Today, John Singer Sargent is a celebrated portraitist, noted for his flourishing paint and fashionable subjects, but his early career was filled with experimentation and failure.

This talk will develop Sargent’s biography and art historical context to understand his interest in subversion, his desire to rebel against classism and what makes him ‘modern’ and not simply the society painter some presume him to be.

Sarah Jaffray is an art historian, educator, curator and writer based in London. Before her current position as head of art history at City Lit, London's largest adult education college, Sarah was a curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. For six years, she was the lead educator for the Bridget Riley Art Foundation and has also worked at Wellcome Collection.

John Singer Sargent, Nonchaloir (Repose), 1911

© National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

This entertaining and informative presentation tells of the Mozart family’s residence in London (1764-5) when the 8-year-old prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus befriended George III, was the subject of medical research by the Royal Society, and composed his first symphony seated at the kitchen table in a small terraced house in the 'country village' of Chelsea.

Dr Griffiths illustrates his talk with explanations and performances of Mozart’s witty and precocious miniatures.

Dr Graham Griffiths is Honorary Research Fellow and Post-graduate Internal Examiner at City University London and is the author of Stravinsky’s ‘Piano: Genesis of a Musical Language’ (Cambridge University Press, 2013). He studied musicology at Edinburgh University and music education at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, obtaining his doctorate - DPhil (Musicology) - at Christ Church, Oxford in 2008. 

The Boy Mozart, Anonymous, Salzburg

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

“All women together ought to let flowers fall on the tomb of Aphra Behn … for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.”

Virginia Woolf

Following a successful career as one of Charles II’s spies in Europe and South America Aphra Behn returned to England and shattered the glass ceiling of London’s Restoration Theatre by becoming one of the most successful playwrights of the age.

Giles Ramsay is an independent theatre director and producer who creates new work with artists in developing countries. He is a course leader in Theatre at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Giles has run theatre projects all over the world. Giles combines academic analysis with hands on experience to bring a unique insight to the world of the theatre.

Aphra Behn, Peter Lely, Yale Center for British Art
Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A true pioneer for her gender, Dame Laura Knight not only achieved a host of 'firsts' for a women artists, but became arguably Britain's most famous and best-loved artist of the mid-C20th.

Focussing on her time in Cornwall, this talk also looks at her incredibly wide oeuvre, taking in ceramics and printmaking as well as painting.

After graduating in History of Art from Nottingham University, Alison Bevan has spent her entire career working in public art galleries.

Starting out at the Graham Sutherland Gallery in Pembrokeshire, she then spent ten years curating exhibitions at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea, where she honed her broadcast media skills.

Dame Laura Knight, A Dark Pool

© Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle Upon Tyne

‘The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret.’

Salvador Dalí

Like the Renaissance artists he admired, Salvador Dalí did not restrict his creative output to painting but was also a writer, poet, engraver, sculptor, architect, photographer, theatre designer and jewellery designer. Jewels such as ‘El cor real’ (1953, The Royal Heart) have become iconic works and are considered to be as exceptional as his paintings.

Dr. Julia Musgrave initial career was in IT but in 2008 she decided that life was too short for just one career and decided to become an art historian.

She now has a Graduate Diploma in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art and an MLitt from the University of Glasgow. She teaches Art History at the City Literary Institute and the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution.

Salvador Dali by Roger Higgins, World Telegram staff photographer

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In 1950 Barbara Hepworth asked Terry Frost to assist in carving the monumental stone sculpture, 'Contrapuntal Forms', the work she was sending to the 1951 Festival of Britain. She was already widely known for her abstract sculpture; he had recently graduated from Camberwell School of Art, a mature student returning to painting after spending much of the War in a Bavarian prison camp. 

Neighbours on the Cornish coast at St Ives, they also shared a passionate belief in art as the expression of emotion and experience, and in the power of abstraction to convey this most clearly.

Justine Hopkins studied History of Art at the Courtauld Institute. She lectures regularly for Tate Britain, Tate Modern, V&A, National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, as well as to Oxbridge and Bristol Universities, Christie's Fine Art, and the Art Fund.

Bronze sculpture by Barbara Hepworth at The Malakoff

photo by Rod Allday via Wikimedia Commons,

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0

As a boy, the speaker once wrote to Edward Ardizzone and had the delight of receiving a letter with a drawing of the artist in reply. This led to a  lifelong admiration and much consideration of why he is such a remarkable artist and how compelling and memorable his drawings are.. ...and he wrote stories!

Dr. Irving Finkel is a British philologist and Assyriologist. He is currently Senior Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures in the Department of the Middle East in the British Museum, where he specialises in cuneiform inscriptions on tablets of clay from ancient Mesopotamia. Irving is the author of academic articles and books on ancient Babylon.

Self-portrait, Edward Ardizzone
from Dr. Irving Finkel's private collection

In 2000, after 13 years as a Curator in the Greek and Roman Department of the British Museum, Louise decided to escape. Given a trowel with a diamond and silver casing in the handle as a leaving present, she set off on a series  of extraordinary archaeological adventures. 

In this richly illustrated talk she will take you to a mysterious ancient city on the coast of southern Albania, to the banks of the two great rivers of Mesopotamia and then to the wild and wonderful mountains of northern Ethiopia.

Louise Schofield is an archaeologist who was Curator of Greek Bronze Age and Geometric Antiquities at the British Museum from 1987-2000. Her book, ‘The Mycenaeans’, was co-published by the Getty Museum and the British Museum in 2007. She now writes, lectures and runs international archaeological projects She was recently appointed Visiting Professor of Archaeology at the American University of Rome.

The Great Basilica, Butrint
Image ©  Elaine Hayes

Since his breakthrough feature ‘The Draughtsman’s Contract’, he has used his experience as a painter to create some of the most startling compositions in cinema history.

This talk considers how Greenaway’s reimaginings of masterpieces by Vermeer, Hals, and Breughel develop a philosophy of life, death, and decay. His uncanny use of the still life – or ‘nature morte’, as it is in French – introduces a stillness to the moving pictures of cinema that unnerves even as it dazzles.

Benedict Morrison is a lecturer in Literature and Film at the University of Exeter. His publications include ‘Complicating Articulation in Art Cinema’ and ‘Eccentric Laughter: Queer Possibilities in Postwar British Film Comedy’ exploring post-war British comedy films. 

After seven years studying at the University of Oxford, he traded the dreaming spires for the cultural bustle of London.

Still from The Draughtsman’s Contract
© BFI (British Film Institute)

Dutch art was very different from other art of the 17th century, as it focused on the real lives of ordinary people. This lecture looks into why this is so.

After independence, the Dutch made astonishing advances in science. This and the country’s merchant wealth, civic pride, and insistence on moral order and well scrubbed households are all reflected in the paintings of the time. This lecture shows how art is the mirror of its age, and how the age is preserved in its art.

Douglas Skeggs read Fine Art at Magdalene College Cambridge. He lectures widely and has written and presented various TV documentaries. Three one-man exhibitions of his paintings have been held in England and Switzerland. He has published five novels. His book ‘Monet, River of Light’, has sold 30,000 copies.

Carel Fabritius, The Goldfinch
Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons