Lectures

What would attract an American, the most celebrated portrait painter of the Edwardian age, to a small village in the Cotswolds? This lecture looks at the work of John Singer Sargent, explains the intriguing connection with Broadway and shows how the bohemian artists’ colony there grew and how Sargent was very much a part of the group.

The Bodleian Library is one of the greatest academic institutions, its constituent libraries across Oxford creating the largest academic collection of books and manuscripts in the world. At the heart of the city’s university is the central Bodleian complex, begun in the 15th century and completed in 2015, presenting a fascinating lexicon of architectural styles and tastes and providing solutions to changing academic demands. Justin will take us from the medieval grace of the Divinity School and the magical Duke Humfrey’s Library through Thomas Bodley’s quirky Old Bodleian, the stylistically anachronistic but historic Convocation House, Hawksmoor’s neo-Classical Clarendon Building and Gibbs’s iconic Radcliffe Camera to Giles Gilbert Scott’s cyclopean New Bodleian (now redesigned as the high tech Weston Library), a unique art historical journey through time and space in the heart of academia.

This lecture will take us from the earliest days of embroidery in this country through several high points in the art. Opus Anglicanum, literally meaning English work, was sought out by Popes and considered the best embroidery in the mediaeval western world. In the 16th century embroidery was worked by Queens (Katherine of Aragon, Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I) before new influences arrived from the east in the 17th century when exquisite embroidered pieces were made by girls of just 11 or 12. Botanic art that could be rendered in water colours or silk threads was the height of fashion in the 18th century and the man’s three piece suit was launched, complete with silk shading embroidery.

In the year 2000, having been a Curator in the British Museum for 13 years, 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 with her to a mysterious and atmospheric ancient city on the coast of southern Albania, to the banks of the two great rivers of Mesopotamia – the Euphrates and the Tigris – and then to the wild and wonderful mountains of northern Ethiopia.

Famous for his collaboration with AA Milne in creating the Winnie-the-Pooh books, E H Shepard’s artistic journey through the First World War is less well known. From jocular cartoons in Punch as a civilian to dark and impactful images of death and destruction on the western front, this lecture will demonstrate how Shepard’s own artistic style and approach changed and was influenced by the conflict. It will show a range of cartoons, drawings, watercolours, annotated maps and guides for the Intelligence Corps, as well as commercial work for the home market in which we will observe a transition towards the simple economy of line and expression exemplified by the Winnie-the-Pooh illustrations started shortly after the end of the war.

Having had access to the jewels designated as Heirlooms of the Crown and with a spectacular collection of her own, the Queen Mother had so much jewellery to choose from over the course of her long life that it would be almost impossible to describe it all. So in this talk Jeremy Mainwaring-Burton will chronicle the Queen Mother’s passion for jewels by concentrating on a selection of items of particular gemmological and historic interest and the intriguing stories attached to them.