Time: 10.30am - 3.30pm

Venue: The Gurkha Museum, Peninsula Barracks, Romsey Rd, Winchester SO23 8TH and online via Zoom (recordings of each day will be available to both in-venue and online attendees for 7 days after each event).  The live events run from 10.30am - 3.30pm. Paricipants joining online via Zoom will be admitted from about 10.15am and can join and leave the event as required. They will also have the option to view or catch-up via the recording.

Theme: Before the Normans invaded in the 11th century, Sicily had been colonised by Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Visigoths and Islamic tribes from North Africa. This lecture looks at the island’s historic role as the crossroads between Europe, North Africa and the Middle East – and how the different cultural strands were woven together by the Normans during their remarkably enlightened rule, which saw Palermo become one of the most important cities in Europe.

Price: £35 per day in venue, to include coffee/tea, light lunch with wine or soft drinks; £15 per session for online attendees. 

The Winter 2025 edition of The Arts Society magazine incorrectly quotes whole course fees of £165 and £70. There are no discounts available for attending all three study days.  Apologies for any confusion caused.

Bookings can be made via Ticket Taylor, our preferred method of booking.  The link is below.  There is no additional charge to subscribers via Ticket Tailor, which conveniently accepts credit and debit cards.

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

If you experience trouble booking via Ticket Taylor please click below for our old-fashioned booking form which contains details of how to book and pay by online bank transfer or cheque. It also contains the organiser’s contact details for queries.

Ancient Worlds; New Horizons - 2026 Booking form in Word format

Ancient Worlds; New Horizons - 2026 Booking form in PDF format

Time: 10.30am - 3.30pm

Venue: The Gurkha Museum, Peninsula Barracks, Romsey Rd, Winchester SO23 8TH and online via Zoom (recordings of each day will be available to both in-venue and online attendees for 7 days after each event).  The live events run from 10.30am - 3.30pm. Paricipants joining online via Zoom will be admitted from about 10.15am and can join and leave the event as required. They will also have the option to view or catch-up via the recording.

Theme: Ancient burial grounds in Mexico and Peru have yielded up dazzling goldwork, fine ceramic vessels, and some of the richest textiles in the world. Before the Spanish Conquest of 1519, numerous civilisations rose and fell. The Olmecs, the Maya, the Mixtecs, the Zapotecs and the warlike Aztecs all forged their own unique and splendid art styles on Mexican soil. In Peru, the Incas developed one of the greatest planned societies that the world has known. Today the descendants of these once-great peoples carry on many ancient traditions. Chloë Sayer will display contemporary textiles and other items from her collection.

Price: £35 per day in venue, to include coffee/tea, light lunch with wine or soft drinks; £15 per session for online attendees.

 The Winter 2025 edition of The Arts Society magazine incorrectly quotes whole course fees of £165 and £70. There are no discounts available for attending all three study days.  Apologies for any confusion caused.

Bookings can be made via Ticket Taylor, our preferred method of booking.  The link is below.  There is no additional charge to subscribers via Ticket Tailor, which conveniently accepts credit and debit cards.

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

If you experience trouble booking via Ticket Taylor please click below for our old-fashioned booking form which contains details of how to book and pay by online bank transfer or cheque. It also contains the organiser’s contact details for queries.

Ancient Worlds; New Horizons - 2026 Booking form in Word format

Ancient Worlds; New Horizons - 2026 Booking form in PDF format

Time: 10.30am - 3.30pm

Venue: The Gurkha Museum, Peninsula Barracks, Romsey Rd, Winchester SO23 8TH and online via Zoom (recordings of each day will be available to both in-venue and online attendees for 7 days after each event).  The live events run from 10.30am - 3.30pm. Paricipants joining online via Zoom will be admitted from about 10.15am and can join and leave the event as required. They will also have the option to view or catch-up via the recording.

Theme: A look at the art, architecture and magnificent royal courts of the Mughal emperors of India, whose creative building culminated in that most sublime of monuments, the Taj Mahal, constructed by Shah Jahan in memory of his beloved queen. The Rajput rajas and maharajas, subject first to the Mughals and then the British, were well rewarded for their loyalty and service. They built majestic fort-palaces in their state capitals where they held glittering courts and sponsored artists and craftsmen who created distinctive styles of art. 

Price: £35 per day in venue, to include coffee/tea, light lunch with wine or soft drinks; £15 per session for online attendees.  

The Winter 2025 edition of The Arts Society magazine incorrectly quotes whole course fees of £165 and £70. There are no discounts available for attending all three study days.  Apologies for any confusion caused.

Bookings can be made via Ticket Taylor, our preferred method of booking.  The link is below.  There is no additional charge to subscribers via Ticket Tailor, which conveniently accepts credit and debit cards.

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

If you experience trouble booking via Ticket Taylor please click below for our old-fashioned booking form which contains details of how to book and pay by online bank transfer or cheque. It also contains the organiser’s contact details for queries.

Ancient Worlds; New Horizons - 2026 Booking form in Word format

Ancient Worlds; New Horizons - 2026 Booking form in PDF format

Image: William Holman Hunt - Our English Coasts 1852 - Tate Btitain

Time: 10.30am - 3.30pm

Venue: The Gurkha Museum, Peninsula Barracks, Romsey Rd, Winchester SO23 8TH and online via Zoom (recordings of each day will be available to both in-venue and online attendees for 7 days after each event).  The live events run from 10.30am - 3.30pm. Paricipants joining online via Zoom will be admitted from about 10.15am and can join and leave the event as required. They will also have the option to view or catch-up via the recording.

Many 19th-century painters looked for art in the detail.  As Ruskin put it, “if you can paint one leaf, you can paint the world”.  This principle found its ultimate expression in the work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who were extraordinarily meticulous in their study of every facet of a scene – figures, setting, clothing – however minute.  But throughout the 19th century, many artists and collectors delighted in small things.  Some specialised in intimate genre scenes and miniature portraits, executed in an immaculate, polished style.  Others were fascinated by the relationship between macrocosm and microsom in nature – the hugeness of the universe reflected in the minutiae of plant cells, or (as Blake put it) “a world in a grain of sand”. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries this idea spurred the imaginations of artists across Europe, including Odilon Redon (France), Mikalojus Čiurlionis (Lithuania), František Kupka (Bohemia) and Hilma af Klint (Sweden). 

Session 1 - Kings of Lilliput

Traditionally, the highest status has been accorded to artists who think and paint big, designing grand historical compositions for churches and palaces.  But the 19th century was a golden age for private collectors, and many of them preferred the beauty of small things.  Some of most celebrated artists of the time specialised in intimate genre scenes and miniature portraits, painted in an immaculate, polished style.  The ‘finish’ in painting, with invisible brushwork, surfaces so smooth they looked like enamel – these were desirable qualities for many collectors, a measure of perfection in the image and the high skill and dedication of the artist.  At the start of the century, the ‘troubadour’ painters were a popular alternative to grandiose neoclassical art, with their miniaturised ‘romances’ inspired by the medieval history.  Similarly in the mid 19th-century, painters like Ernest Meissonier – dubbed the ‘king of Lilliiput’ by one contemporary – and Mariano Fortuny, became stars of the art world for their ability to conjure worlds in miniature. The cult of the small had arrived.

Session 2 - Immaculate Truths

In 1848 a group of young art students decided to reform British art.  They called themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in tribute to Medieval and Renaissance art, setting its honesty and conviction against the art of their own time.  The latter they condemned as conventional and vacuous; above all, it lacked truth in its content and method, characterised by flashy brushwork, strong tonal contrasts and sketchy finish.  The Pre Raphaelites – led by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti – embarked on an alternative route.  Above all, they sought truth: truth in the content of a painting, and truth in the observation of nature.  And the results can be traced in paintings like Christ in the Carpenter’s Shop by Millais or Holman Hunt’s Awakening Conscience: the painstaking method of painting, the jewel-like colour and polished finish, designed to emulate the rigour of medieval art. Last but not least, the Pre-Raphaelite paintings accumulate facts.  They are extraordinarily meticulous in their study of every facet of a scene – figures, setting, clothing, setting – however small.  The truth is in the detail.

 Session 3 - Microcosm

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour.” At the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries it seemed as if William Blake’s promise might be realised.  Scientists were revealing new levels of reality, and exploring the relationship between macrocosm and microcosm – the hugeness of the universe reflected in the minutiae of worlds seen through the lens of a microscope, the form of the tiniest creature a pattern for the cosmos. Ernst Haeckel’s lavishly illustrated Die Radiolarien of 1862, for example, revealed a previously invisible world of single cell aquatic animals, remarkable in their intricate beauty.  And this was just one of several influential publications during the later 19th century to spur the imaginations of contemporary artists, including Odilon Redon (France), Mikalojus Čiurlionis (Lithuania), František Kupka (Bohemia) and Hilma af Klint (Sweden). 

Price: £35 per day in venue, to include coffee/tea, light lunch with wine or soft drinks; £15 per session for online attendees.  This year we are offering a reduced total fee of £165 and £70 for in-venue and online tickets respectively when you select all 5 days as a bundle. Please see the Ticket Tailor box office for further details. 

Bookings can be made via Ticket Taylor, our preferred method of booking.  The link is below.  There is no additional charge to subscribers via Ticket Tailor, which conveniently accepts credit and debit cards.

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

If you experience trouble booking via Ticket Taylor please click below for our old-fashioned booking form which contains details of how to book and pay by online bank transfer or cheque. It also contains the organiser’s contact details for queries.

Art in Miniature - Booking form in Word format

Art in Miniature - Booking form in PDF format

This Study Day is being organised by The Arts Society PORTSDOWN

Click Here for more details

Time: 10.30am - 3.30pm

Venue: The Gurkha Museum, Peninsula Barracks, Romsey Rd, Winchester SO23 8TH and online via Zoom (recordings of each day will be available to both in-venue and online attendees for 7 days after each event).  The live events run from 10.30am - 3.30pm. Paricipants joining online via Zoom will be admitted from about 10.15am and can join and leave the event as required. They will also have the option to view or catch-up via the recording.

From dolls’ houses to portrait miniatures and exquisite precious objects, the creation and craftsmanship of miniature objects flourished in these centuries, created not only for the aristocracy but also for a successful middle class.

After the devastation of the Thirty Years War, Europe experienced slightly more peaceful conditions during the later 17th and 18th centuries.  Trade flourished and the wealth of an increasingly affluent middle class, as well as the aristocracy, resulted in a more leisured way of life and hence the production of objects for collecting or for entertainment.  One of the more interesting aspects was the development of the doll’s house and all the miniature objects needed to furnish it. Portrait miniatures continued to be commissioned to record loved ones of all ages, and an intriguing development was the painting of just the eye of the sitter. Sewing accessories made of precious materials were eagerly produced as gifts or items to show off new affluence and especially walnuts which opened to show miniature sewing tools were commissioned as gifts for children. Miniature pianos, which were also musical boxes, containing sewing items made from precious gold and mother of pearl were a culmination of this special category.

Session 1 - The Evolution of the Doll, the Doll’s House and Its Contents

The lecture will trace this fascinating development exemplified by important surviving Dutch examples, such as that owned by Sara Ploos van Amstel-Rothé in the Frans Hals’ Museum in Haarlem, which contains nearly a thousand objects in twelve rooms.  Other magnificent examples elsewhere give a wonderful idea of contemporary interior design during the 18th century in miniature.  When did dolls and other miniatures toys become popular and how did they develop will also be considered.

Session 2 - The Portrait Miniature in All Its Varieties

Portrait miniatures which had been such an important feature in British art of the 16th century continued to develop in the 17th and 18th centuries from complex family scenes to quirky representations of just an eye of the beloved, as well as the usual oval or rounded shapes of single figures, often set in exquisitely jewelled cases.  The miniature silhouette portrait became very fashionable, how and why did this fashion develop?

Session 3 - Further Miniature Objects for Court and Home

The third lecture will be an opportunity to consider other miniature manifestations such as the extraordinary Throne of the Great Mogul (1701–8) in the Grünes Gewolbe (Green Vaults) in Dresden. This is a unique work of European, an intricate miniature model of the court of the Mughal Emperor. It was created by the jeweller Johann Melchior Dinglinger for the Saxon Elector Augustus the Strong for an enormous sum. It is made of gold, silver, thousands of gemstones, and extraordinary enamel work, consisting of 164 glittering figures and animals. Dresden’s Green Vaults contain other wonderful miniature items.  The last part of the lecture will be an opportunity to introduce other works in miniature from book illustrations to box wood sculptures. 

Price: £35 per day in venue, to include coffee/tea, light lunch with wine or soft drinks; £15 per session for online attendees.  This year we are offering a reduced total fee of £165 and £70 for in-venue and online tickets respectively when you select all 5 days as a bundle. Please see the Ticket Tailor box office for further details. 

Bookings can be made via Ticket Taylor, our preferred method of booking.  The link is below.  There is no additional charge to subscribers via Ticket Tailor, which conveniently accepts credit and debit cards.

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

If you experience trouble booking via Ticket Taylor please click below for our old-fashioned booking form which contains details of how to book and pay by online bank transfer or cheque. It also contains the organiser’s contact details for queries.

Art in Miniature - Booking form in Word format

Art in Miniature - Booking form in PDF format

Time: 10.30am - 3.30pm

Venue: The Gurkha Museum, Peninsula Barracks, Romsey Rd, Winchester SO23 8TH and online via Zoom (recordings of each day will be available to both in-venue and online attendees for 7 days after each event).  The live events run from 10.30am - 3.30pm. Paricipants joining online via Zoom will be admitted from about 10.15am and can join and leave the event as required. They will also have the option to view or catch-up via the recording.

We tend to associate miniature art in the Renaissance with painted ‘miniatures’, be it in devotional books, or portraits.  Yet the range of small-scale artworks produced in this period was vast and varied, as was the range of materials employed.  Such objects were made for the elite, intended for personal use, and generally portable.  Materially precious, their preciousness was enhanced by the finesse and virtuosity of their execution; they are among the most dazzlingly beautiful artworks produced in the period.  The first two lectures focus on tiny objects, sacred and secular.  The third lecture looks at a contrasting aspect of miniature art: its employment in large-scale artworks to encourage private viewing, be it for devotion or diversion.

Session 1 - Private Prayer

In this lecture we look at small-scale objects intended for private devotion, including tiny panel paintings, prayer books, reliquaries made of costly goldsmiths’ work, and carved wooden ‘prayer nuts.’  We consider how such objects, that demanded close looking, were intended to enhance personal prayer.

Session 2 - Private Passions

Small scale objects were also prized in the secular world.  Growing demand for portraits fuelled the production of new, portable portrait types such as painted miniatures and portrait medals. The rise of collecting encouraged the making of small-scale objects often inspired by classical Antiquity, such as statuettes and gems, while more traditional contexts also called for precious miniature objects, such as games-boards and table fountains. 

Session 3 - Monumental Miniatures

Painting in miniature was not confined to the pages of prayer books or tiny portraits, but was employed in large-scale works too, most notably in the Southern Netherlands.  Jan van Eyck introduced minute details into the backgrounds of his devotional paintings to enhance their meaning. Later, Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel developed a new type of didactic painting, covering huge panels with tiny figures, which the viewer was encouraged to inspect and interpret. 

Price: £35 per day in venue, to include coffee/tea, light lunch with wine or soft drinks; £15 per session for online attendees.  This year we are offering a reduced total fee of £165 and £70 for in-venue and online tickets respectively when you select all 5 days as a bundle. Please see the Ticket Tailor box office for further details. 

Bookings can be made via Ticket Taylor, our preferred method of booking.  The link is below.  There is no additional charge to subscribers via Ticket Tailor, which conveniently accepts credit and debit cards.

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

If you experience trouble booking via Ticket Taylor please click below for our old-fashioned booking form which contains details of how to book and pay by online bank transfer or cheque. It also contains the organiser’s contact details for queries.

Art in Miniature - Booking form in Word format

Art in Miniature - Booking form in PDF format

This Study Day is being organised by The Arts Society WINCHESTER

Click Here for more details

10.30am - 3.30pm

British artists first travelled to India in the mid-eighteenth century, and views of the country remained a popular subject for numerous British artists, professional and amateur, throughout the period of the Empire. Their work encompassed both India’s natural scenery and its rich architectural heritage. But what were the issues facing artists from one culture engaged in portraying scenes from another? How was their work shaped by European aesthetic theories? And what was the impact back in Britain of the material they produced?

Venue: The Gurkha Museum, Peninsula Barracks, Romsey Rd, Winchester SO23 8TH and online via Zoom (recordings of each day will be available to both in-venue and online attendees for 7 days after each event).  The live events run from 10.30am - 3.30pm. Paricipants joining online via Zoom will be admitted from about 10.15am and can join and leave the event as required. They will also have the option to view or catch-up via the recording.

Price: 

£35 per day in venue, to include coffee/tea, light lunch with wine or soft drinks;

£13 per session for online attendees.

Bookings can be made via Ticket Taylor, our preferred method of booking.  The link is in large font below.  There is no additional charge to subscribers via Ticket Tailor which conveniently accepts credit and debit cards.

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

If you experience trouble booking via Ticket Taylor please click below for our old-fashioned booking form which contains details of how to book and pay by online bank transfer or cheque. It also contains the organiser’s contact details for queries.

Ancient Worlds; New Horizons - Booking form in Word format

Ancient Worlds; New Horizons - Booking form in PDF format

Image: Edward Lear, Kinchinjunga from Darjeeling, 1879 (public domain)

Lecturer biography:

Prasannajit de Silva completed his doctorate in 2007, researching the art of the British in India during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His lecturing covers British visual culture of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, including art produced in various colonial settings. He is particularly interested in the relationship of aspects of art, architecture, and design to their broader cultural, social, and political contexts, and also teaches courses on the methods and theoretical approaches of art history. His work has included teaching roles at the University of Sussex, at Birkbeck, University of London, and at the WEA. 

This Study Day is being organised by The Arts Society WINCHESTER

Click Here for more details

Note:  This Study Day is on a THURSDAY

First lecture starts at 10.30

Second lecture at 12.00 (approx)

Third lecture at 2.00 (approx)

Session 1. The Sacred Codes of Ukrainian Folk Embroidery

The Ukrainian embroidery tradition dates back to the times of Scythians, and remains a vibrant part of national culture.  This lecture will explore its rich history and talismanic power by uncovering the hidden meanings of the intricate regional patterns and distinctive colours sewn into household textiles such as the rushnyk (ritual cloth) and the vyshyvanka (embroidered shirt).

Session 2. The Kaftan and the Kokoshnik: A History of Russian Dress

Due partly to the adoption of Christianity from Byzantium and the development of trading with the Orient, as well as geographical factors, for centuries Russians wore clothes which were very different from those in Western Europe.  This lecture will outline the principal features of Russian dress, and show how dramatically they changed for the elite following Peter the Great's reforms.

Session 3. The Fabric of Revolution On Stage and in the Atelier: Ukrainian and Russian Avant-Garde Textile Design

This lecture will survey the dazzling costume designs of artists such as Bakst, Goncharova and Sonia Delaunay, who worked for the Ballets Russes and were also innovators in the world of fashion.  We will discuss the textiles created to abstract designs by Malevich and Alexandra Exter before 1917, the Constructivist clothing pioneered by Lyubov Popova and Varvara Stepanova, and the experimental theatrical costumes designed by Ukrainian modernists such as Vadym Meller and Anatol Petrytsky.

Venue: The Gurkha Museum, Peninsula Barracks, Romsey Rd, Winchester SO23 8TH and online via Zoom

Price: £35 per day in venue, to include coffee/tea, light lunch with wine or soft drinks; £13 per session for online attendees

For more information go to: Jean Bolton Study Days 2024 

Bookings can be made via Ticket Taylor, our preferred method of booking.  The link is in large font below.  There is no additional charge to subscribers via Ticket Tailor which conveniently accepts credit and debit cards.

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

If you experience trouble booking via Ticket Taylor please click below for our old-fashioned booking form which contains details of how to book and pay by online bank transfer or cheque. It also contains the organiser’s contact details for queries.

Booking form in Word format

Booking form in PDF format

Please click on the link below to see a tribute to Jean Bolton

Jean Bolton tribute

First lecture starts at 10.30

Second lecture at 12.00 (approx)

Third lecture at 2.00 (approx)

Session 1. The dress in the picture

Academy schools during the 19th century saw the representation of drapery as a necessary skill.  Art students were taught to produce figure drawings with a sculptural appearance, the drapery treated so that it enhanced the modelling of the human body and a sense of its movement through space.  The results of this academic training can be seen in much European art of the early 19th century, when Neoclassicism was still the dominant style. Increasingly however, contemporary tastes shifted away from scenes of ancient history and mythology, and many artists found their main employment in treating contemporary subjects, including genre scenes or portraits. Here fashion supplanted drapery, and costume communicated ideas around society, morality, and status. A dress might signal a figure’s role within a narrative scene or define the sitter’s character in a portrait.  After training in the studio of David, Ingres would become one of the century’s outstanding portrait painters, despite his insistence that portraiture was a distraction from his ambition to be a classical history painter.  His exactitude in the treatment of dress became almost obsessional, so that his portraits provide a survey of developments in fashion between the 1800s and 1850s, culminating in the National Gallery’s Madame Moitessier.  As much as recording the individual appearances of his sitters, Ingres presents a history of his time through dress.   

Session 2. The Inspiration of the Orient

19th-century Europeans tended to view the Middle East through the filter of stereotypes.  A key one was the idea that the Middle East presented Europe’s opposite in its culture, politics, and faith. For many Europeans the region promised an escape from the social and economic uncertainties that were central to their experience after the industrial revolution. The Middle East – encompassing Egypt and North Africa, the Holy Land, Syria, Turkey and Arabia – was perceived as a place beyond time, where traditions in society and culture endured. This vision extended to its textiles and costumes, admired by Europeans for their fine craftsmanship and decorative beauty.  Starting in the 18thcentury, it became fashionable for ladies and gentlemen to have themselves portrayed in eastern dress – richly colourful, graceful and elegant, and offering escape into a fantasy world. Later, in the 19th century, artists like Jean-Léon Gérôme in France and John Frederick Lewis in England returned from their travels abroad with substantial collections of carpets, silks, and costumes. These would become essential features of their work, enhancing both the illusion of realism and of a luxuriant exoticism.   

Session 3. Textiles and modernity

In 1824 a chemist, Michel Eugène Chevreul, became Director of dyeing at the Gobelins Factory in Paris. His experiments in the use of dyes to enhance the brilliance of textiles would be hugely important for artists later in the century, influencing both the Impressionists and Post Impressionists in their use of colour.  This is one example of a much wider phenomenon in the art world of the 19th and early 20th centuries, when there was growing resistance to the idea that the fine and decorative arts belonged within separate realms.  Increasingly, the guiding principle was the ‘gesamptkunstwerk’, or total work of art, where all elements of an interior – wall colour, furnishings, textiles, paintings, sculptures – were planned together as parts of a harmonious totality.  William Morris was particularly important in reviving traditional crafts and asserting the importance of good design – including new techniques in dyeing and weaving textiles.  His achievements were influential across Europe, not least in the work of contemporary artists.  The flat, brightly coloured patterns of carpets and other textiles inspired painters including Gauguin, Klimt and Matisse. Matisse in particular collected furnishings and textile samples, using them as decorative motifs within his compositions and also drawing on their flat designs and brilliant colours.  In his work, textiles became part of the modernist aesthetic.

Venue: The Gurkha Museum, Peninsula Barracks, Romsey Rd, Winchester SO23 8TH and online via Zoom

Price: £35 per day in venue, to include coffee/tea, light lunch with wine or soft drinks; £13 per session for online attendees

For more information go to: Jean Bolton Study Days 2024 

Bookings can be made via Ticket Taylor, our preferred method of booking.  The link is in large font below.  There is no additional charge to subscribers via Ticket Tailor which conveniently accepts credit and debit cards.

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

If you experience trouble booking via Ticket Taylor please click below for our old-fashioned booking form which contains details of how to book and pay by online bank transfer or cheque. It also contains the organiser’s contact details for queries.

Booking form in Word format

Booking form in PDF format

Please click on the link below to see a tribute to Jean Bolton

Jean Bolton tribute

First lecture starts at 10.30

Second lecture at 12.00 (approx)

Third lecture at 2.00 (approx)

Session 1: The Art of Textile in European 17th Century Art from Rubens and Rembrandt to Bernini

Textiles feature more and more in 17th century European art.  Curtains billow in portraits by Rubens and Van Dyck.  One of Rubens’ most important commissions was for a series of tapestries, still in good condition and magnificently displayed in Madrid.  Although the sitters in Dutch portraits appear to be dressed more soberly, the fabrics of their clothes are expensive, and an important fashion item was the lavishly embroidered stomacher or substantial ruff.  The embroidery techniques of stumpwork and crewel work became very fashionable, and a large number of examples survive.  Another popular and complex method of decorating fabric was blackwork and there are some fine examples to be seen in Dutch painting, in particular. An interesting result of trade was the importation of exotic fabrics and the effect of this upon painters, such as Rembrandt and his contemporaries and the emergence of paintings of exotically dressed and turbaned  people in popular tronies. However even in sculpture the flow and sumptuousness of fabrics was imitated successfully by such as Bernini. The first lecture will also explore something of fabric dyes and how textiles were made and by whom.

Session 2: Textiles and Textile Art at the Turn of the 17th and 18th Centuries

What effect might politics have had upon textiles and their production or the way they were used in art?  In 17th century Catholic Spain for example fashion and textile decoration was plain for men but very elaborate and unyielding for women as can be seen in the portraits of Velazquez.  Similarly in English politics at the same time the production and use of wonderful fabrics and embroidery suffered during the Interregnum of Oliver Cromwell, when dress and interior decoration became restrained in line with Protestant ideas during the middle of the 17th century.  Textile workers suffered or had to flee religious persecution at the end of the century at the time of the Revocation of the Edit of Nantes by Louis XIV.  What effect did this have on the silk industry and the benefits to the development of textiles in England with the arrival of the Huguenots?  By the 17th century Lyons had also become an important centre of the silk industry from its foundation in the 15th century.  How did silk production change with regard to colours and patterns at the end of the 17th century and how did it effect the representation of fabrics in the paintings of Watteau and Chardin and their contemporaries for example?  Outstanding examples can easily be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Session 3: From Carpets to Curtains and the Use of Textiles in Palace and Home

Before 1600 precious carpets from the Caucasus and Persia can be found in religious paintings, often in front of the throne of the Virgin and Child, but during the 17th century they appear more frequently but usually on tables, rather than on the floor.  The lecture will explore the carpet as a work of textile art on the table in Flemish, Dutch and British 17th century paintings and then examine the reasons finally for the use of such carpets on the floor.  We will then examine other textiles used for curtains for beds and then eventually windows, as well as the valuable textiles, such as tapestry or crewel needlework as part of the upholstery of chairs and stools.  How and why did patterns change?  Kashmir, Paisley and pashmina fabrics begin to appear for shawls in the later 18th century and these would become a fashion ‘must have’ in the 19th century spreading to all classes in Europe.

Venue: The Gurkha Museum, Peninsula Barracks, Romsey Rd, Winchester SO23 8TH and online via Zoom

Price: £35 per day in venue, to include coffee/tea, light lunch with wine or soft drinks; £13 per session for online attendees

For more information go to: Jean Bolton Study Days 2024 

Bookings can be made via Ticket Taylor, our preferred method of booking.  The link is in large font below.  There is no additional charge to subscribers via Ticket Tailor which conveniently accepts credit and debit cards.

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

If you experience trouble booking via Ticket Taylor please click below for our old-fashioned booking form which contains details of how to book and pay by online bank transfer or cheque. It also contains the organiser’s contact details for queries.

Booking form in Word format

Booking form in PDF format

Please click on the link below to see a tribute to Jean Bolton

Jean Bolton tribute

First lecture starts at 10.30

Second lecture at 12.00 (approx)

Third lecture at 2.00 (approx)

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw the production of some of the most spectacular and lavish textiles ever made in western Europe: artefacts that testify to their owners’ prestige and their makers’ skills.  Tapestry sets like the Lady and the Unicorn in the Cluny Museum, Paris, or the Unicorn Hunt in the Cloisters, are today among the best known of such textile arts, but they are only the rare survivals of what was the most prized – and pricey – form of large-scale wall decoration of the day.  On a smaller scale, embroidery possessed the same status, notably (although not exclusively) in ecclesiastical contexts. 

To some extent these art forms can be viewed as a continuum from the earlier medieval period, yet in other respects this was an era of change, as designers and makers responded to the demands of naturalistic representation, increasingly seen in paintings.  There were important new developments too, in the production of silks and velvets, with Italy now eclipsing Asia in the production of the luxury textiles that were essential wear for the secular and ecclesiastical elite, and for the adornment of furniture from beds to altars.

The fragility and poor survival rate of such textiles has tended to skew our understanding of their importance, and their original beauty: faded fragments on museum walls or in display cases do not do justice to their original, literally dazzling visual effect.  Looking at surviving pieces, and at their depictions in contemporary paintings, we can gain an insight into their centrality in the lives of the people for whom they were made, offering an opportunity to reappraise these beautiful ghosts of a magnificent past. 

Session 1: Tapestry

Focusing on secular wall tapestries produced in the Southern Netherlands, we shall look at stylistic and pictorial developments in their design, from the Devonshire Hunts (V&A) of c. 1440 – among the earliest to survive – to the Acts of the Apostles woven to designs by Raphael for the Sistine Chapel, c. 1516-8.  We shall also consider how and where tapestries were made and used, and marketing and demand.  Famous sets, such as the War of Troy, were owned by several late fifteenth-century princes, including the Dukes of Burgundy and Urbino, and Henry VII of England.  In Italy, there were attempts to establish ateliers to cut the costs of imports of this sought-after art form from the north and to enhance local prestige.

Session 2: Embroidery

Two spectacular surviving mid fifteenth-century sets of ecclesiastical embroidery, the Golden Fleece vestments from the Burgundian Netherlands, probably designed by Rogier van der Weyden (Vienna, Schatzkammer) and the Parato di San Giovanni designed by Antonio Pollaiuolo, for the Florence Baptistery (Opera del Duomo) showcase the apogee of this art form north and south of the Alps, and offer insights into the relationship between embroidery design and painting. 

Session 3: Silks and Velvets

Italian figured silks and sumptuous cut-pile velvets, woven in centres such as Lucca, Venice and Florence, were as sought-after in renaissance Europe as tapestries of northern production.  Fragments still survive in museum collections, but they are most spectacularly evoked in the textiles depicted in contemporary paintings by artists such as Van Eyck, Holbein and Bronzino.  Indeed, the visual evidence of paintings offers a rich insight into how such textiles functioned, and supplemented with the documentary evidence of inventories and sumptuary laws, sheds light on the relationship between textiles, dress and social status. 

Venue: The Gurkha Museum, Peninsula Barracks, Romsey Rd, Winchester SO23 8TH and online via Zoom

Price: £35 per day in venue, to include coffee/tea, light lunch with wine or soft drinks; £13 per session for online attendees

For more information go to: Jean Bolton Study Days 2024 

Bookings can be made via Ticket Taylor, our preferred method of booking.  The link is in large font below.  There is no additional charge to subscribers via Ticket Tailor which conveniently accepts credit and debit cards.

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

If you experience trouble booking via Ticket Taylor please click below for our old-fashioned booking form which contains details of how to book and pay by online bank transfer or cheque. It also contains the organiser’s contact details for queries.

Booking form in Word format

Booking form in PDF format

Please click on the link below to see a tribute to Jean Bolton

Jean Bolton tribute

Note:  This Study Day is on a THURSDAY

First lecture starts at 10.30

Second lecture at 12.00 (approx)

Third lecture at 2.00 (approx)

Woven, embroidered, appliquéd, quilted, and painted textiles were some of the most precious commodities of the Middle Ages, as costly as precious metal objects and schemes of stained-glass windows, more expensive, by far, than a painted panel or illuminated manuscript. This trio of lectures will consider medieval textiles from a variety of angles: the craftspeople, very often women, who made them, the materials and techniques employed in their production, and the contexts, both sacred and secular, in which they were employed. Medieval textiles were immensely delicate and fragile, vulnerable to prolonged wear and tear, neglect, exposure to high levels of light, fire, and flood, but a remarkable number survive. They are often fragmentary and housed typically in museums rather than remaining in situ, but they repay close study and shed light on many aspects of medieval culture.

Session 1 - Textiles in Sacred Spaces

Medieval church interiors were furnished with a wide array of textiles, employed for various purposes. Woven silk curtains were suspended between nave arcade supports as curtains to demarcate liturgical spaces and saints’ precious relics were wrapped in silk to confirm their sacred status. Embroidered hangings like the late 11th-century, erroneously named, Bayeux Tapestry, designed to adorn the nave of Bayeux Cathedral, were polemical commissions, designed to spell out political messages underpinned by spiritual justification. Altar tables were draped with silken coverings like the monochrome 14th-century Parement de Narbonne that depicts Charles V, King of France, during the somber Lenten liturgy; and wool tapestries such as the extensive set woven in the late 14th century for Louis, Duke of Anjou, dramatise the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelation. As trade expanded in the Late Middle Ages and more exotic Eastern textiles reached the West, European painters, especially in Italy, developed ways to conjure fictive, sumptuous, silks in their altarpieces.

Session 2 - OPUS ANGLICANUM Vestments

Fragments of embroidered vestments, worn by high-ranking ecclesiastics survive from early 10th -century England, but the finest medieval vestments were those stitched by embroiderers working in London from the late 13th- late 14th centuries. Known contemporaneously as Opus Anglicanum, “English Work” was famed throughout Europe, sought by Popes, Cardinals, Archbishops and Kings for their cathedrals and private chapels. This session will consider the patrons of surviving Opus Anglicanum copes and chasubles, the craftswomen and men who stitched such commissions and how such products were fashioned from imported velvet, silk, and gold, enriched, on occasion, with precious materials like seed pearls. The iconographic parallels between late 13th and early 14th century English embroidery and contemporary wall, manuscript and panel paintings made at Westminster yield evidence of fascinating cross-fertilization of ideas and influence between craftspeople working in Court circles.

Session 3 - Textiles in Secular Spaces

Medieval inventories and wills associated with high-ranking families mention copious amounts of textiles commissioned for use in secular contexts: clothes fashioned from costly fabrics and accessories such as aumônières, alms purses, embroidered with silk and metal threads. Visiting dignitaries to a city were received beneath textile canopies, rooms in royal and noble residences were hung with decorative and historiated tapestries and appliqued panels; figured quilts were draped over beds and, on occasion, textile “armorial achievements” were suspended above tomb monuments. Although secular textiles survive less well than their ecclesiastical cousins,  some have been preserved, ranging from ceremonial mantles and gloves worn by the Norman Kings of Sicily and the Holy Roman Emperors, to quilts gifted on the occasion of a marriage decorated with adulterous fictional lovers like Tristan and Isolde, and distinctive blue and white “Perugia Towels” employed in secular contexts as napkins and tablecloths at high status dining tables, and as altar cloths and sacristy hand towels in ecclesiastical settings.

Venue: The Gurkha Museum, Peninsula Barracks, Romsey Rd, Winchester SO23 8TH and online via Zoom

Price: £35 per day in venue, to include coffee/tea, light lunch with wine or soft drinks; £13 per session for online attendees

For more information go to: Jean Bolton Study Days 2024 

Bookings can be made via Ticket Taylor, our preferred method of booking.  The link is in large font below.  There is no additional charge to subscribers via Ticket Tailor which conveniently accepts credit and debit cards.

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

If you experience trouble booking via Ticket Taylor please click below for our old-fashioned booking form which contains details of how to book and pay by online bank transfer or cheque. It also contains the organiser’s contact details for queries.

Booking form in Word format

Booking form in PDF format

Please click on the link below to see a tribute to Jean Bolton

Jean Bolton tribute

Area events are open to everyone, whether or not they are members of The Arts Society. The Area Co-ordinator for Education organises Days of Special Interest which provide the opportunity to look at subjects in more depth than is often possible at a society lecture, encouraging discussion and a chance to explore new ways of looking at art.

The Arts Society Hampshire and Isle of Wight Area usually offers two study courses each year.  The first, in the Spring, is held in Winchester and the second in November has traditionally been held in Southampton. The Winchester Study Days are held over 3 days (usually in February, March and April), with each day comprising of 3 lectures.  The Southampton Study Days, known as the Jean Bolton Memorial Study Course, are held over 5 days (usually consecutive Fridays in November), again with each day comprising 3 lectures. (Please click here to see a tribute to Jean Bolton)

A zoom option will usually be made available. 

Please watch this page for information or send an email to info@theartssocietyhantsiowarea.org.uk to ask to be placed on our mailing list.

The Spring Study Course 2024

Nature in Art

Bookings are now open

Nature has always played an important place in art and having been included in man's paintings whether as the main focus of a picture or to convey depth or perspective.   Depictions of nature can also be symbolic of the deeper meaning of a work of art.  Nature provides a central theme in the work of many artists.     

Detailed synopses of each day are further down the page.

Clare Ford-Wille  - Friday 9th February 2024

The History of Trees in Art from Giotto to Klimt

Steven Desmond - Thursday 21st March 2024

An Image of Liberty:  the Origins of the English Landscape Garden

Hilary Guise - Thursday 18th April 2024

Flowers in the Art of the Great Masters

Venue: 

St. Peter's Pastoral Centre, St. Peter's Church, Jewry Street, Winchester, SO23 8RY                

And online via Zoom

Recordings will be available for 7 days after each event for online subscribers.

Attendees will be treated to 3 superb sessions each day delivered by our lecturers on the theme Nature in Art.  

Study Day Fees

The cost is £35 per day in person to include morning coffee and a light lunch.

A Zoom option is available at £13 per day

How to book

Bookings can be made via Ticket Taylor, our preferred method of booking.  The link is in large font below.  There is no additional charge to subscribers via Ticket Tailor which conveniently accepts credit and debit cards.

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

If you experience trouble booking via Ticket Taylor please click below for our old-fashioned booking form which contains details of how to book and pay by online bank transfer or cheque. It also contains the organiser’s contact details for queries.

Booking form in Word format

Booking form in PDF format

Hilary Guise - Thursday 18th April 2024

Venue - St. Peter's Pastoral Centre, St. Peter's Church, Jewry Street, Winchester SO23 8RY and online via Zoom

Time - 10.30am - 3.30pm

Flowers in the Art of the Great Masters

Flowers comfort with their inexhaustible variety and beauty. From ancient times, empresses and kings decorated their palaces with Secret Gardens painted on their walls. The Egyptians painted gardens ‘in the afterlife’ with lily ponds and fish. In the Middle-Ages the concept of the Secret Garden was transformed into a person, a much-revered woman. She, who is The Virgin, is the Mystic rose. The sacred geometry of the Gothic rose windows describes her character. The troubadours sang of courtly love in the Walled Garden around an over-flowing fountain.  In the golden age of the 17th century Italian fruit baskets take on an allegorical rôle in the hands of Caravaggio, while the Dutch masters immortalise many species of flowers, all buzzing with insects.  The Victorians adopted the language of flowers and Manet uses flowers to tell about the women of Paris. Van Gogh pours out his heart in his dying Sunflowers and is later treated with the poisonous foxglove. Monet’s purest joy was his garden at Giverny where he could drift away on the surface of his water lily pond.  The Secret Garden - from ancient Rome to the Medieval Walled garden The Language of flowers - from the 17th century ‘Vanitas’ to the Victorians. Flowers for Healing, Consolation and Cure – from Manet’s courtesans, & Monet’s water-lily garden to Irma Stern’s Cape flower sellers.

Movers and Shakers!The Art World Today

Three talks and a must for anyone who is interested in learning more about the exciting art of today, including women artists leading the way.

Speaker: Cindy Polemis BBC Broadcaster, art historian, independent lecturer and art guide.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF BRITISH CONTEMPORARY ART?

In 1988 art students from Goldsmith’s College, led by Damien Hirst, put on an infamous exhibition called Freeze, arguably kicking off one of the most fertile and radical periods in the story of art and putting London firmly at the centre of the contemporary art world. What was their legacy and was this a golden age for British contemporary art?

LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE GIRLS

With the art scene finally giving some real recognition to both long-established and emerging female artists, Cindy looks at what’s been happening in Britain: who are the leading contemporary female artists who should be household names?  Some names will be familiar, others getting increasing recognition. Artists include Tracy Emin and her painful yet hopeful personal journey; Chantal Joffe’s haunting psychological portraits; Joy Labinjo - making black lives visible; and the extraordinary frozen moments of Cornelia Parker’s installations (photo). These are just a few of the artist we will discuss.

DO NOT ADJUST YOUR EYESIGHT

This talk explores the discombobulating world of Optical Art or Op-Art art - how artists including Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely use shapes, patterns and eye-popping colours to create artworks which literally fool our eyes.

Venue: The tiered purpose-built MAST Mayflower Studios , 144 Above Bar St, Southampton SO14 7DU

Doors open 10.00: first talk is at 10.30

Tickets  £35 plus a small booking fee to include mid-morning refreshments available through Ticketsource via www.theartssocietysouthampton.org.uk  This takes you to the Home Page of the Southampton scociety.  Refresh the page and click on the Ticket Source icon in the top left corner.

Alterrnatively, if you have a query, send an email to Ticketsourcesouthampton@gmail.com

Area events are open to everyone, whether or not they are members of The Arts Society. The Area Co-ordinator for Education organises Days of Special Interest which provide the opportunity to look at subjects in more depth than is often possible at a society lecture, encouraging discussion and a chance to explore new ways of looking at art.

The Arts Society Hampshire and Isle of Wight Area usually offers two study courses each year.  The first, in the Spring, is held in Winchester and the second in November has traditionally been held in Southampton. The Winchester Study Days are held over 3 days (usually in February, March and April), with each day comprising of 3 lectures.  The Southampton Study Days, known as the Jean Bolton Memorial Study Course, are held over 5 days (usually consecutive Fridays in November), again with each day comprising 3 lectures. (Please click here to see a tribute to Jean Bolton)

A zoom option will usually be made available. 

Please watch this page for information or send an email to info@theartssocietyhantsiowarea.org.uk to ask to be placed on our mailing list.

The Spring Study Course 2024

Nature in Art

Bookings are now open

Nature has always played an important place in art and having been included in man's paintings whether as the main focus of a picture or to convey depth or perspective.   Depictions of nature can also be symbolic of the deeper meaning of a work of art.  Nature provides a central theme in the work of many artists.     

Detailed synopses of each day are further down the page.

Clare Ford-Wille  - Friday 9th February 2024

The History of Trees in Art from Giotto to Klimt

Steven Desmond - Thursday 21st March 2024

An Image of Liberty:  the Origins of the English Landscape Garden

Hilary Guise - Thursday 18th April 2024

Flowers in the Art of the Great Masters

Venue: 

St. Peter's Pastoral Centre, St. Peter's Church, Jewry Street, Winchester, SO23 8RY                

And online via Zoom

Recordings will be available for 7 days after each event for online subscribers.

Attendees will be treated to 3 superb sessions each day delivered by our lecturers on the theme Nature in Art.  

Study Day Fees

The cost is £35 per day in person to include morning coffee and a light lunch.

A Zoom option is available at £13 per day

How to book

Bookings can be made via Ticket Taylor, our preferred method of booking.  The link is in large font below.  There is no additional charge to subscribers via Ticket Tailor which conveniently accepts credit and debit cards.

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

If you experience trouble booking via Ticket Taylor please click below for our old-fashioned booking form which contains details of how to book and pay by online bank transfer or cheque. It also contains the organiser’s contact details for queries.

Booking form in Word format

Booking form in PDF format

Steven Desmond - Thursday 21st March 2024

Venue - St. Peter's Pastoral Centre, St. Peter's Church, Jewry Street, Winchester SO23 8RY and online via Zoom

Time - 10.30am - 3.30pm

An Image of Liberty:  the Origins of the English Landscape Garden

When Joseph Addison observed that a spacious Horizon is an Image of Liberty, he was expressing the beginnings of a collective desire to break free from the corset of the French baroque garden with its emphasis on state and parade. Landowners became increasingly interested in the idea of the garden as a political emblem, and one in which they could function not only as gentlemen farmers but also as men of taste familiar with the scenes and texts of classical antiquity. Thus, the Georgian garden, at first sight a pleasant stroll through undulating greenery, is revealed as a hotbed of ideas: the paintings of Claude Lorrain, the journeys of mythical heroes and the theories of Hogarth and Burke are drawn together to present the British landowner as the modern Roman, conferring freedom under the law on his happy tenantry. All these ideas are explored through illustrations of period gardens and artefacts compared with their sources. 

This SAtudy Day is being Organised by The Arts Society SALISBURY

Click Here for details

Area events are open to everyone, whether or not they are members of The Arts Society. The Area Co-ordinator for Education organises Days of Special Interest which provide the opportunity to look at subjects in more depth than is often possible at a society lecture, encouraging discussion and a chance to explore new ways of looking at art.

The Arts Society Hampshire and Isle of Wight Area usually offers two study courses each year.  The first, in the Spring, is held in Winchester and the second in November has traditionally been held in Southampton. The Winchester Study Days are held over 3 days (usually in February, March and April), with each day comprising of 3 lectures.  The Southampton Study Days, known as the Jean Bolton Memorial Study Course, are held over 5 days (usually consecutive Fridays in November), again with each day comprising 3 lectures. (Please click here to see a tribute to Jean Bolton)

A zoom option will usually be made available. 

Please watch this page for information or send an email to info@theartssocietyhantsiowarea.org.uk to ask to be placed on our mailing list.

The Spring Study Course 2024

Nature in Art

Bookings are now open

Nature has always played an important place in art and having been included in man's paintings whether as the main focus of a picture or to convey depth or perspective.   Depictions of nature can also be symbolic of the deeper meaning of a work of art.  Nature provides a central theme in the work of many artists.     

Detailed synopses of each day are further down the page.

Clare Ford-Wille  - Friday 9th February 2024

The History of Trees in Art from Giotto to Klimt

Steven Desmond - Thursday 21st March 2024

An Image of Liberty:  the Origins of the English Landscape Garden

Hilary Guise - Thursday 18th April 2024

Flowers in the Art of the Great Masters

Venue: 

St. Peter's Pastoral Centre, St. Peter's Church, Jewry Street, Winchester, SO23 8RY                

And online via Zoom

Recordings will be available for 7 days after each event for online subscribers.

Attendees will be treated to 3 superb sessions each day delivered by our lecturers on the theme Nature in Art.  

Study Day Fees

The cost is £35 per day in person to include morning coffee and a light lunch.

A Zoom option is available at £13 per day

How to book

Bookings can be made via Ticket Taylor, our preferred method of booking.  The link is in large font below.  There is no additional charge to subscribers via Ticket Tailor which conveniently accepts credit and debit cards.

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

If you experience trouble booking via Ticket Taylor please click below for our old-fashioned booking form which contains details of how to book and pay by online bank transfer or cheque. It also contains the organiser’s contact details for queries.

Booking form in Word format

Booking form in PDF format

Clare Ford-Wille – Friday 9th February 2024

Venue - St. Peter's Pastoral Centre, St. Peter's Church, Jewry Street, Winchester SO23 8RY and online via Zoom

Time - 10.30am - 3.30pm

The History of Trees in Art from Giotto to Klimt

Lecture 1:  From Dead Trees to Living Trees in Medieval and Renaissance Art

Lecture 2:  The Tree Triumphant in 16th and 17th Century Painting 

Lecture 3:  The Diversity of the Tree in 18th and 19th Century Art

Bookings are open

Dr Kathy McLauchlan – 1st Dec 2023

Venue - Online via Zoom

Time - 10.30am - 3.30pm

An Age of Progress? Peasants, Workers and Slaves in 19th and early-20th century art.

1.  Ideal versus Real: Imagining the Peasant

By the mid 19th century scenes of rural life had become hugely popular among art patrons and the exhibition-going public. In nearly all cases, painters adopted an idealising approach, favouring Italian peasants in beautiful, sunlit settings, apparently enjoying an idyllic existence in harmony with their natural environment.  This perception of peasant life started to change by mid-century, as artists used public exhibitions like the Salon in Paris and the Royal Academy in London to confront their viewers with an alternative vision of the world outside the city.  Painters like Millet and Courbet made visible the harsh realities of peasant life.

2.   A whole new Class: Representing the Worker

The industrial revolution was in full swing during the second half of the 19th century, transforming societies and economies. A whole new class of industrial workers emerged as a powerful and often troubling force in countries across Europe and America.  By the turn of the century the gulf between bourgeois society and the lives of the working poor in cities and countryside was increasingly prominent as a theme in literature and art.  While socialists and anarchists sought a cure for social inequity, many artists – including those without any strong political convictions – saw the world of work as a rich new source of inspiration, and a powerful way to make an impact on their public. 

3.   Liberation! Images of Slavery and Freedom

In 1940 Jacob Lawrence began work on a series of 60 paintings on the theme of the Great Migration, when over 1,000,000 African Americans moved north from the southern states in search of work and better living standards.  Lawrence’s project marked the culmination of efforts to represent the experience of black Americans reaching back to the 19th century, when images of black servants and slaves arose from a variety of interests – ranging all the way from protest and outrage to fascination with an exotic ‘other’. This session looks at slavery and its legacy in art, concentrating on America but also considering the theme of slavery within a wider European art tradition. 

Click this link for the Booking Form for cheque and online bank transfer

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

Email questions to Ali Green hiowsd2@gmail.com

Sarah Dunant says: "As a writer and historian, I’ve written five best selling novels featuring the lives of women in the Italian renaissance *(see below). From infamous figures like Lucrezia Borgia and the patron Isabella d’Este to the unknown and unsung; painters, writers, courtesans and nuns. Thanks to recent feminist history, their stories are now being brought to light, shining a different torch beam onto art and culture.

I’d like participants to read (library loan is fine by me) one of my novels* – not necessarily the same one.  We will then come together to discuss this slippery, wonderful thing called historical fiction. How do novelists do it? How much is fact, how much made up? Can fiction get to parts of the history that other disciplines just can’t reach. 

This is a study day where what the participants think is as important as what the lecturer knows."

This study day offers two lectures in the morning:

1.     Introduction lecture: The second Sex: the rich history of courtesans and nuns. 

2.     A portrait of one great woman – patron, collector, fashion icon and political manipulator, Isabella d'Este.  

3.     The afternoon session will be not a lecture but a book group. 

*The Birth of Venus; In the company of the Courtesan; Sacred Hearts; Blood and Beauty; In the Name of the Family

Venue: The Spring  Date: Thursday 30th November 2023  Registration at 9.45am; Start 10am; Finish 3pm

Cost: £40 to include buffet lunch, morning & afternoon refreshments.

To book, please email: TASPSIDS@gmail.com

To pay using debit or credit card, please click https://the-arts-society-portsdown.sumupstore.com/products  or by bank transfer to The Arts Society Portsdown; 52-30-04; 30652324; ref SID Nov

Bookings are open

Dr Rosamund Bartlett – 24th Nov 2023

Venue - Online via Zoom

Time - 10.30am - 3.30pm

Making the Invisible Visible: Uncovering The Women Artists of European Modernism

The story of modern art as conventionally told inevitably runs from Monet and Cezanne through to Picasso, Kandinsky, Duchamp and Dalí. This day of lectures paints a new picture of avant-garde experimentation before and after WW1 by showcasing the lives and careers of the many female artists who also contributed to the Modernist movement, and are only now receiving due recognition.  They include Suzanne Valadon, Anna Ancher, Hilma af Klint, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Helen Saunders, Marianne Brandt, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp.

1.  Early Pioneers in Paris

It was in Paris that numerous women first began to make their mark as professional artists.  By the time they gained the right to study at the École des Beaux Arts in 1897, the pioneering Académie Julian already had over 600 female students.  This lecture considers pathbreaking female artists based in Paris such as Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Marie Laurencin and Paula Modersohn-Becker.

2. Seekers of New Forms

By 1910, women artists had grown in stature.  Pursuing careers which often crossed European borders, they numbered amongst the boldest members of the avant-garde This lecture will branch out to Northern Europe to look at how artists such as Hilma af Klint, Helene Schierfbeck, Marianne Werefkin and Natalia Goncharova contributed to the ferment of ideas that would lead ineluctably to abstraction.

3.  Modern Eclectics

This lecture explores the diverse achievements of female creative talent in the dynamic years following the First World War.  Embracing new media and technology, artists like Sonia Delaunay, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Marianne Brandt and Benedetta Cappa expressed their own spirit of modernity in vibrant work which looks confidently to a future of gender equality.

Click this link for the Booking Form for cheque and online bank transfer

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

Email questions to Ali Green hiowsd2@gmail.com

Bookings are open 

Clare Ford-Wille – 17th Nov 2023

Venue - Online via Zoom

Time - 10.30am - 3.30pm

Making the Invisible Visible in European Painting and Sculpture of the 17th and 18th Centuries  

Making the Invisible Visible in European Painting and Sculpture of the The period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in European art is wonderfully rich in representations of servants, slaves, peasants, and gardeners, either anonymously in the backgrounds of a vast range of compositions or they begin to be studied more prominently in portraits or compositions of everyday life. How such men, women and children have been presented in art has been much neglected by art historians and the day will be an opportunity to discover the many ways in which the invisible can be made visible. 

1.  Servants, Slaves, Peasants and Gardeners in 17th Century Italian, French and Spanish Art

There were certain Biblical subjects for example where servants often came to the fore as vital helpers, for example in the episode of Judith decapitating Holofernes with the help of her servant, painted several times by Artemisia Gentileschi as well as other artists. Another example where servants can be found are in scenes of Christ visiting Martha and Mary.  Dwarfs were very important at the Spanish and Medici Courts and are frequently seen in royal portraits.  Velasquez began his career painting bodegones or kitchen scenes in which street sellers and servants appear. Landscape painting began to be an important subject in 17th century Rome in the work of Annibale Carracci and Claude and working peasants are often included, in order to set the scene and to help as pointers for the viewer in the landscape composition. Servants began to be celebrated as named individuals such as Velazquez’s portrait of his servant, Juan de Pareja.

2. Servants, Slaves, Peasants and Gardeners in 17th Century Flemish, Dutch, British and German Art

By the 17th century the new subjects of landscape, everyday life and still life had become important subjects, partly because the development of Protestantism meant that religious subjects were no longer subjects for art in a Protestant society.  Certainly, servants and peasants remained in the background as before in many cases, but were often frequently included, although not prominently, in paintings by Pieter de Hooch or Vermeer or in family portraits by Frans Hals or Jacob Jordaens.  However, artists such as Rembrandt, Frans Hals or Michiel Sweerts were some Dutch painters who made the tronie  or character study popular and often used their servants as models, thus making the invisible very visible. In Dutch and Flemish portraits by Van Dyck or Pieter Lely black servants increasingly can be seen. For a painting by the Leiden artist, Frans van Mieris a careful and beautiful drawing of a black woman was made as a study for the painting. Nannies can either be seen in the background but also in their charges’ portraits.  Beggars often can be seen receiving alms from wealthy citizens as in the work of Jan Steen and another popular Dutch subject is that of the street seller.  Gardeners can often be seen in the backgrounds.

3.  Servants, Slaves, Peasants and Gardeners in 18th Century Art

Another rich century in which the invisible is often made more visible in the work of Italian, British and French paintings from Tiepolo and Hogarth to Chardin and Greuze.  In Stubbs and Gainsborough, for example, farmworkers and peasants can be seen not only in the background but also in the foreground, often inspired by the influence of 17th century examples.  Gainsborough knew of the work of Murillo, whilst Hogarth was familiar with the work of Dutch painters, through prints.  Chardin raised to a new level the kitchen routines of maids in a fresh and dignified way.  During the eighteenth-century views of vast landscape gardens often have gardeners working  in them and Tiepolo’s son, Gian Domenico, celebrated the Italian peasant in his frescoes for the Villa Valmarana near Vicenza. 

Click this link for the Booking Form for cheque and online bank transfer

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

Email questions to Ali Green hiowsd2@gmail.com

Bookings are open 

Dr Sally Dormer  - 2 Nov 2023

Venue - Online via Zoom

Time - 10.30am - 3.30pm

Making the Invisible Visible in the Middle Ages

1. Labourers and the Labours of the Months in the Middle Ages

Doorways and floors in medieval churches, and calendars in Psalters and Books of Hours, were frequently adorned with the Labours of the Months, scenes that depicted activities appropriate to each season of the calendar year, arranged in sequence from January to December. Most featured labourers, toiling at agricultural pursuits that included ploughing fields, sowing seed, pruning vines, harvesting crops, and slaughtering animals. This lecture will consider who these images were intended for, how they functioned, and whether they represented the reality of everyday life for the agricultural poor, who made up roughly 90% of the population and yet remain largely absent from the visual arts of the Middle Ages.

2. The Mendicants; a response to urban poverty

The Dominicans and Franciscans, the two most successful mendicant orders of the medieval church, were founded in the early 13th century to support the growing numbers of urban poor created by the efflorescence of towns in Western Europe post 1200. Mendicant foundations were purposefully situated in poverty-stricken, slum-ridden, areas of a city, where there was great spiritual, and material, need amongst the very poorest inhabitants. This lecture will explore how the architecture, interior decoration and furnishings of mendicant churches related to the friars’ ideals of ministering to the urban poor and whether, or not, they maintained their founding principles of austerity and discipline in the face of increasing prosperity.

3. Images in and on Medieval Margins

The edges of medieval World Maps (mappae mundi), church portals and corbel tables, and the margins of some illuminated manuscripts teem with mythical creatures, male and female, invisible in every-day life but believed to inhabit the periphery of the known world:sciapods, men with huge feet which sheltered their heads from the sun; blemmyes, men with faces on their chests; cyclops, men with a single eye in their foreheads; mermaids; and Sheela na gigs, naked women exhibiting exaggerated vulva. This lecture will investigate where these creatures stemmed from and how they were understood in relation to the sacred spaces, or texts, with which they were often associated.

Click this link for the Booking Form for cheque and online bank transfer

Click this link for bookings via Ticket Tailor

Email questions to Ali Green hiowsd2@gmail.com

The Area Spring Lectures in Winchester for 2023 will not be held this year.

They will be resumed in 2024

This is the final day of the 5-day study course making up the Jean Bolton Memorial Study Course for 2022 under the theme of Festivities and Celebration.

It is not surprising that the most important national holidays of Poland and Finland, Norway and Iceland, Estonia and Latvia commemorate the dates when these countries gained their independence, after centuries of foreign domination. The annual explosion of national song and festive dress acknowledges the key role played by the arts in the awakening of these countries in the 19th century, and bears out the Romantic ideas of Johann Gottfried von Herder.  After travelling by horseback through Latvian villages, the German philosopher became convinced that shared songs, stories and dance played a far greater role in forging national identity than blood ties or common history. This day of lectures will explore the vibrant artistic heritage of each of the above-mentioned countries, as expressed in their exuberant festivals of national culture.

Click here for the booking form or contact Ali Green at hiowsd2@gmail.com for a form in Word format.

This is the forth of 5 study days making up the Jean Bolton Memorial Study Course for 2022 under the theme of Festivities and Celebration.

The 19th century saw a revival in genre painting – scenes of everyday life in urban or rural settings.  Most of these pictures presented an idealised view of working people, showing them participating in traditional religious festivals, or celebrating weddings, enjoying music, drinking and dancing.  Such images of a joyful, idyllic existence were enormously popular across Europe and beyond: they can be found in museums from America to Russia.  Only in the second half of the century did some artists try to give a more sober and realistic account of the lives – and recreations – of working people. 

In the same period western artists became obsessed with defining their own experiences and identities.  One stereotype of the romantic artist had him living alone in a state of melancholic isolation.  But this was only a reality for the few.  For most, being an artist meant working and socialising with others, and there is a wealth of imagery recording these professional and social connections – artists at lunch, drinking together in their studios, in cafés and restaurants.  By the end of the 19th century, the urban world of entertainment was a key source of inspiration for artists like Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas.  And they worked not just as outside observers but as active participants in the ‘floating world’ of the city. 

A painting by Matisse, Le bonheur de vivre, of 1905-6 marks the culmination of a particular tradition in art – the idyll.  Throughout the 19th century artists tried to represent the possibility of a paradise on earth.  Mostly they looked back in time to classical art and mythology, presenting idealised nudes relaxing together in a state of perfect harmony against the backdrop of a vaguely Mediterranean landscape.  The possibility of a perfect existence endured into the early 20th century.  But by this point, some painters were trying to give a modern form to old aspirations.  The results, notably in the work of Cézanne and Matisse inaugurated a new age in art.

1. High Days and Holidays in 19th-century Genre Painting 
2. Painters at Play 
3. Bonheur de vivre: Images of a Paradise on Earth

Click here for the booking form or contact Ali Green at hiowsd2@gmail.com for a form in Word format.

This is the third of 5 study days making up the Jean Bolton Memorial Study Course for 2022 under the theme of Festivities and Celebration.

The study day will explore festivities in the 17th and 18th centuries from special occasions such as royal, Biblical or mythological processions by Annibale Carracci, Rubens, or Van Dyck to everyday celebrations, which were some of the most popular subjects, in the work of Dutch painters who painted feasts taking place in gardens of love, for example by Dirk Hals or Esaias van de Velde or the indoor scenes of debauchery and drunkenness by Jan Steen, which often served as moral warnings.  Frans Hals pioneered with his sparkling brushwork the spontaneity and vibrancy of the Dutch militia companies’ feasts which marked the end of the officer’s term of service. Festivities surrounding births or christenings were also popular at a time when infant mortality was ever present.  The more serious Biblical feasts, such as the Last Supper, or the Marriage of Cana, but also the parable of the Feast in the House of Levi continued during this period.  Lavish displays of sumptuous food known as pronkenwere popular, painted by Willem Kalf.  In contrast Spanish painters such as Velazquez or Zurburan favoured simpler, more down-to-earth still life of peasants sitting round a table together in an inn, known as bodegones. Scenes of groups either listening to or playing music increased in popularity as innovative developments in musical composition gathered momentum during this rich and vibrant period.

Click here for the booking form or contact Ali Green at hiowsd2@gmail.com for a form in Word format.

This is the second of 5 study days making up the Jean Bolton Memorial Study Course for 2022 under the theme of Festivities and Celebration.

Festivals came in many forms in the renaissance period, religious and secular, political and private, elite and popular, from Triumphal Entries to carnival festivities, religious processions to Burgundian banquets, wedding masques and tournaments.  The art and artefacts produced for these events was no less wide ranging – theatrical costumes, temporary architecture, banners, dinner services and marriage chests, to name but a few.  Drawing on written descriptions and visual sources we shall immerse ourselves in the rich world of renaissance festivity, looking not only at surviving artefacts associated with festive occasions, but at depictions of such events, including Gentile Bellini’s great Procession in the Piazza San Marco and Bruegel’s Battle Between Carnival and Lent.

Click here for the booking form or contact Ali Green at hiowsd2@gmail.com for a form in Word format.

This is the first of 5 study days making up the Jean Bolton Memorial Study Course for 2022 under the theme of Festivities and Celebration.

A multitude of sacred and profane events, some public, others intensely private, were cause for celebration and an opportunity to escape the dull routine of everyday life during the Middle Ages, including, amongst others, the provision of the Sacraments by the Church; the protection and intercession offered by the saints; the dawning of each New Year; the coronation of a sovereign; and the forging of marriage alliances. These events were marked by carefully choreographed ceremonies staged in purpose-built buildings, celebrated employing tailor-made objects, and often accompanied by an exchange of gifts. This study day will focus upon a variety of these medieval celebrations, the Sacraments of Baptism, the Eucharist, and Marriage; Feast Days and Holidays; and the Coronations of emperors and kings. It will consider the buildings where such events were held, including baptisteries, abbeys and cathedrals, investigate the array of elaborate artefacts that furnished such ceremonies, including fonts, chalices, illuminated manuscripts, thrones, crowns, sceptres, and vestments, and explore how celebrations were recorded for posterity in paintings and sculpture.

The 3 sessions are as follows:

1.     Celebrating the Sacraments: Baptism, the Eucharist and Marriage

2.     Celebrating the Saints: Feast Days and Holidays

3.     Celebrating Emperors and Kings: Coronation Ceremonies

Click here for the booking form or contact Ali Green at hiowsd2@gmail.com for a form in Word format.

This day is live and in-venue only - it is not available by Zoom.

A stimulating and enjoyable Special Interest Day exploring how and why the city of Paris has acted as both a magnet and cauldron of talent for aspiring artists and designers. Discover more about the key events and personalities shaping the 'City of Light' during the first half of the twentieth century. Looking beyond the mainstream, we will identify the creative individuals, including newly emerging female talents, who shaped the Parisian concept of 'modernity' in art, design, interiors, fashion, and photography.  Whether strolling along Haussmann's new boulevards, ascending the magnificent staircase of Garnier's Opéra House, calling into an artist's studio, cafe, nightclub, or couture fitting, we will recreate the sense of 'being there'. Literary descriptions by Zola, Stein, Cocteau, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald will accompany the sumptuous visual details photographed especially for this purpose. Comparisons between the international Paris exhibitions of 1900, 1925 and 1937 will shed light on changing social/cultural issues, rapid technological change, and the key role of couture and fashion in French identity, especially during the German Occupation, and immediately after the Liberation.

An inclusive and exploratory approach is used with location maps, using both contemporary and old photographs of the city, and various art and design media. Whether you know the city well or not at all, there will be new and exciting discoveries for everyone.

1) La Belle Époque - city of pleasure and reinvention 1890s - 1914

2) Partying into the Future 1920s and 30s

3) Paris Exposition 1937, Occupation and Defiance

Tickets cost £25pp to include tea/coffee on arrival. 

Lunch is not provided. 

This year we are trialling a new venue, The Performance Hall in the Winchester Discovery Centre. There is an on site cafe and many eateries in the vicinity, so we have decided not to provide a lunch with the days. Instead we will aim to finish the morning session by 1pm enabling attendees to find something to eat and reconvene for the afternoon session around 2pm. Attendees may also bring their own lunches if preferred to eat in the Performance Hall.

Click here for the booking form.

This day is live and in-venue only - it is not available by Zoom.

This light-hearted talk by the Antiques Roadshow's Andy McConnell examines the history of wine, an elixir that has sustained much of humanity for almost 10,000 years. Essentially little more than fermented grape juice, this extraordinary and contradictory liquid has caused wars and riots, has helped broker peace and more commonly, served as an aphrodisiac. It has been personified in the form of Gods and been the principal catalyst in civilised entertaining and dining rituals. 

Wine is based on ethanol, a potent alcoholic poison and depressant. Yet, when consumed in moderation, its effects are liberating, euphoric and positively beneficial to our physical health. What do we do when we drink too much and feel bad the following morning? Swallow another glass of it to make us feel better! 

Bottom’s Up! traces the story of wine: from its humble beginnings in rotting grapes before the Bronze Age to the present when single bottles can change hands thousands, even hundreds of thousands of pounds. It examines the extraordinary diversity of paintings and artefacts, including drinking vessels, created by some of history’s greatest artists and craftsmen to enhance the pleasure of wine, and to impress guests. 

The talk visits the ancient societies of Egypt, Greece and Rome, travels through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and 18th century Britain. It culminates in the present day, when more wine is being consumed than ever before, with its world market now worth over £100 billion.

Please note: the afternoon session will be 'roadshow' in style - please bring along your own glass items for Andy to discuss and assess.

Tickets cost £25pp to include tea/coffee on arrival. 

Lunch is not provided. 

This year we are trialling a new venue, The Performance Hall in the Winchester Discovery Centre. There is an on site cafe and many eateries in the vicinity, so we have decided not to provide a lunch with the days. Instead we will aim to finish the morning session by 1pm enabling attendees to find something to eat and reconvene for the afternoon session around 2pm. Attendees may also bring their own lunches if preferred to eat in the Performance Hall.

Click here for the booking form.

This day is live and in-venue only - it is not available by Zoom.

1) Cabbages, Carrots and Lamb. Spanish Still Life from 1600-1812   

Robert Hughes declared of Still life painting; ‘Still Life is to eating what the nude is to sex’, (we won’t go there I assure you!), although he did admit that Spanish Still Life painting is ‘more sacramental than gastronomic’. The lecture will cover a cabbage that has been painted with such astonishing accuracy that the painted version is more alluring than the vegetable itself. Featuring paintings by Velazquez, Zurburán, Meléndez & Goya, we shall explore several stunning key themes that can all be discerned from arrangements of simple food stuffs; religious fervour and symbolism, the absence of presence and that importance generates waste.

2) Caterpillars, Lemons and Lobsters. Dutch Still Life from 1560-1650

When it comes to Dutch Flower paintings the only real expert in the field (often literally) is the insect that lives off the stems and petals. As Harry Berger puts it “the caterpillar is connoisseur”. From Meat Stalls to Mince Pies, and Bubbles to Bread Rolls, this lecture will help you to discover the enormous symbolism that is conveyed by simple every day objects, that have been rendered with breath taking accuracy and convey really satisfying moral meaning. Examining works by Claesz, Steenwyck, de Heem, Bosschaert, van Aelst and Kalf; we shall explore the corruption of abundance, the mutability and ephemerality of life and the inevitability of death.

3) Animal Fur, Telephones and Apple Cores. Still Life as Real Life in the 20th & 21st Centuries

The ‘lesser’ genre of Still Life painting was one of the vehicles that launched Modern Art in the 19th century, and the obsession continued into the subsequent century by Picasso, Dali and Oppenheim. Painting was replaced by the Object, often playing upon the established and traditional themes of old. Mortality, mutability and abundance can all be traced through the ground breaking ‘still life’ sculptures of Oldenburg, Taylor Wood and Hirst. Like the Still Life genre, in all its permeations, this talk will be an exuberant assault on the senses of taste, sight, sound, touch and smell.

Tickets cost £25pp to include tea/coffee on arrival.  Lunch is not provided. 

This year we are trialling a new venue, The Performance Hall in the Winchester Discovery Centre. There is an on site cafe and many eateries in the vicinity, so we have decided not to provide a lunch with the days. Instead we will aim to finish the morning session by 1pm enabling attendees to find something to eat and reconvene for the afternoon session around 2pm. Attendees may also bring their own lunches if preferred to eat in the Performance Hall.

Click here for the booking form.

This day of lectures uses the prism of light and darkness to reveal the mysteries behind some of Russia's most remarkable artistic creations. We begin with Orthodox icons, exploring the theology, which lies behind the way they are painted, and the vital notion of "reverse perspective", with reflections on their role in Russian spiritual life.  The focus in the second lecture is on the bold artistic experimentation undertaken by Russian artists and musicians on the eve of the Russian Revolution.  We will range from the apocalyptic harmonies of Scriabin's music to the meaning of white and black in Malevich's iconoclastic paintings.  The final lecture is devoted to the miraculous "heaven underground" created in Moscow's brightly illuminated metro stations, which the Communist Party dictated should be beautiful works of art, and a symbol of the luxurious future of light which would reward Russian workers.

Lecture 1: Towards the Light of the East: Тhe Symbolism of Russian icons  

Lecture 2:  From The White Mass to The Black Square: The Radical Use of Colour in Russian Painting and Music

Lecture 3:  "A Bright Future": The Moscow Metro and The Radiant Light of The Socialist Future

Click here for the booking form.

In the mid-19th century Realist painters including Millet and Courbet set European art in a new direction.  In place of idealized historical subjects drawn from history and mythology, they decided to depict the daily lives of ordinary people.  These images of everyday reality were often sombre and ‘dark’, addressing aspects of contemporary society that were problematic and controversial.  Moreover, the appearance of Realist paintings matched the nature of their material, with heavy, textured surfaces and dark tonalities. 

For the generation of painters who began their careers in the 1860s, the reality of modern life was still a key theme.  But the Impressionists – including Monet, Sisley, Renoir and Pissarro – were less interested in social problems than visible phenomena – how we perceive people and things in the world around us.  Light became their central concern: how our eyes perceive it, how it shifts in colour and strength from moment to moment, its effect on the appearance of objects, figures, and landscapes, and finally how the artist might convey our experience of light in nature in a painting.  Starting in France, the Impressionist vision revolutionized art across Europe and beyond, from Russia to America and from Spain to Scandinavia.

At the end of the 19th century artists and writers became impatient with superficial realities and tried to look beyond the outer surfaces of human experience.  Symbolist painters including Redon and Moreau wanted to represent a world of ideas.  In their work, contrasting values of light and dark were not just a matter of surface appearances, but held meaning; they could express questions around human nature and the human condition, conflicts between good and evil, or the contesting forces of hope and fear.  In fin-de-siècle Europe the Symbolists restored meaning to art.

Lecture 1: The Good, the Bad and the True: Painting the Realities of Life

Lecture 2: Dissolving into Light: The Impressionist Vision

Lecture 3: Drawn from the Imagination: Symbolism and its Legacies

Click here for the booking form.

By 1600 the Catholic Church was in the throes of reform, and both painting and sculpture, as well as architecture became a useful tool in successfully enabling Catholic reforms, during the period known as the Counter Reformation.  An important figure in this respect was Caravaggio, who arrived in Rome, and together with Annibale Carracci, reformed religious painting with new approaches to light and darkness, in order to create drama and the involvement of the viewer in new and striking ways, as in the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo. Bernini also began to exploit striking light effects in his architecture and sculpture, maximising the spiritual impact by means of hidden sources of light, suggestive of a heavenly presence, which engulf the worshipper upon entering the church, as in his Santa Teresa in Ecstasy in Santa Maria della Vittoria.

In the north of Europe, in the Southern Netherlands, the dramatic and exciting effects of light and darkness in the work of Rubens in his strikingly novel use of paint and highlight, as in the artificial light effects of candle, torch and oil lamp, in his Samson and Delilah (NG). These themes of light and dark contrasts, known as chiaroscuro, continued in the work of his Flemish contemporaries, Van Dyck and Jordaens.  In the Dutch Republic Rembrandt exploited new dramatic ideas of light, emerging from a mysterious darkness, to bring a special depth to his paintings and prints. Rembrandt, unlike Rubens, did not travel to Italy but he was much influenced by the Dutch Caravaggisti, Honthorst and Ter Brugghen, who returned from Rome bringing these new ideas with them.  Light and darkness was also interpreted in very different, but equally exciting ways, by the Dutch painters Fabritius, Maes and Vermeer, for example. Such baroque effects were also used to great purpose by Spanish painters of the 17th century such as Zurburan, Murillo or Velasquez.

Although changes in the use of light and darkness took place in the 18th century, and the contrasts were not quite as extreme, nonetheless, gentle subtle contrasts can be enjoyed in the work of the French painter, Chardin, for example and light and dark effects continue into the 19th century in the dramatic spirituality, seen in the landscapes of Friedrich or the immense, brooding vistas of John Martin.

Lecture 1:   Light and Darkness in Italy and Spain from Caravaggio to Bernini

Lecture 2: Light and Darkness in the Netherlands from Rubens to Vermeer

Lecture 3: Light and Darkness in Europe from Chardin to Caspar David Friedrich

Click here for the booking form.

Renaissance painters approached light and darkness in a variety of ways, exploiting it for realistic effect, to tell a story, or to convey meaning.  The subject is a rich one, and the artists we shall encounter include Van Eyck, Leonardo, Bosch, Raphael, Titian and Tintoretto.

Naturalism, the depiction of the visible world based on close observation of reality, was one of the most significant developments in painting around 1420.  Central to this was the depiction of light and shadow, and the understanding (only partly realised by earlier painters) that light describes and defines form and space, making objects appear three-dimensional and locating them in relation to each other. These ideas were first explored by the Van Eycks in Flanders and Masaccio and Gentile da Fabriano in Florence, and first expressed in writing by Leon Battista Alberti, also in Florence.  Once mastered, naturalistic lighting could be exploited in sophisticated ways, to blur the boundaries between the real and painted worlds, and to play visual games.  This ‘optical revolution’ was facilitated by developments in oil painting, first in Flanders and subsequently in Italy, with is tonal range and ability to suggest sheen, shimmer and sparkle.

At the same time, Renaissance painters were concerned not only with depicting the visible world, but also the invisible.  Art was still to a large extent in the service of religion, and light could be used to suggest the divine, the miraculous, and the visionary.  The possibilities inherent in the naturalistic depiction of light enabled painters to portray things that earlier had been represented with symbols, in newly realistic ways.  Yet while naturalistic lighting was increasingly favoured, gilding, often used to suggest light in earlier art, did not disappear altogether; rather, it was used selectively to enhance symbolic meaning, or to distinguish between levels of reality.

Light and darkness also played their part in Renaissance painters’ storytelling.  The Nativity could now be represented, plausibly, as if happening at night.  Light and shadow could also be used, quite simply and logically, to tell a story: St Peter could be shown healing with his shadow; St Francis receiving stigmata that really look like rays of blazing light.  Light and darkness could also heighten the drama of a narrative, paving the way for Caravaggio.

Lecture 1: Reality: Light, shadow and the physical world

Lecture 2: Symbol: Light and the metaphysical

Lecture 3: Narrative: Light and darkness in the service of storytelling

Click here for the booking form.

From God the Father’s pronouncement “Fiat lux!”, “Let there be light!”, in Genesis, to Christ’s proclamation “I am the Light of the World” in St John’s Gospel, the Bible mentions light, juxtaposed frequently with its polar-opposite, darkness, on multiple occasions. In the Middle Ages, such references were understood metaphorically; light was viewed as synonymous with God’s presence, and spiritual enlightenment, whereas darkness symbolised God’s absence, and mankind’s sin. St Augustine of Hippo summed up the principle “How far the first gleams of your (God’s) light have illumined me and how dense my darkness remains….”, Confessions XI.2.1. Artificial light also played a central role in devotional practice; oil lamps were suspended from vaults and beeswax candles were placed around altars, tombs, and shrines and before revered images. This study day will explore the rich variety of ways in which light and darkness were expressed visually in the medieval world: how imagery brought biblical references of darkness and light to life; how church interiors were illuminated by light, both natural and artificial, reflected by smooth marble, and glass surfaces; and how artefacts that provided artificial light, candelabra, chandeliers, and candlesticks, were embellished with complex imagery relevant to their purpose.

Lecture 1:       Biblical Imagery: From Darkness into Light

Lecture 2:       Material and Immaterial light:

                        Illuminating the medieval church

Lecture 3:       Medieval Candelabra, Chandeliers, and Candlesticks

Click here for the booking form.

Venue:  The Discovery Centre, Jewry St, Winchester (limited numbers) and also online via Zoom

Time: 10.30am – 3.30pm (approx)

Cost: £30 for attendees in the venue (pre-booked lunch available at additional cost); £15 for online attendees

For information, if you book to attend in person, and then Covid restrictions mean that the event can only take place online via Zoom, you will have a full refund, and the option to book a Zoom place instead.

Please note: this study day will not be recorded: it will be available on the day only.

In Ancient China, the phoenix, a bird of myth and legend, symbolised the Empress, consort to the Dragon Emperor. The lectures focus on three Empresses who lived in the Forbidden City from the 18th century to the end of empire in 1911. Empress Xiaoxian was consort to the Qianlong Emperor, one of China’s greatest art collectors. The formidable Dowager Empress Cixi ruled the Empire ‘from behind the curtain’ during the 19th century. Empress Wanrong, known as Elizabeth, married Puyi, the last Emperor of China. She was beautiful and received a Western education yet died an opium addict in wartorn China. Their history reaches back to a golden age of art patronage and expansion of the vast Imperial collection, through the opium wars and twilight days of Empire, to the Warlord era of the 20th century, when the art collection was plundered by Palace eunuchs. In these lectures, the phoenix is also the Imperial art collection itself, which was reborn from the ashes of Empire and civil war. After the 1949 Communist victory, Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek and his charismatic Shanghainese wife, Soong May Ling, described as China’s ‘Last Empress’, brought thousands of crates of treasures to Taiwan. The former Imperial collection is now housed in China, Taiwan and in museums and private collections in the West. 

Bookings are now being taken.

Booking Form can be found here:

Spring Study Day Booking Form

Details of the lunch box for pre-order can be found here

Online attendees will be sent further information on how to join via Zoom

For further information please contact:

Vivienne Jarvis

E: hiowsd2@gmail.com 

T: 01264 358065

Venue:  The Discovery Centre, Jewry St, Winchester (limited numbers) and also online via Zoom

Time: 10.30am – 3.30pm (approx)

Cost: £30 for attendees in the venue (pre-booked lunch available at additional cost); £15 for online attendees

For information, if you book to attend in person, and then Covid restrictions mean that the event can only take place online via Zoom, you will have a full refund, and the option to book a Zoom place instead.

Under the great conqueror Tamerlaine and his successors, Central Asia experienced a Golden Age. Samarkand and other cities were endowed with splendid monuments; art, literature and science flourished. Babur, the last of the Timurids, and expelled from his homeland, went on to conquer India and found the Mughal empire. There the Mughal emperors presided over magnificent royal courts and sponsored creative building which reached its apogee in the Taj Mahal.

Bookings are now being taken.

Booking Form can be found here:

Spring Study Day Booking Form

Details of the lunch box for pre-order can be found here

Online attendees will be sent further information on how to join via Zoom

For further information please contact:

Vivienne Jarvis

E: hiowsd2@gmail.com 

T: 01264 358065

Venue:  The Discovery Centre, Jewry St, Winchester (limited numbers) and also online via Zoom

Time: 10.30am – 3:30pm (approx)

Cost: £30 for attendees in the venue (pre-booked lunch available at additional cost); £15 for online attendees

For information, if you book to attend in person, and then Covid restrictions mean that the event can only take place online via Zoom, you will have a full refund, and the option to book a Zoom place instead.

This day follows the course of this hard, determined, and often brutal dynasty who ruled Russia for over 300 years, from Peter the Great, the Founder of St Petersburg, through his eccentric daughter Elizabeth to Catherine the Great, the most powerful of all the Empresses of Russia who had no real claim to the throne. Finally onto the tragic figure of Nicholas II, the last Tsar and one of the most poignant figures in history whose death in a cellar in Ekaterinburg ended the reign of this turbulent and ill-fated family.

Session 1 “The Blaspheming Bear.” - The life of Peter the Great

Session 2 “The New Byzantium.” - Russia at the time of Catherine the Great

Session 3 “The Last Romanovs.” - The life and death of Nicholas and Alexandra.

Bookings are now being taken.

Booking Form can be found here:

Spring Study Day Booking Form

Details of the lunch box for pre-order can be found here

Online attendees will be sent further information on how to join via Zoom

For further information please contact:

Vivienne Jarvis

E: hiowsd2@gmail.com 

T: 01264 358065

Thi the last of five 2020 Jean Bolton Memorial Study days seeking to explore the strong relationship between travel and art not only in the illustrative sense, but also art which arises from the experience of the journey itself.

Venue: Online via Zoom. Each day will be available for viewing for 7 days afterwards

Time: 10.30am – 3:30pm (approx) Cost:£12 per day

Until the beginning of the eighteenth century, Russia was a country of icons and folk art which looked decidedly towards Asia.  All that changed when Peter the Great became the first Russian Tsar to travel abroad, commissioning the first state portrait in a Western style, going on to found St. Petersburg in 1703 as his "window on Europe", and opening the floodgates to foreign architects, artists and craftsmen. 

This day of lectures will show how the process of cultural exchange he initiated transformed Russia, focusing first on how the three great empresses of the eighteenth century brought painting, sculpture, ballet and opera to St. Petersburg. The next lecture will tell the story of the journeys downtrodden Russian artists undertook in the nineteenth century order as they wrestled with their own identity.  Finally we will explore the great transnational artistic explosion of the early twentieth century, ranging from Diaghilev's long crusade to win recognition for Russian culture abroad, to the commissions resulting from Sergei Shchukin's visits to Matisse, which electrified the young Moscow avant-garde.

Session 1 – From Paris to St Petersburg: How the fine arts travelled to Russia in the 18th century.

Session 2 – Wanderers: How Russian artists discovered their own country in the 19th century.

Session 3 - Cultural exchange and the European Avant-Garde in the 20th century.

Bookings are now being taken and the Booking Form can be found here:

Jean Bolton Memorial Study Course Booking Form

Once registered you will be sent further information on how to join via Zoom

This is the fourth of five one-day meetings seeking to explore the strong relationship between travel and art not only in the illustrative sense, but also art which arises from the experience of the journey itself

Venue: Online via Zoom. Each day will be available for viewing for 7 days afterwards

Time: 10.30am – 3:30pm (approx) Cost: £12 per day

Although Italy never lost its allure, Victorian travellers became much more adventurous thanks to the railways and ocean liners. Thomas Cook launched his enterprise taking trips to the Great Exhibition in 1851. He soon expanded into Scottish tours and trips down the Nile. By the mid-1860s he was organising tours to America. The first escorted round-the-world tour departed from London in September 1872. It included a steamship across the Atlantic, a stagecoach across America, a paddle steamer to Japan, and an overland journey across China and India. The Russell-Cotes, whose fortune came from the Royal Bath Hotel, Bournemouth, embarked on their first 'grand tour' to Australasia and New Zealand in 1885.  Returning home, they travelled through Asia acquiring many works of art in Japan. In 1898 they travelled to Russia and Scandinavia, where they were particularly taken with the vistas of St Petersburg. Their travels shaped the decoration of their home, East Cliff Hall, the interiors still a fascinating mixture of styles, cultural influences and 'objets d'art' from all over the world.

The Russell-Cotes travelled in style in the days of the great ocean liners. Their opulence reached a peak in the 1920s and 1930s. The Normandie and the 'Queens', which sailed out of Southampton, mark the highpoint of Art Deco styling. The same could be said of the Orient Express and famous Pullmans.

Holiday resorts flourished, from Bournemouth to the French Cote d'Azur. Hotels catered for an increasingly sophisticated and demanding clientele. Merton Russell-Cotes renamed his establishment the Royal Bath Hotel following a visit from Edward, Prince of Wales. Only the elite could afford to stay at the Savoy in London or the Waldorf Astoria in New York

Session 1 - Beyond Italy: A Cook's tour

Session 2 - Bringing back a few Souvenirs

Session 3 - Hotels and Ocean Liners: Art Deco opulence

Bookings are now being taken and the Booking Form can be found here:

Jean Bolton Memorial Study Course Booking Form

Once registered you will be sent further information on how to join via Zoom

This is the third of five one-day meetings seeking to explore the strong relationship between travel and art not only in the illustrative sense, but also art which arises from the experience of the journey itself.

Venue: Online via Zoom. Each day will be available for viewing for 7 days afterwards

Time: 10.30am – 3:30pm (approx) Cost: £12 per day

Across renaissance Europe, regional artistic styles and techniques were shaped by artistic crosscurrents, enabled by the travels of merchants, princes, diplomats and artists. In the great mercantile city of Venice, trade with the Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa and Asia influenced local style and also the development of luxury industries such as glass and silk. In the equally important trading centre of Bruges, a cosmopolitan merchant community fed international demand for Netherlandish painting, resulting in its influence as far afield as Italy. One notable visitor to both Venice and the Netherlands was Albrecht Durer, and we conclude by looking at his experiences in these centres, and his artistic responses to them.

Session 1: Venice and the East

Session 2: Bruges and the South

Session 3: Durer in Venice and the Low Countries

Bookings are now being taken and the Booking Form can be found here:

Jean Bolton Memorial Study Course Booking Form

Once registered you will be sent further information on how to join via Zoom

This is the second of five one-day meetings seeking to explore the strong relationship between travel and art not only in the illustrative sense, but also art which arises from the experience of the journey itself.

Venue: Online via Zoom. Each day will be available for viewing for 7 days afterwards

Time: 10.30am – 3:30pm (approx)   Cost: £12 per day

The study day will explore the lure of travel and its impact upon the work of artists and the influences upon their patrons from the 17th to the early I9th centuries. In the 17th century Rubens travelled to Spain and Italy and what he produced during his future career was shaped by those journeys.  Van Dyck's stay in Italy and his experience of seeing the work of Titian enabled him to transform British painting for the next three hundred years.  Inigo Jones travelled with the Earl of Arundel and the architecture of Palladio would determine Inigo Jones contribution to British architecture.

The 18ih century was the period of the Grand Tour and the impact of what rich young German, Austrian and British travellers saw in France and Italy upon the houses and palaces of Central Europe. The pastel painter, Liotard, lived and worked in Constantinople and contributed to the influence of Middle Eastern fashions and ideas in Western Europe.

In the early 19th century Delacroix travelled further outside Europe to North Africa while Caspar David Friedrich and Turner were impressed by the European mountains nearer home. How did their travels transform their work and introduce new ideas to European painting and architecture?

Session 1: The Travels of Artists and Patrons in the 17th Century.

Session 2:  The Travels of Artists and Patrons in the 18th Century. 

Session 3:  The Travels of Artists and Patrons in the early 19th Century.

Bookings are now being taken and the Booking Form can be found here:

Jean Bolton Memorial Study Course Booking Form

Once registered you will be sent further information on how to join via Zoom

The Jean Bolton Memorial Study Course starts with this one of five one-day meetings seeking to explore the strong relationship between travel and art not only in the illustrative sense, but also art which arises from the experience of the journey itself.

Venue: Online via Zoom. Each day will be available for viewing for 7 days afterwards

Time: 10.30am – 3:30pm (approx)

Cost: £12 per day

Travel was a difficult and often treacherous activity in the Middle Ages and yet surprising numbers of men and women made frequent journeys across vast distances, thereby facilitating the transmission of visual ideas. Pilgrims travelled across France and Spain to venerate shrines like that of St James at Santiago de Compostela and dispersed ideas about church architecture and sculpture along the way. Crusaders visited the Holy Land and were inspired by buildings like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem which they replicated upon their return to Europe. Merchants voyaged by land and sea to remote places and brought back exotic materials, lapis lazuli from modern day Afghanistan or elephant ivory from the Horn of Africa, which exerted considerable influence on European craftsmen and their patrons’ taste. This study day will explore the abundant variety of ways in which pilgrimage, trade, and crusade effected cultural exchange that transcended national borders during the Middle Ages. 

Session 1 - Pilgrimage: The Road to Santiago de Compostela

Session 2 - Trade: Merchants and Luxury materials

Session 3 - Crusade: Outremer and the West

Bookings are now being taken and the Booking Form can be found here:

Jean Bolton Memorial Study Course Booking Form

Once registered you will be sent further information on how to join via Zoom