulge their love of opera, travelling all over the world but especially to Salzburg. Familiarity with Austria enabled these two eccentric opera loving sisters to undertake dangerous undercover missions in the 1930s rescuing Jewish musicians and others from the Nazis. 
 
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Psychology of a City: The Architecture of St Petersburg Venue: Town Hall (please note venue) Wednesday 3rd November 2021 10.30am AGM followed by lecture Morning lecture only, members only

Lecturer: Rosamund Bartlett


Psychology of a City: The Architecture of St Petersburg
St. Petersburg’s dignity and grandeur is everywhere apparent. Peter the Great had before him a vast tabula rasa when planning his future capital at the beginning of the 18th century. The city he built was truly sumptuous – but it came at a price. This lecture tells the story of the buildings of St. Petersburg, but also the life that went on inside the buildings, focussing particularly on the city’s writers, musicians and artists, for whom St. Petersburg definitely had a personality – sometimes enigmatic, sometimes tragic - which they immortalised in their paintings, music and literary works.
 
 
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Thursday 21st October 2021 at Phyllis Court 10.45am and 2.15pm

Lecturer: Colin Pink


Gustav Klimt and Fin de Siècle Vienna Society
 
 
Turn of the century Vienna was a melting pot of new ideas in science (Hertz and  Boltzmann);
 
philosophy (Ludwig Wittgenstein);
 
psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud);
 
modernist architecture (Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos);
 
twelve tone music (Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern);
 
modernist literature (Karl Kraus, Robert Musil and Arthur Schnitzler);
 
and in art (Klimt, Kokoschka and Schiele).

 

Gustav Klimt led the Secession movement, which broke free from nineteenth century academic art, to create a highly decorative and potent form of imagery, drawing inspiration from art nouveau, symbolism, Byzantine and Mycenaean art.

Klimt created a highly decorative and sensual visualization that explored the power of sex in the age of Freud. We will examine the ramifications of Klimt’s sexually charged images in the context of Viennese art and society.

 

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Thursday 16th September 2021 at 10.45am and 2.15pm live at Phyllis Court

Lecturer: Matthew Williams


Ghastly Good Taste - The Highs and Lows of British Interior Design 1880 - 1980

This lecture looks at the enormous changes in our homes over a hundred year period, encompassing aspects of household taste from Victorian clutter to the psychedelic ‘throw away’ furnishings of the 1970s.

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Thursday 15th July 2021 online at 10.30am repeated at 2.30pm

Lecturer: Dr Geri Parlby


Shock! Horror! Probe! The Art and Artifice of Fleet Street: A Newspaper Story in Pictures

Thursday 17th June 2021 at 10.45am and 2.15pm or online t 10.30am if necessary.

Lecturer: Pamela Campbell-Johnston


The Art of 1935

Can a single year adequately encapsulate an artistic environment in British art history? This lecture, The Art of 1935, explores that year’s many aspects of decorative and fine art, demonstrating how these artistic forms reflected the period in a fitting and cohesive manner. 

Set against the backdrop of the 1935 Silver Jubilee Celebrations of King George V and Queen Mary, audiences are transported back to this fabulous time and learn about this pivotal year.

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Thursday 20th May 2021 Online at 10.30am and 2.30pm

Lecturer: Peter Medhurst


The Genius of Beethoven Lecture
This lecture is affiliated to the Special Interest Day on Wednesday 9th June.  Click here to go straight to that page.
 
Famously, every morning of his adult life, Beethoven measured out exactly 60 coffee beans for his breakfast.  A man who is capable of such discipline over a cup of coffee can surely apply that exactness elsewhere in his life;  and in Beethoven's case, it was applied to his compositions. 

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Thursday 15th April 2021 Online at 10.30am and 2.30pm

Lecturer: Jo Walton


'So! They Do Cook After All! Ravilious, Bawden and the Great Bardfield Artists

 

In 1932 the artist Edward Bawden and his wife Charlotte moved into Brick House in the Essex village of Great Bardfield, initially sharing the house with another artistic couple, Eric Ravilious and Tirzah Garwood.