"Looking at Art" is the Society's Art Appreciation Group

Page edited by Michael Culverwell

Thursday 26 September: "The work of George Stubbs" by Tony Mawbey

He produced magnificent images of animals and people throughout his career and these were a product of his keen scientific eye and his advocacy of the importance of personal observation.

His is generally described as a horse painter but this would be better expressed as “a painter who painted horses” or possibly not just a painter but an experimental observer of nature – a product of the 18^th century enlightenment.

Born in 1724 he spent his early years dissecting human cadavers building up sufficient knowledge to lecture students in human anatomy. He applied the same scientific rigour to his study of horses producing the iconic “Anatomy of the Horse” between 1756 and 1758. This minute observation was then applied to his vast output of paintings. He spent time in Italy and in 1759 arrived in London where he was introduced to Joshua Reynolds who was instrumental in introducing Stubbs to his own circle of influential art patrons.

In pure statistical terms, Stubbs was a painter to the elite landed gentry with over a third of his output being either commissioned or purchased by the top rank of society, titled noblemen or the monarchy. Friends included Benjamin West, Johan Zoffany and Josiah Wedgwood with whom he had a long standing partnership producing enamels painted on ceramic supports.

This “Looking at Art” lecture will cover many of the artist’s well known works but also some surprising lesser known output together with, of course, many stories and anecdotes about his life. 

Thursday 24 October “The Life and Work of Gustav Klint” by Michael Culverwell:

Gustav Klimt (14 July 1862 – 6 February 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Klimt's primary subject was the female body, and his works are marked by a frank eroticism. Amongst his figurative works, which include allegories and portraits, he painted landscapes. Among the artists of the Vienna Secession, Klimt was the most influenced by Japanese art and its methods.

Early in his career, he was a successful painter of architectural decorations in a conventional manner. As he began to develop a more personal style, his work was the subject of controversy that culminated when the paintings he completed around 1900 for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna were criticized as pornographic. He subsequently accepted no more public commissions, but achieved a new success with the paintings of his "golden phase", many of which include gold leaf. Klimt's work was an important influence on his younger peer Egon Schiele.

Since the 1990s, he has been one of the artists whose paintings fetch top prices at auctions. 

Thursday 28^th November “Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers

And Monet and London. Views of the Thames” by Jane Hornby

As an introduction to the Art Appreciation trip to London in January 2025, Jane Hornby will be looking at two exhibitions at the National Gallery and The Courtauld. 

Van Gogh – National Gallery (14^th September 2024 - 19^th January 2025)

The National Gallery brings together Vincent van Gogh’s most spectacular paintings from across the world in a once-in-a-century exhibition. Some of the paintings are rarely seen in public. Van Gogh’s drawings, also included, help to explore the artist’s creative process and his sources of inspiration.

The exhibition looks at Van Gogh’s time over two years in Arles and Saint-Rémy, a decisive period in his career when he was inspired by poets, writers and artists.  His work produced a landscape of poetic imagination and romantic love on an ambitious scale. Starry Night Over the Rhône is one of the iconic paintings in the exhibition. 

Monet - The Courtauld (27^th September 2024 – 19^th January 2025)

For the first time in 120 years since its inaugural exhibition in Paris in 1904, Claude Monet’s Impressionist paintings of London will be reunited in an exhibition at The Courtauld. Painted between 1899 and 1901, the series of extraordinary views of the Thames includes the Houses of Parliament, Charing Cross Bridge and Waterloo Bridge. The exhibition realises Monet’s unfulfilled ambition of showing this group of paintings in London. 

Thursday 23 January 

“Joseph Wright of Derby” by Tony Mawbey:

Joseph Wright, styled “of Derby”, as a means of distinguishing him from another artist of the same name, was and artist whose 40 year career coincided with the flowering of the Enlightenment and spanned a period when the art world was undergoing major changes.  

Wright’s name is perhaps not as recognisable as those of Reynolds or Gainsborough, but he was in the vanguard of the new British school of art and throughout his career he pushed the boundaries, exploring his interest in light through a diverse range of subjects  

Light, and its counterpart dark, were the central features on which the narrative of his paintings revolved. He used them to create mood and feeling often posing his figures in the traditional attitude of melancholy with the head resting on a hand. Throughout his life he suffered from bouts of depression and many of his paintings have been seen as a reflection on the artist’s own state of mind. 

Today, Wright’s work can be found on the walls of the world’s leading art institutions, but the largest collection of his work can be found in the museum in his hometown Derby.