Past lectures
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Thursday 16th February 2023 at 10.45am and 2.15pm at The Henley Rugby ClubLecturer: Leslie PrimoFavourite 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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Thursday 19th January 2023 at 10.45am and 2.15pm at The Henley Rugby ClubLecturer: Anne SebbaWilliam 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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1st December 2022 at The Henley Rugby Club
10.45am, repeated at 2.15pmLecturer: Sandy BurnettChristmas 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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Venue: The Kenton Theatre, Henley
Wednesday 9th November AGM at 10.30am followed by lecture (morning lecture only)Lecturer: Harry VenningThe 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 Guardian, Radio 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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Thursday 20th October at Phyllis Court
10.45am repeated at 2.15pmLecturer: Joanna MabbuttRiver 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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Thursday 15th September at Phyllis Court 10.45am and 2.15pmLecturer: Dr Duncan PringThe 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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Thursday 16th June at Phyllis Court
10.45am repeated at 2.15pmLecturer: Lois OliverBetrayal: The Story of Samson and Delilah in Art and Music (Please click on the blue print above to continue reading)
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Thursday 19th May at Phyllis Court
10.45am repeated at 2.15pmLecturer: Jacky KleinThe 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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Thursday 21st April 10.45am repeated 2.45pmLecturer: Julia KornerIdentifying 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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Thursday 17th March at Phyllis Court
10.45am repeated 2.15pmLecturer: Stephen DuffyThe 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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Thursday 17th February 2022 at 10.45am repeated at 2.15pm
at Phyllis CourtLecturer: David RosierImperial 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 2.15pmLecturer: Angela FindlayArt 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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Thursday 18th November 2021 at Phyllis Court
10.45am and 2.15pm Lecturer: Anne SebbaThe Story of the Cook Sisters and How They Used Opera to Save Lives ![]() (Please click on the blue print above to continue reading)
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Venue: Town Hall (please note venue)
Wednesday 3rd November 2021 10.30am AGM followed by lecture
Morning lecture only, members onlyLecturer: Rosamund BartlettPsychology 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 PinkGustav 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 CourtLecturer: Matthew WilliamsGhastly 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. (Please click on the blue print above to continue reading) |
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Thursday 15th July 2021 online at 10.30am repeated at 2.30pm
Lecturer: Dr Geri ParlbyShock! Horror! Probe! The Art and Artifice of Fleet Street: A Newspaper Story in Pictures |
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Thursday 17th June 2021 at 10.45am and 2.15pm or online t 10.30am if necessary.Lecturer: Pamela Campbell-JohnstonThe 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. (Please click on the blue print above to continue reading.) |
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Thursday 20th May 2021 Online at 10.30am and 2.30pm Lecturer: Peter MedhurstThe 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.
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