On visiting Seurat’s studio, Van Gogh marvelled at the “fresh revelation of colour” in Seurat’s work. This presentation invites slow, attentive viewing to appreciate how both artists produced extraordinary, pioneering art. Despite their brief careers, they made remarkable contributions to modern art through distinctive, experimental approaches.

Whistler’s painting, Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl (1862) is both monumental and modern. Though its scale recalls grand portraits, Whistler’s innovative technique and overall treatment of the subject resist straightforward interpretation. In this presentation we will examine Joanna Hiffernan’s role in his art and life. Was she simply his model and lover? Or could she have been an essential collaborator who influenced his artistic vision, assisting him in his development of a new pictorial language?

Film production took off in Australia in the 1970s, a period that came to be known as the Australian New Wave. Meet Australia’s greatest living playwright and discover some of the stars in award-winning movies made during this exciting period of cinematic renaissance.

Pandora, Eve and Galatea have something in common – they were manufactured rather than born. This lecture looks at the original sources for the stories, and draws parallels between them before showing how ballets, operas and plays from Coppelia to My Fair Lady and The Winter’s Tale to Educating Rita have developed the theme of a creation that runs out of control.

With the help of the evocative photographs of Scott’s photographer, Herbert Ponting, and some of Edward Wilson’s watercolours, this session focuses on the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration, in particular, the journeys by Scott and his rival, Amundsen to be first at the South Pole.

From the 1890s to the 1960s, Winston Churchill’s life was captured in countless photographs. A prolific writer and speechmaker, the definitive edition of his speeches alone runs to four volumes. A successful and enthusiastic artist, he produced some 500 paintings in over five decades. Churchill was a complex and sensitive man of many parts and interests – a discriminating contemporary, Kenneth Clark, wrote of him, “I have never been frightened by anyone except Churchill … he was a man of a wonderful and very powerful mind”. This lecture portrays the richness, diversity and achievements of Churchill’s life and character.

During the Edo period of rule by the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1868), the arts of Japan gained in richness and diversity. With the rise of the merchant class and the growth of cities such as Edo (modern-day Tokyo), a new vitality was injected into traditional forms and an emerging middle-class culture gave rise to exciting developments in the visual and performing arts. This lecture will consider the arts of the period including castle architecture, golden screen painting, ukiyo-e prints, textiles, lacquerware, and netsuke, as well as the emergence of the flamboyant kabuki theatre.

The story of Roland Penrose, British Surrealist artist and biographer of Picasso, and Lee Miller, the American Surrealist photographer, who shot fashion and combat with equal talent, as seen through the eyes of their son Antony Penrose, who is also their biographer. We look at how their early lives formed their motivations and how they strove to use art to make the world a better place. The last decades of their life together were at Farley Farm, their home in Sussex which was frequented by many prominent Surrealist and Modern artists.