Johannes Vermeer, the concert, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons   The role of music and musical instruments in both life and art of the Dutch Golden Age.  This talk comes with musical excerpts which illustrate particular instruments shown in paintings. Based on a popular exhibition at the National Gallery by the same title some years ago. <input type="hidden" value="{"instance":{"image":14349,"image_fallback":"","size":"thumbnail","size_width":"","size_height":"","size_external":"custom_size","size_external_width":"","size_external_height":"","align":"default","title_align":"default","title":"Lecturer's Image","title_position":"hidden","alt":"The […]

Walter Langley, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons   In the 1880s, the fishing village of Newlyn in the far West of Cornwall became a mecca for rural realist painters, who documented the lives of the local community in their beautiful and moving paintings. This talk will outline the key characteristics of this famous art movement, […]

A picture crammed with hidden meanings. Hans Holbein the Younger, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons   Discover the deeper meaning hidden in the work of paintings of the past. Learn how to read the secrets of different objects, forms, shapes and colours included on the canvas. As the centuries passed, a language of symbols developed […]

Qing dynasty artist, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons   What is Chinese painting? What makes it Chinese and why is it different from Western painting? In this lecture we will look at paintings from the Tang dynasty (618-907) to the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) and at the ideas that shaped a unique pictorial language. Landscape painting […]

Linnaea Mallette has released this “Abstract Contemporary Art” image under Public Domain license.   Why do so many art lovers find contemporary art intimidating or puzzling? This lecture explores the ideas, methods and intentions behind contemporary art. Since the 1960s, artists have used an increasingly wide range of media and exhibition spaces to question the […]

Cropped Last Supper in Cookham. Photo by Francesco Bini, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons   Spencer, an English painter working in the 20th century, is considered a visionary and an eccentric, he was an independent artist that never joined any of the artistic movements of the time. Spencer's works often express his fervent if […]

Still Life - Caravaggio, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons   Objects have always been present in paintings but the necessary clutter of daily life came to be used by artists as a language of its own, symbolising complex and invisible ideas. This lecture charts the rise in popularity of independent still life paintings from the […]

Salvador Dali Clock - Stephen Dawson / Palm House at Kew Gardens   Few people nowadays give more than a second thought to their clocks: practical, sometimes beautiful, devices that form the background noise of our daily lives. But from their introduction in the thirteenth century onwards, clocks have held a variety of philosophical and […]

Eric Ravilious chalk landscape, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons   Between the world wars a group of British artists explored the downland of southern England, finding in the ancient landscapes of Sussex and Wessex inspiration for modern paintings. Eric Ravilious and fellow artists Peggy Angus and Tirzah Garwood, William Nicholson, and John and Paul Nash […]

John Constable, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons   2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of the quintessential English landscapist John Constable.  Enormously popular and endlessly reproduced, his paintings today are familiar – perhaps over-familiar.  But his modern reputation masks a radical, experimental artist who pushed the boundaries of art of his time just […]