Please Note this is a change in Lecturer and Programme

To be held in the Dove Suite at The Ark, Turners Hill. Timing 10.00 - 15.00

Paris, largely considered the “Centre of Impressionism”, had a lasting influence on the art of Monet and the Impressionists. Inspired by the rapidly changing modernism of the city, as well as by ordinary Parisians, these artists captured scenes of everyday life that reveal key moments in the history of the city - from Hausmann’s renovation, to the development of leisure, to scenes in the bars, theatres, and Paris streets. This Special Interest Day will be exploring key locations that inspired these great artists: Montmartre, the Ile de Chatou, and Giverny (Monet’s escape from the city)

Lecture 1 - Montmartre and Haussmann’s Boulevards

In the first session, we’ll discover Haussmann’s famous renovation of Paris, that changed the city landscape and transformed the ways that people lived. But at the same time as the modernity of the city inspired some of the Impressionists, other explored the gritty realism of the bars and cafes in the artists’ district in Paris: Montmartre.

Lecture 2 - The Seine and Argenteuil:

In the second session, we’ll look at depictions of leisure and fun along the Seine, where pleasure-seeking bourgeoisie enjoyed socializing, and where artists such as Monet, Manet, and Renoir set up easels to paint en plein air.

Lecture 3 - Giverny: Though Giverny was outside of Paris, it represented an escape from the urbanization of the city for Monet, who created a “green nirvana” where he painted his famous water lilies. In the final session, we’ll look at the divergence of representations of the real and the natural world as Monet sought to create and record his own personal paradise.

For more details Click here

Please contact Rosemary Chamberlain, Special Interest Day Organiser on 01342 322940 or jandrchamberlain@sky.com

Now fully booked

This Special Interest Day explores an artist whose work, inventiveness, and ability to catch the zeitgeist is still admired a century after her bold 'Bizarre' wares were launched in 1927. These Art Deco masterpieces are the products that most vividly signify Clarice Cliff's oeuvre.

The first lecture will look at why her success was so extraordinary. Born in 1899, she was a working professional whose lifespan covered the period in which women broke through the barriers of the art world. While the Royal Academy barred women from accessing the full training and privileges of their male counterparts, the pottery industry was one that had traditionally offered female artists the opportunities to excel.

The context of women in the pottery industry and the structure of the art world will be explored as the background to her career. Cliff's talents were recognised when she was still a teenager, and she went on to produce designs that keyed into the cutting-edge trends of the period, setting the bar for ceramics as a commercial art form.

The second and third lectures will look at her designs chronologically, from inspiration to marketing. The third lecture will finish with the legacy of her innovations.

For more details Click here

For booking form Click Here

Biography

Viv Lawes is an art historian, curator, author and journalist with over 25 years’ experience in the art market. She teaches at several Higher Education institutions, including the University of the Arts London, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, the City & Guilds of London Art School, SOAS (University of London) and Imperial College. In January 2021 she received the Geoffrey Bond Bursary for Art, an annual prize awarded by the Worshipful Company of Educators to an “outstanding educator” nominated by their institution. Her articles, essays and reports have been published in numerous specialist journals, newspapers, catalogues, handbooks and websites, aimed at both the academic and general readership in print and online. Since 2011 she has been Senior UK Consultant to Singapore gallery One East Asia and has co-curated many exhibitions of Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art in London and Singapore. When time allows she lecture as an on-board art historian for cruise lines.

FULL but the same SID is offered to members by The Arts Society Wealden Heathfield on Wednesday 02 April 2025 Contact johnlarum@hotmail.com  

To be held in the Dove Suite at The Ark, Turners Hill.

Timing 10.00 - 15.00

Subject: The Art of Cornwall 1880 - 1975

Lecturer: Sarah Burles MA (Cantab) MA

Throughout the history of art particular places at particular times have inspired intense periods of  creativity. From the late 19th century, Cornwall became a focus for a number of artists who challenged conventions, beginning with the artists’ colonies at Newlyn and then Lamorna. In the 20th century, St Ives was home to British modernists such as Bernard Leach, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson who in turn inspired and were challenged by a younger generation of avant-garde artists that included Peter Lanyon, Roger Hilton, Patrick Heron and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham.

This Special Interest Day will look at the work of these artists and others who lived and worked in Cornwall from the 1880s to the 1970s and explore their artistic influences, relationships and legacy.

Agenda: Timings are approximate

10.00 Arrival and Coffee

10.30 First Lecture – Newlyn and Lamorna

11.30 Comfort Break

11.45 Second Lecture – St Ives and the arrival of the Modernists

12.45 Buffet Lunch

13.45 Third Lecture – The Triumph of St Ives 1945 - 1975

15.00 Finish

For more information see our website: www.theartssocietyturnershill.org.uk or see our flyer CLICK HERE

Cost: £40 which includes morning coffee/tea and biscuits, buffet lunch with a choice of sandwiches, fresh fruit, chocolate brownie, wine and coffee.

Closing date: Friday 28 March 2025

Please contact Rosemary Chamberlain, Programme Secretary on 01342 322940 or email  jandrchamberlain@sky.com so that we know that you wish to attend as numbers will be restricted.

Payment by Internet Banking

Account 96664339 (The Arts Society Turners Hill)

Sort Code 60-07-17 using the reference “TH Spring SID”

Please note: Once the society has committed to expenditure, refunds cannot be made except when The Society cancels the event. Where a member is unable to attend due to illness or other unforeseen circumstance and the event is sold out, and The Society has a waiting list, The Society will endeavour to resell the tickets on behalf of the member. This does not prevent a member making their own arrangement to pass on or resell a ticket to another person. (Please inform the organiser if this happens)

Sarah Burles - Biography

Sarah Burles studied History of Art at Cambridge University before doing a master’s degree at University College London. She went on to have a career in museum and gallery education, establishing new services in three different museums before working at the Fitzwilliam Museum for many years. Sarah is the founder of Cambridge Art Tours, which runs tours and courses in and around East Anglia, as well as online. She is a Tour Director for an award winning travel company and has led tours to Italy, France, Germany, Belgium and America. Sarah became an Arts Society accredited lecturer in 2021 and, since then, has given lectures and run study days for Arts Societies throughout the UK, as well as in Germany, Holland and New Zealand.

To be held in the Dove Suite at The Ark, Turners Hill.  Timing 10.00 - 15.00

Subject:  A Colourful History of Paints, Pigments and Dyes

   Lecturer: Lynne Gibson, Bed, MA

 We will explore some of art’s most beautiful, expensive, rare and poisonous paints and dyes.

We will journey from the beginnings of empire and exploration, where precious colours such as lapis, lazuli, cochineal and indigo were brought into Europe, to the modern day international trade in industrial pigments.

From the days of Medieval alchemists, who concocted colours in secret from mixtures of arsenic, sulphur and mercury, to modern chemists with their toxic experiments and lurid coal tar dyes.

Artists, fabric dyers and manufacturers have brought us a brilliant world of a man-made colour.  It has been a fascinating journey and this will be a very colourful day.

Schedule

 Lecture 1 – Alchemy and Adventure – A History of Exotic Colours and Poisonous Pigments

Lecture 2 – Death by Wallpaper – Colourful Stories of Chemical Pigments and Dyes

Lecture 3 – Handling (with due care!) the pigments.  Discussion of a small selection of paintings.  Q & A

For more details  CLICK HERE

For Booking form CLICK HERE

SPECIAL INTEREST DAY – WEDNESDAY 1 MAY 2024

 To be held in the Dove Suite at The Ark, Turners Hill.  Timing 10.00 - 15.00

We will look at how the European art market has evolved from a structure of commissioning and elite patronage by the wealthy princes of the Italian Renaissance, through to the commercial instincts of the merchant classes of Holland's Golden Age, and on to the impact of the Grand Tour on British tastes in the eighteenth century. We then explore the gradual appearance of a professional ‘dealer’ class in France and England in the nineteenth century before focusing on the speculative activities at work in the twentieth century art market. It's a fascinating story of capitalist self-interest, connoisseurship, commercial acumen, occasional bad behaviour and frequent sleight of hand. The lectures touch on the emergence of an entrepreneurial middle class in the mid-nineteenth century whose members sought to emulate the aristocracy through their consumer choices, leisure activities and aesthetic tastes. Conspicuous consumption — the eternal desire of successful people to display their success through the works of art they acquire — remains as powerful a driver of the global art market today as it was in Renaissance Florence.

For more details CLICK HERE

For booking details CLICK HERE

Dr Tom Flynn is a UK-based art historian, writer and art consultant. 

 He holds a First Class Honours degree in Art History from the University of Sussex, a Masters in Design History from the Royal College of Art and a doctorate from the University of Sussex.  His interests include contemporary art; sculpture history; museology and the history of museums; art crime; issues in cultural heritage; and the historical development and professional practice of the European art markets. He is Senior Lecturer at Christie’s Education, Adjunct Professor at Richmond, the American International University in London, visiting Senior Lecturer at Kingston School of Art, and teaches at a number of other UK and European universities. He has taught for many years on the summer Post-Graduate Certificate in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies at the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA) in Amelia, Umbria, Italy.  A former Henry Moore Foundation post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Sussex, he has written for numerous international art publications and is the author of The Body in Sculpture (Everyman Art Library, 1998), and co-editor (with Dr Tim Barringer) of Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum (Routledge, 1997). He has written monographs on a number of British contemporary sculptors, including Sean Henry, Terence Coventry and Charlotte Meyer. His most recent book, The A to Z of the International Art Market was published by Bloomsbury Press in 2016 and published in a Chinese edition in 2019.

The event will be held in the Dove Suite on Tuesday 17 October 2023

Timing will be 10.00 – 15.00 Coffee/biscuits on arrival and a buffet lunch

Nicole studied Art History at the Universities of Sussex, York and Paris.  She was Senior Lecturer at Queen’s University, Belfast until 2009, working primarily with adults, managing and teaching on both the Part-Time degree and Extra-Mural programmes and conducting annual, international study tours.  She also established and was first Director of the Department of Art History, the first in the north of Ireland.  Nicole now lives in central London and is a freelance lecturer, working for organisations including the National Museums, universities, the National Trust and private companies.  She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the Higher Education Academy and her publications focus on adult education and the arts.

The Special Interest Day examines the art and artefacts of an extraordinary century and the context which they illuminate.

Six wives, phantom pregnancies and a Virgin Queen – in barely 100 years the upstart Tudor dynasty produced some of the great dramatic characters of British history. It also steered the realm into the modern age and virtually invented the art of propaganda through portraits by such artists as Holbein and palaces which outshone the finest of its European rivals. In an age of intense religious conflict, church commissions were followed by the destruction of monasteries and their heritage and, throughout, as monarchs impose their changing allegiances on the people, the arts herald the virtues of their chosen Faiths.

Lecture 1 - The Inherited Throne

In August 1485, Henry Tudor conquered a country torn by civil war for nearly half a century. The new nobility brought in foreign artists to realise their ambitions for Renaissance glory, but the concerns of the king himself were for stability and moral justification and his patronage reflects these distinct objectives. His son, however, was politically and financially secure and determined to enhance his standing through an aura of classical magnificence and discernment.  By the time of his death Henry VIII was the possessor of 55 palaces, the largest-ever collection of tapestry, paintings, terracotta, plate and nearly 2,000 books. We look at some of the sumptuous secular creations of Henry VIII and at his incentives to capitalise on the arts.

Lecture 2 - The Face of the King - Horenbout  and Holbein

For nearly a century, Flemish painters like van Eyck and Campin, Italians like Leonardo and Titian had been immortalising their patrons, but Henry VIII had no one to celebrate and disseminate his image until, in the 1520’s the Horenbout family brought to his court the most avant garde of European form and style. So successful were they that their contemporary fame was to outshine even the man whose name has become almost synonymous with the royal image, Hans Holbein. We examine and contrast the art of these great portraitists through images of the king and his circle.

Buffet Lunch with Wine or Soft Drinks

Lecture 3 - “Gloriana”

Elizabeth I was an unlikely monarch.  Declared illegitimate at the age of 2, she survived to become not only the longest reigning and most charismatic of Tudor monarchs, but the one who used the arts, and portraiture above all, to weave propaganda. In an age where her gender alone made her an object of suspicion and disdain, “Gloriana” inspired a language of symbols designed to present her as a semi-divine figure, above the limitations of mere human beauty or even mortality, both romantic heroine and the perfect monarch.  Through miniatures and large-scale portraits, through pageantry and literature, the exquisite art of the Elizabethan age reflects the language of allusion and mystery created to celebrate the Queen herself.

For More details CLICK HERE

For booking details CLICK HERE

 SPECIAL INTEREST DAY – TUESDAY 18 APRIL 2023

What have the Huguenots Ever Done for Us?  Mass Migration and the Arts in Britain  

 Lecturer: Viv Lawes MA BA

This event will be held in the Dove Suite at The Ark, Turners Hill

Timing will be 10.00 – 15.00

There will be morning coffee with biscuits and a buffet lunch with wine

Viv Lawes is an art historian, curator, author and journalist with over 25 years’ experience in the art market. She teaches at several Higher Education institutions, including the University of the Arts London, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, the City & Guilds of London Art School, SOAS (University of London) and Imperial College. In January 2021 she received the Geoffrey Bond Bursary for Art, an annual prize awarded by the Worshipful Company of Educators to an “outstanding educator” nominated by their institution.

Viv’s articles, essays and reports have been published in numerous specialist journals, newspapers, catalogues, handbooks and websites, aimed at both the academic and general readership in print and online.

Since 2011 Viv has been Senior UK Consultant to Singapore gallery One East Asia and have co-curated many exhibitions of Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art in London and Singapore. She is also Head of Education for the London Asian and African Contemporary Art Fair (founded 2020).  When time allows Viv lectures on-board art historian for cruise lines.

SID Synopsis

The mass migration of the French Protestant Huguenots in the 16th and 17th centuries impacted the arts, the military and finance sectors of the countries to which they fled after suffering Catholic persecution in their homeland. It is estimated that upwards of 50,000 people settled in the British Isles, and that perhaps one in six of the country’s current population descends from Huguenot lineage. This lecture focuses on three areas of the arts impacted by the migration: the baroque style of Versailles that arrived in London through the great Huguenot designer, Daniel Marot, who worked for William and Mary at Hampton Court; the growth of the silk weaving industry in Canterbury, Spitalfields and later Sudbury and Macclesfield; and on the silversmiths and ceramicists who ushered the French Rococo style into Britain. This is put into the context of how their work changed material culture and was absorbed into British national identity.

Lecture 1 - Calvinism and Persecution in 16th & 17th Century France

Lecture 2 - Silk and Silver: Huguenot Emigrée Treasures

Lecture 3 - Daniel Marot and the Versailles Style under William and Mary

For more information and how to book CLICK HERE

This event will be held in the Dove Suite at The Ark, Turners Hill

Timing will be 10.00 – 15.00

There will be morning coffee with biscuits and a buffet lunch with wine

Jane Angelini is a freelance lecturer for The Arts Society and other arts organisations. She runs her own art tours company, specialising in cultural visits. She speaks several foreign languages and has translated a number of works of 19th century Russian literature for Penguin Books and Oxford University Press. She has a BA in Russian Studies and an MA in Byzantine Studies.

 Lecture 1 - St Petersburg: The Venice of the North

St Petersburg is an epic city, founded in defiance of nature in a region of swampy marshland as Peter the Great’s “window to the West”. The city that evolved is a remarkably harmonious collection of baroque, rococo, neoclassical and art nouveau buildings that reflect his taste and that of his successors. The large sweeping vistas, the ordered architecture, the majestic palaces reflected in the waters of the canals make St Petersburg hauntingly beautiful. The museum collections are outstanding and unlike any other.

 Lecture 2 – The Jewel in the Crown: Arab and Norman Sicily

In the middle of the 11th century, at the time of the Norman Conquest, Palermo was one of the greatest commercial and cultural centres of the Muslim world. It was a busy metropolis with over 300 mosques, abuzz with markets, exchanges, craftsmen and artisans and all around were parks and pleasure gardens with fountains and running streams, so typical of the Muslim world. In 1072 Palermo fell to the Normans, taken by Roger I. During the 12th century Palermo became the most intellectually active and artistically eclectic centre in Europe; the great cathedrals of Cefalu, and Monreale, the Palatine Chapel of the Norman Palace, and the small church of Santa Maria Dell’Ammiraglio, witness to a brilliant fusion of Norman, Arab and Byzantine art and architecture.

 Lunch Break

 Lecture 3 – Venice and the Contribution to Lively Venetian Women

Venice is, quite simply, the most beautiful city in the world. A thousand years of independence, of sailing and trading, many centuries of a flourishing commercial empire and a unique position, have resulted in the harmonious growth of a beautiful entity. La Serenissima (The Most Serene City) holds an appeal which goes far beyond the sum of its many palaces, churches and monuments. This talk will provide a visual experience of the city, exploring some of the monuments and works of art that best represent its culture and spirit, especially during the Renaissance period.  Against this background the role of women in Venice will be discussed, although famed throughout Europe, for most their life was a less than enviable silent subjugation to men and destiny. A handful of exceptional sixteenth century Venetian women - nuns, patricians, courtesans - managed to make their own way, academically, socially, and economically, leaving their mark on history.

 For more details CLICK HERE

For booking form details CLICK HERE

 This event will be held in the Dove Suite at The Ark, Turners Hill. 

Timing 10.00 - 15.00 with two lectures in the morning and one in the afternoon.  There will be morning coffee with biscuits and a buffet lunch with wine.

First Lecture - Gilbert and Sullivan and the Birth of English Musical Theatre 

In the middle of the 19th century London the musical stage was dominated by the imported works of Jacques Offenbach.  It was in answer to this that Arthur Sullivan wrote his first comic opera, but it was only when he went into partnership with W S Gilbert that the pair achieved a lasting success that was to put their French rival in the shade.  Other English operettas, mostly now long forgotten, rivalled the achievements of Gilbert & Sullivan at the time, but it was impresario George Edwardes who introduced an even lighter form of musical entertainment which he called musical comedy.  In this first talk we look at how one evolved out of the other.

Second Lecture - Glamorous Nights - Musical Theatre between the Wars

 Up to and during the First World War romantic operetta and light musical comedy existed side by side.   However in the 1920s imported shows from America brought about a change in style.  From The Arcadians and Chu Chin Chow of the Edwardian era we follow the story of British Musical Theatre through to the romantic musical plays of Noel Coward and Ivor Novello in the 1930s and 40s

Third Lecture:

From Oklahoma to Phantom of the Opera -The Rise of the Modern Musical

 When the ground-breaking Oklahoma opened in London in 1947, it changed the face of musical theatre.  In the 1950s it seemed that imported shows would once again dominate the London stage, but home grown musicals fought back in the 1960s.  In the 1970s and 80s foreign imports such as Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures and Boublil and Schonberg’s Les Misérables had to compete with the phenomenal rise of Andrew Lloyd Webber, the most successful British composer of musical theatre since Gilbert and Sullivan, culminating in his record breaking Phantom of the Opera, currently the most successful musical of all time.

Agenda: Timings are approximate

10.00               Arrival and Coffee

10.30               First Lecture – Gilbert and Sullivan and the Birth of English Musical Theatre

11.30               Comfort Break

11.45               Second Lecture – Glamorous Nights – Musical Theatre between the Wars

12.45               Buffet Lunch

13.45               Third Lecture – From Oklahoma to Phantom of the Opera

15.00               Finish

Cost: £35 which includes morning coffee, a choice of sandwiches, fresh fruit, chocolate brownie, wine and coffee

Closing date: Friday 6 May 2022

Contact Rosemary Chamberlain on 01342 322940 or jandrchamberlain@sky.com so that we know that you wish to attend as numbers will be restricted.

Payment by Internet Banking

Account 96664339 (The Arts Society Turners Hill)

Sort Code 60-07-17 using the reference “TH Spring SID”

Please note: Once the society has committed to expenditure, refunds cannot be made except when The Society cancels the event.  Where a member is unable to attend due to illness or other unforeseen circumstance and the event is sold out, and The Society has a waiting list, The Society will endeavour to resell the tickets on behalf of the member.  This does not prevent a member making their own arrangement to pass on or resell a ticket to another person.  (Please inform the organiser if this happens).

SPECIAL INTEREST DAY

BOOKINGS NOW BEING TAKEN

Postponed from May last year due to Covid, we are now delighted that this popular lecturer is returning to The Ark for the first of our Special Interest Days since the easing of lock-down.

To be held at The Ark, Turners Hill.  Timing 10.00 - 15.00
Subject: Treasures of Thailand and Laos
Tutor: Denise Heywood

The lecture will explore the artistic and cultural treasures of Laos and Thailand, once a region of small kingdoms that influenced each other in the realms of sacred Buddhist temples and living arts such as silk weaving and silversmithing.

CLICK HERE for more information about the lecture.

Cost: £32 which includes morning coffee, a choice of sandwiches, fresh fruit, chocolate brownie, wine and coffee
 

To secure a place CLICK HERE for Booking information and Programme.

SPECIAL INTEREST DAY

TUESDAY 20th APRIL 2021

Via Zoom

Lecturer:  Andrew Prince

Subject:  ‘Jewels, Style and the Image of Power’

Programme

11.00am     First Lecture

12.00noon   One hour break

1.00pm       Second Lecture

 First Lecture - The Glamour Years: Jewellery and Fashion 1929 to 1959

 In this talk that follows on from Downton to Gatsby, Andrew shows how the rise of Cinema and Hollywood had such an important impact on fashion and jewellery design.

From Dietrich to Grace Kelly, he guides you through the Screen Goddesses and how they were portrayed.

He discusses that with the development of advertising, labour saving machines and leisure time, people had more opportunities to enjoy themselves and spend money on the finer things in life and later how political events influenced what was worn. He also shows how the Edwardian and Art Deco styles did not in fact end with the outbreak of the Second World War, rather, they slowly combined to finally flower again in the late 1940s and 1950s with Christian Dior’s 'New Look'.

 Second Lecture - A Portrait of Jewels: Following missing treasures through canvass

 Andrew was inspired to produce this after visiting the National Portrait Gallery, and seeing all the Tudor and Stuart monarchs, in all their finery, and wondering where were and what are all the jewels that they wore.

Among the many jewels he traces, Andrew follows some pearls that belonged to Catherine De Medici then Mary Queen of Scots, Queen Elizabeth I and now are worn by Queen Elizabeth II. Also a spectacular diamond that belonged to King Charles I, later worn by Marie Antoinette, which was stolen then purchased by a Russian Aristocrat and later mounted in a tiara by Cartier for and American Heiress, when she became a British member of parliament! Jewel hunting has never been more fascinating.

SPECIAL INTEREST DAY – WEDNESDAY 14 OCTOBER 2020

Via Zoom at 10.00

Two lectures with questions and answers and a half an hour coffee break between the two lectures – Finish by 13.00

Zoom Host: The Arts Society Turners Hill

Lecturer: Dr Anne Anderson

Subject California Dreaming: American Super Collectors

It comes as a surprise to many to find so much fabulous art in the Los Angeles area: the Huntington Museum, the Getty Villa and the Getty Centre.  Not only do these institutions house remarkable collections, including Gainsborough’s Blue Boy at the Huntington and Van Gogh’s Irises at the Getty Centre, the galleries are themselves works of art.  The Huntington boasts some of the finest gardens in the world, the Japanese garden resembling a living version of the ‘Willow Pattern’, complete with teahouse and hump-backed bridge. Designed by Richard Meier, the Getty Centre is an outstanding architectural work of art. 

First Lecture - Super-Collectors:  Hearst, Huntington and Getty

Although many great works of art are now institutionalised in galleries, American collectors initially bought art to enrich and decorate their homes; paintings were ‘household gods’. Hearst Castle, Saint Simeon is the supreme example of this desire to surround oneself with beauty. Randolph Hearst, media mogul, collected on an unprecedented scale, paintings, sculpture and even entire rooms and buildings which were shipped to California to fulfil his dream of creating a country estate.  The Huntington Mansion became a showcase for Henry Edwards Huntington’s 18th century British portraits by Reynolds, Gainsborough and Romney, largely acquired through the art dealer Lord Duveen. For the American super-rich collecting initially secured a place in the top ‘Four Hundred’, the cream of Society.  But by creating a foundation, the likes of Huntington and Getty realised they could achieve immortality.  

Second Lecture - Palaces of Art: the Getty Villa and Getty Centre

Hearst’s audacity spurred J. Paul Getty to recreate a Roman villa at Malibu to house his European art collections. Initially he concentrated on buying Greek, Roman and Etruscan marble sculptures and reliefs, bronzes and mosaics.   But his interests soon extended to French 18th century decorative arts, furniture, porcelains and tapestries. The collections soon outgrew the Malibu ranch house. The Getty Villa opened in 1974, providing a magical setting for his antiquities.  With his death in 1976 and the creation of the Getty Trust, the Getty Centre was conceived in 1983. Overlooking LA, the centre ultimately opened to the public on December 16, 1997, costing some $1.3 billion dollars.

In the decades following his death, the collection has expanded considerably beyond Getty’s predilection for Italian Renaissance and seventeenth–century Dutch and Flemish painting. Highlights include Alma Tadema’s Spring, Renoir’s La Promenade, and Monet’s Water Lilies, Rouen Cathedral and Le Havre Harbour.

Getty Villa at Malibu

Cost

As this is a Zoom event we are not taking bookings, you just watch on the day. 

However we are asking for contributions of £5 per person either by bank transfer to sort code

60-07-17, account 96664339 or by sending a cheque payable to The Arts Society Turners Hill and sent to the treasurer at 4 Underwood Close, Crawley Down  RH10 4UN. 

We are happy for you to invite as many members of your family or friends as you like to join us.