Painter, printmaker, musician and Royal Academy founder member Thomas Gainsborough was born in May 1727. As part of the celebrations for his tercentenary which includes upcoming exhibition at Tate Britain, this trio of lectures takes three sideways looks Gainsborough’s life and work to discover the best of this great British artist.
The day begins with the story of his life and career through the fabrics and fashions that inspired him, from his childhood three hundred years ago in a Suffolk cloth merchant’s family, to the loose, almost impressionistic late style that captured the cloud-like muslins and powdered curls of the 1780s so perfectly.
Gainsborough made several portraits of his beloved daughters dressed in the latest styles, but underneath the surface of their graceful portraits is a story of poor health, social ambiguity and personal sorrow, the subject of the second lecture.
Finally, we meet some of the animals that gave Gainsborough so much pleasure, both as companions and as subjects for his art.
This will be held at The Wokingham Theatre with the following format:
10.00 - Arrival and coffee
10.30 - Gainsborough A la Mode
11.30 - Coffee
12.00 - Molly and the Captain
13.00 - Sandwich Lunch
14.00 - Nature Sits to Mr Gainsborough
15.00 - Close
Amina Wright has three decades of experience as a curator of historic art collections and exhibitions. She has produced several major exhibitions on eighteenth-century British Art and Old Masters and published and lectured widely in these areas. As Senior Curator at the Holburne Museum in Bath she was a leading member of the team that delivered the museum’s highly successful 2011 redevelopment. She has recently completed a unique and brand new museum, the Auckland Project’s Faith Museum in County Durham. Amina has also worked for English Heritage and the National Trust and has an MA in Christianity & the Arts from King’s College London. Her writing has been published in the Burlington Magazine, The Guardian, British Museum Magazine and the Arts Society Magazine and she has appeared on BBC Radio 4's Moving Pictures, Songs of Praise and Free Thinking on Radio 3.
Cost: £40 to include tea/coffee and a sandwich lunch.
Thomas Gainsborough: The Gravenor Family, c. 1754. Oil on canvas. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection