Impressionism is widely familiar and popular, but why and how did Impressionism emerge in France during the 1870s? This lecture describes how a group of artists forged an original understanding of the world by pioneering a new technique for producing paintings. Shaped by technological changes, war, the industrial revolution and the rebuilding of Paris, the Impressionists were not bound together by a shared programme but rather by shared ambitions for investing painting with immediacy and relevance. Most importantly of all, they wanted to communicate the experience of vision in a particular moment and place.

Joshua is an enthusiastic and experienced art historian and lecturer who thoroughly enjoys sharing his love and knowledge of art, photography and visual culture with an audience. He is an experienced lecturer in 19th and 20th century European and American art, international contemporary art, photography, design and architecture. Teaching for 20 years at Christie’s Education, the college of Christie's auction house in London, he can provide a lecture or study day with his listed talks or create bespoke talks on request, for example to coincide with a temporary exhibition, special event or anniversary.

At Christie's Education, Joshua was director of The London Art Course and many other courses in the field of modern and contemporary art, ranging from Impressionism and Surrealism to photography and modern sculpture. He has also taught on the client VIP courses for the Chairman's and President's offices at Christie's, the world's biggest art business. 

Drawing on his media experience as a former BBC journalist, Joshua is also a founder and presenter of The Art Channel, an online project documenting and interpreting art exhibitions and artworks in museums and commercial galleries. The channel has now received two million views.

Joshua has direct experience of the art market while working as the Director of Hamiltons Gallery between 2018 and 2020 specialising in 20th Century photography. At Hamiltons, he exhibited and represented Don Mccullin and the estates of Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton and Herb Ritts. 

Elsewhere, he has lectured for Sotheby’s Institute, The University of the Arts, The University of California, Cheung Kong Business School (China's leading business university), Tate Modern and Tate Britain, The Victoria and Albert Museum Academy, The National Portrait Gallery, Somerset House, The Design Museum, Union Bank of Switzerland, Artemisia, P & O Cruises and Mr and Mrs Smith. Further to his institutional work, he has worked with numerous private clients (including many former students) in London and led groups abroad to visit Berlin, the Venice Art Biennale and the influential art festival, Documenta in Kassel, Germany. In the UK, he has led groups to visit Bristol, Cambridge, Chichester, Liverpool and Oxford. In 2026, Joshua will be leading tours abroad for Kirker Cultural Tours and ACE Cultural Tours.

On television and radio, Joshua has been a guest contributor to Channel 5’s ‘Great Paintings of the World with Andrew Marr’, BBC Radio 4’s ‘Behind The Scenes’ and BBC Radio 3’s ‘Turning Picasso.’ As a writer, Joshua has written exhibition catalogues and been published by Hamiltons Gallery, the BBC, The FT, Christie’s Magazine, Flash Art, Wanderlust, Decanter, Lonely Planet, Mr and Mrs Smith and The Nicola Erni Collection of art and photography in Switzerland. 

Sicily has long been the crossroads between Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. This lecture looks at the rich and varied cultural influences brought to the island by Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans, Byzantines, Visigoths and Islamic tribes from North Africa. It goes on to explore how these were woven together by the Normans during their remarkably enlightened rule, which saw Palermo become one of the most important cities in Europe. 

Richard is a professional artist who graduated in English and Art History from York University in 1986. From 1988-1994 he lectured at the adult education departments of Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities, and then went on to become a full-time figurative artist, executing large-scale public commissions, and exhibiting widely throughout the UK. He now lives and works in Chichester, West Sussex. 

In the early 1900s, as the 'Newlyn School' artists' colony began to lose its coherence, the focus of Cornish art shifted a few miles along the coast to the dramatic wooded cove at Lamorna. Here, students from the art school founded by Stanhope and Elizabeth Forbes joined with leading artists such as Dame Laura Knight, Alfred Munnings and SJ ‘Lamorna’ Birch to establish a more bohemian community, producing great works of art while outraging the locals with their wild ways, and playing host to leading figures of the day, from Augustus John to 'tramp poet' WH Davies.

Since graduating in History of Art from Nottingham University in 1986, Alison Bevan (née Lloyd) has spent her entire career working in public art galleries. Starting out at the Graham Sutherland Gallery in her home county of Pembrokeshire, she then spent ten years organising and curating exhibitions at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea, where she honed her broadcast media skills, including presenting a weekly Arts News feature on BBC Radio Wales, 1995-6.

In 1999, Alison took up the role of Director of Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance. Here she became an acknowledged expert on the Newlyn, Lamorna and St Ives artists colonies (1880-1940), a subject on which she has lectured in the UK, USA and France. She raised the profile of this area of art through initiating national and international touring exhibitions, and contributing to numerous publications and television programmes, and in 2013 was awarded the British Empire Medal for services to Cultural Heritage in Cornwall.

From 2013-2024, Alison was Director of the RWA (Royal West of England Academy) – Britain’s only regional Royal Academy of Art: an extraordinary historic institution whose Academicians have included leading figures of the Newlyn School and Bloomsbury Group, and today include Sir Peter Blake, Sir Frank Bowling and Eileen Cooper.

Now based in Chepstow and working as a freelance lecturer, curator and consultant, she is also Chair of Bristol Museums’ Oversight Board; a Fellow of the Museums Association, and an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Bristol.

Frank Lloyd Wright declared himself to be the ‘world’s greatest living architect’. His work certainly defined American architecture in the 20th Century. 

He believed in creating structures that fit organically into the natural world. His iconic masterpiece, Fallingwater, is today considered to be one of America’s most important buildings and has become an inspiration to architects all over the globe. His career spanned seven decades and he created a vast body of work

Stella Grace Lyons is a freelance Art History lecturer, speaker and writer accredited with The Arts Society. She has lectured across the UK, Ireland, Spain, Norway, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Malaysia. Stella gained her BA in the History of Art with a 1st class in her dissertation from the University of Bristol and her MA in History of Art from the University of Warwick. She spent a year studying Renaissance art in Italy at the British Institute of Florence and three months studying Venetian art in Venice. In addition, she attended drawing classes at the prestigious Charles H. Cecil studios in Florence, a private atelier that follows a curriculum based on the leading ateliers of nineteenth-century Paris. 

Stella runs her own online lectures, Stella Talks, which frequently attract listeners from across five continents, from California to Singapore. Stella is a sought-after lecturer for art societies, travel companies, private members’ clubs in London—such as the RAC, The Hurlingham Club and The Travellers Club—as well as boutique cruise lines.  Stella has also lectured for the University of South Wales. She has written about art for several publications, including The Arts Society Magazine, where her feature on Norwegian art was chosen for the cover. Her recent article for the publication explores the work of Swedish painter Anna Boberg. In 2024, she wrote the Introduction for David Griffiths: Portraits, a book about the renowned Welsh portrait painter and chaired an event about Welsh Art for the Penarth Literary Festival 2024. Additionally, she spent many years modelling for the acclaimed Wales-based artist, Harry Holland. For more information about Stella’s talks and to read a selection of testimonials, please visit www.stellagracelyons.co.uk

While opera may have had its roots in the artistically fertile soil of Italy, it quickly became central to the music and cultural lives of the German speaking peoples. Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Wagner, Strauss, Schoenberg and Berg were all drawn to the Lyric theatre and all created masterpieces that are still heard regularly today. So impactful and so popular was opera in Germany and Austria that those countries are now the proud possessors of more than 100 opera houses between them. The works of the composers mentioned above not only challenged audiences and musicians alike, but set new standards in performance that did much to shape today's performance climate.

Born in Australia, Professor Raymond Holden AM studied at Sydney, Cologne and London and is both a critically acclaimed and a multi-award winning writer, conductor, broadcaster and lecturer. He has performed with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Emilia Romagna and the New Symphony Orchestra of London, and has been published regularly by Oxford, Cambridge and Yale University Presses, the Royal Academy of Music Press, Hans Schneider Verlag (Vienna) and by ICA, EMI and Warner Classics. Professor Holden has appeared on BBC Television and Radio, Servus TV (Germany), RAI Television and Radio, ABC Classic FM, 3MBS FM, Vision Australia Radio, SRF (Switzerland) and Classic FM (South Africa), and has spoken at many of the world’s leading music and literary festivals, universities, conservatoires and research institutes. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2019 Queen’s Birthday Honours List and is currently Emeritus Professor of Music at the Royal Academy of Music, London.

This lecture will focus on two overriding interests of the late 18th century – the study and collecting of Greek vases and a fascination with volcanic activity; encouraged by the excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii; and will look, in particular, at the life and collections of Sir William Hamilton, British envoy to the Court of Naples from 1764 to the end of the century. It is based on an exhibition of the same name staged by the British Museum in 1996, and could be followed up by a visit to the Museum’s new Enlightenment Gallery.

Jane has a MA History of Art, University of London. Trained at the V&A and continues to lecture there. Was Senior Lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute of Art for 17 years, becoming a Deputy Director of Sotheby's, UK. Has also lectured for the National Trust, the Art Fund, London University, Buckingham University, l'Institut d'Etudes Superieures des Arts in Paris, a private women's college in Saudi Arabia, on cruise ships and at antiques fairs and interior design conferences in America.

More famous for his work inside the home, William Morris (1834-1896) made a significant impact on the evolution of the English garden. He considered the garden inseparable from the house, rejecting Victorian formality and instead drawing inspiration from medieval gardens. This lecture examines his gardening principles and how we should live with Nature drawing from Morris’s designs, lectures, letters and prose. We explore his own gardens that served as an inspiration behind his flower-based designs: Red House, Kelmscott Manor, Kelmscott House and the garden at his workshop at Merton Abbey

Fiona Rose has been lecturing about topics she feels passionately about since 2010 including William Morris and his artisan-designer daughter May, art worker David Parr, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. With a background in Social Psychology she always includes the human stories behind the artistic endeavours of her subjects. After an early career in public health Fiona founded and runs a home interiors business featuring the work of the great C19th designers such as Morris, Dearle, Voysey and Mackintosh. Fiona is a member of the Museum Collections Committee for The William Morris Society and a former Trustee serving as Chair of their Communications group. She is also a regular contributor to the Society’s magazine and a book reviewer for the Journal of William Morris Studies. Fiona is a volunteer House Guide and specialist lecturer for the David Parr House in Cambridge

When Edvard Munch created The Scream in 1893, he was responding to an intense emotional experience. Today, we would call it a panic attack. Crippling and anxious making, this primal cry was also a rallying call: for Munch and for the wider world of art. It gave birth to a movement known as expressionism, showing life not as it is (realism) or as it might be perceived in a fleeting moment (impressionism), but as it is experienced within the unembellished core of our being. Explosive and emotive, the aftershocks of Munch’s vision were felt across the world: in art and music, literature, dance and film.

A writer and broadcaster. Appears on BBC Radio 3 and 4, and contributes to newspapers, magazines and opera and concert programmes worldwide. Lectures widely about the culture of Central Europe. Recent appearances include Klimt and The Kiss in cinemas worldwide, and talks for the Hay and Cheltenham Literature Festivals, the Royal Opera House, the National Gallery, the National Trust, the National Theatre, the British Museum and the V&A. His first book, A Home for All Seasons, is out now.