‘Nearly a Perfect Drawing’; Hickman Bacon and the Watercolourist’s Eternal Quest by Timothy Wilcox
Tuesday 21 February 6.30pm
‘Friends’ £6.00, Adults £9.00, includes a glass of wine or juice served from 6.00pm.
Timothy Wilcox worked at the V&A, the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, Hove Museum and Art Gallery and the British Museum, where in 2002 he curated John Sell Cotman: the poetry of nature. He is the author of several books on British painting.
John Ruskin described a tiny Turner sketch of a sunset that he owned as ‘nearly a perfect drawing’; this sketch was later bought by Hickman Bacon. The phrase sums up the passion that fires any collector, always hunting for an elusive prize.
Tim Wilcox explores Hickman Bacon’s remarkable group of Turner watercolours alongside other less well-known aspects of his collection. Through the paintings, we gain rare insights into the work of some of the greatest practitioners of the English watercolour.
Tempting Prospects; the Lives of the Great Watercolour Painters by Michael Clarke CBE
Thursday 8 March 6.30pm
Friends’ £6.00, Adults £9.00, includes a glass of wine or juice served from 6.00pm.
Michael Clarke is the Director of the Scottish National Gallery and Deputy to the Director-General, National Galleries of Scotland. An expert on French painting, he has published widely, including books on English watercolours and the landscape painter Camille Corot. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
In this lecture, Michael Clarke, author of The Tempting Prospect: A Social History of English Watercolours (British Museum Publications, 1981), examines the working lives of the great watercolourists featured in the Turner and his Contemporaries exhibition.
Turner and his Contemporaries Walking Tour by Charles Nugent
Tuesday 20 March 9.30 - 10.15am
Friends’ £6.00, Adults £9.00, includes a cup of tea or filter coffee afterwards.
A walking tour of Turner and his Contemporaries: The Hickman Bacon Watercolour Collection. Join Charles Nugent on a tour of this brilliant private collection which features some of the greatest watercolourists of the mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century. Artists include Turner, Cozens, Ruskin, Cotman, Girtin and Cox.
Charles Nugent is an independent art historian and freelance fine art consultant. After seven years at Christie's, he was for fifteen years Curator of Drawings and Watercolours at the Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester. As well as contributing to specialist publications, he is the author of Turner Watercolours from Manchester (1996), British Watercolours in the Whitworth Art Gallery (2003) and Edward Lear, the Landscape Artist (2009).
The ‘Discovery’ and ‘Terra Nova’ Expeditions through the Art of Edward A Wilson by Christopher Wilson
Thursday 22 March 6.30pm
Friends’ £6.00, Adults £9.00, includes a glass of wine or juice served from 6.00pm.
Christopher J Wilson Dip Eco (Cork), FZS, is the great-nephew of Dr Edward A Wilson, FZS (1872-1912), who died with Captain Scott and his party on their return from the South Pole in 1912. He is an accomplished photographer, contributing to numerous wildlife books. His own publications include Edward Wilson’s Nature Notebooks (2004) and Edward Wilson’s Antarctic Notebooks (2011).
Dr Edward Wilson was an extraordinary naturalist and one of the last of the great expedition artists at a time when pencil and paint were the main means of recording discoveries. This lecture explores his unveiling of the Antarctic continent through remarkable drawings and watercolours that give a real taste of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration.
Illustrating Identity in Text and Canvas: Anne Clifford’s Great Picture and Great Books of Record by Dr Jessica Malay
Wednesday 16 May 6.30pm
Friends’ £6.00, Adults £9.00, includes a glass of wine or juice served from 6.00pm.
Jessica Malay has published widely on English literature and culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She is currently leading a three-year Leverhulme-funded project to investigate and produce an edition of Anne Clifford’s Great Books of Record.
Anne Clifford’s Great Picture and her Great Books of Record celebrate the essential role of the female heir in creating, sustaining and enhancing the Clifford house. Both projects were designed to justify and celebrate Anne Clifford’s status as the legitimate heir to her father, and the Cliffords more generally.
Monumental Circles: Lady Anne Clifford and the Arts of Memory by Professor Patricia Phillippy
Thursday 31 May 6.30pm
Friends’ £6.00, Adults £9.00, includes a glass of wine or juice served from 6.00pm.
Patricia Phillippy is a Professor of English Literature at Kingston University, London. She is currently at work on a monograph entitled Monumental Circles and Material Texts in Early Modern England, examining post-Reformation funeral monuments in relation to printed and manuscript ‘monuments’ in the period.
In this lecture, she will explore the way that Lady Anne Clifford expressed her devotion to those she loved through the building of tombs for her parents, cousin, tutor and her favourite poet - relationships that are themselves recalled in the inscriptions and images in The Great Picture.
Event Booking: 01539 722464
Download LAT Events Booking Form (pdf)
