Lecture Feedback
FEEDBACK FROM LECTURES “Thank you for the wonderful lecture. The members were full of praise and we gave it a rare outstanding rating. As all really good lectures should, yours did more than inform and entertain; it provoked, stimulated and inspired.” CLAIRE POWER (Chairman, LVDFAS) “Thank you so very much for a truly great lecture last Thursday. The feed […]
Furniture Design
The Great Commissions of Luke Hughes – English Furniture Design Today With major furniture commissions in 54 of the 68 Oxbridge colleges, countless museums, palaces, boardrooms and churches, it is highly probably that you have sat on a Luke Hughes chair or around a boardroom table without knowing it. Despite a scholarship to Peterhouse and […]
Edward Seago
EDWARD SEAGO * Landscape perfectionist and royal favourite * = ‘TRENDING’ ! ‘Ted’ Seago’s refined landscapes personified a respect for the traditions of British landscape painting as well as impressionism. In Britain, he was part of a remarkable post-impressionist flowering that included the likes of Sickert, Munnings and Augustus John. What made Seago […]
Van Gogh
Vincent Van Gogh – Madman or Genius It would seem that there has never been fascination in an artist to rival the Dutchman who simply signed his work ‘Vincent’. We are all aware of the recent exhibitions and the remarkable prices realised for this humble artist’s work. Most of us appreciate the beauty of his […]
Churches
Beauty and the Beast – Our Parish Churches and the Modern Predicament It is argued that like the monarchy, the Church of England has been fighting a “rearguard action” for many decades. Church buildings have suffered as a result, with leaking roofs, locked doors and cold services once a week for an aging congregation. But there is […]
Canaletto
VENICE CANALETTO AND HIS RIVALS Following the National Gallery of London’s exhibition of the same title, this lecture gives a heady mixture of ‘superstar’ painter, immensely rich patrons on the move and a city whose modern face hides behind a romantic mask. Though some were little better than modern hooligans, many a grand tourist […]
Blenheim Palace
Blenheim Palace – The Agony and the Ecstasy * * = ‘TRENDING’ ! Possibly the most admired historic English building outside London, Blenheim Palace is an uncompromising World Heritage monument to English military ambition and one family’s self importance. The story of its construction is a fascinating catalogue of excess and outrage, while the result […]
Country Houses.
The Power & Glory of our Country Houses. * Their Evolution and Changing Role * = ‘TRENDING’ ! It is often argued that Britain possesses the finest collection of “living” stately homes in the world. It is harder to deny that they represent one of the country’s greatest assets and its greatest […]
Holbein
The Mystery of Holbein’s ‘Ambassadors’. * * = ‘TRENDING’ ! “Thank you so much for the pair of excellent lectures that you gave to us today. I was so looking forward to finding out more about the “Ambassadors” and I was not disappointed!The fact that you set out the political and the religious situation so […]
Virgins
The Virgins of the National Gallery London The National Gallery has an extraordinarily rich collection of images of the Virgin Mary, especially for a nation that formally broke the ties with the Church in Rome. It is sometimes argued that the presence of an omnipotent matriarch has always been important to this island’s culture. This […]