Betty Joel, born Mary Stewart Lockhart, ran a furniture making and design business. At its peak, in the 1920s and 30s, Betty Joel Ltd employed 50 craftsmen and had showrooms in Knightsbridge. With no formal training, she created, through a flair for branding and marketing, the leading furnishing company of the day in London. The […]

The Italian architect, Andrea Palladio, was born in Padua in 1508. His work was based on the symmetry, perspective and values of the formal classical temple architecture of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Palladianism became popular during the mid 17th century but its flowering was cut short by the onset of the Civil War and […]

A lecture which explores how refugees and travellers from across Europe and Asia brought new skills and talents which both affected and changed the development of art in Britain. Why were foreigner painters preferred by the aristocracy in London to native-born English painters, why did foreigners come in the first place, what was their motivation, […]

Go to the rescheduled lecture. The work of women photographers has often been neglected. This lecture examines the contribution of three outstanding British practitioners: Julia Margaret Cameron, a Victorian pioneer, Jane Brown, a brilliant portraitist and Fay Godwin, who excelled in landscape photography. This lecture will also explore the work of Annie Liebovitz and Dorothea […]

Frank Hurley’s photographs are a visual narrative, captured with great artistry, of Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated 1914-16 expedition to Antarctica and the epic story of survival which followed the loss of the Endurance. On Ernest Shackleton’s third Antarctic expedition in 1914, his ship, the Endurance, was trapped and eventually crushed in the pack ice. After camping for […]

Jim Thompson arrived in Bangkok as a US army officer in 1945, fell in love with it and stayed. Captivated by the beauty of Thai silk, an ancient craft in decline, he resuscitated it and made it famous, creating costumes for films and embellishing his house, which today is a museum. An aesthete and art […]

Britain’s oldest fine arts institution will be celebrating its 250th Anniversary in 2018. The Royal Academy has an illustrious history that spans from the mid 18th century through to the 21st century.  We contemplate its past and review its various homes before settling on its current Mayfair location in Burlington House. This fully illustrated talk explores a […]

In his tribute to Shakespeare on the publication of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays in 1623, Ben Jonson addresses him as ‘Sweet Swan of Avon’ , ‘Thou Star of Poets’ and ‘Not of an Age, but for all Time’. 400 years after Shakespeare’s death his words still have the power to thrill, to move, […]

This lecture traces British marine painting back to the Van de Veldes, father and son, who were invited to England in 1672 and shows how they influenced British marine painters. After a brief look at the 18th century marine painters that followed, 19th century marine painters are divided into four categories: painters of naval battles, […]

Johann Sebastian Bach, composer of the Baroque era and the most celebrated member of a large family of north German musicians. Bach is now generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. Appearing at a propitious moment in the history of music he was able to survey and bring together the principal […]