Throughout history we have been aware of the contribution of women to the arts, sometimes as artists or as models, as makers and muses, or perhaps as patrons and very often as trail blazers. However now may be a good moment to spend some time focussing on these women – exploring some already famous, some infamous and some unknown to many of us. In this eight day course we plan to examine the amazing artistic contributions by women through the centuries.

DAY ONE  7 October 2024

FROM LEVINA TO ARTEMISIA:  Women Artists of The Renaissance

Levina Teerlinc, miniaturist & Artemisia Gentileschi, artist. The lectures today look at the careers and personal lives of the best known women artists of the renaissance.

 Afternoon session:   A third lecture in the afternoon   2.30-3.30pm     

Lecturer  Paula Nuttall

 DAY TWO  21 October 2024 WHERE HAVE ALL THE WOMEN GONE?

 Putting Self- Portraits of Women Back Into The Frame. From antiquity to the 19C there were many celebrated Western European women artists, despite achieving fame and recognition in their own time, they were subsequently erased from the narrative of art history.  Our morning lectures will reintroduce these artists and discuss the problems of recognition. Afternoon visit: Guided visit to the National Portrait Gallery

Lecturer Aliki Braine 

DAY THREE 11 November 2024    VANESSA BELL, BARBARA HEPWORTH, ELIZABETH                                                           FRINK,  RACHEL WHITEREAD & PAULINE BOTY     Vanessa Bell’s art & tangled Bloomsbury Group relationships.   Gender and 20c British Sculpture: the lives & times of Barbara Hepworth & Elisabeth Frink, then in the afternoon Pauline Boty & Rachel Whiteread.

Afternoon session:   A third lecture in the afternoon   2.30-3.30pm

Lecturer Raymond Warburton

DAY FOUR   9 December 2024   WOMEN THROUGH THE EYES OF ARTISTS IN SPAIN             

Sex & Power in Hapsburg & Bourbon Spain – iconic portraits across all classes of society                

Afternoon session:   tbc

Lecturer Gail Turner                                                                                                           

DAY FIVE    6 January 2025   EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN WHO INFLUENCED THE        

                                               COURSE OF MODERN ART

Five women who influenced Modern Art: Berthe Morisot – extremely talented and beautiful, but suffered self doubts and was one of the few Women Impressionists.  Mary Cassatt – an American who spent most of her adult life in France who was a wonderful painter of domestic scenes.  She was also an outstanding printmaker deeply influenced by the Japanese.  Misia Sert -  whose extraordinary life was celebrated in 2012 with a one-man show at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.  With her first husband Thadee Natanson, she was involved in the famous art magazine La Revue Blanche, she was painted by many of the Impressionists and was a great supporter of Serge Diaghilev.  Suzanne Valadon – born in poverty she began modelling at the age of 15 for many of the well known artists, encouraged by Degas she became a talented artists and was Maurice Utrillo’s mother.  The Marchesa Luisa Casati – A fascinating and even outrageous figure spending recklessly on herself and art, she modelled for many artists and photographers. A fashion icon extravagantly dressed and accompanied by two black panthers.  

Afternoon Session:   A third lecture in the afternoon   2.30-3.30pm

Lecturer Julian Halsby 

DAY SIX    27 January 2025  CLARICE CLIFF                                                                     

 An artist whose work, inventiveness, and ability to catch the zeitgeist is still admired a century after her bold Bizzare wares were launched in 1927.  These Art Deco masterpieces are the products that most vividly signify Clarice Cliff’s legacy.  She was a professional artist who broke through the barriers of the art world.

Afternoon Session:   A guided visit to the Ceramic Galleries at the V & A 

Lecturer Vivienne Lawes

DAY SEVEN  3 March 2025  THREE AMAZING WOMEN                                                    

Dame Laura Knight was the first woman to be elected a full member of the Royal Academy in London, 168 years after its establishment.  In her extraordinary career she painted landscapes, portraits and seascapes, as well as scenes from the circus, ballet and the theatre,  She was the only woman artist to be given 1st and 2nd World War Commissions and to cover the Nuremburg Trials.   

Cornelia Parker, a contemporary sculptor and installation artist whose installations are (literally) exploded and the debris installed creating the dramatic effect of an explosion frozen in time.

Tracey Emin – Mad Tracey from Margate who shot to fame with My Bed in 1999, taking up a role as the enfant terrible of the Young British Artists                      

Afternoon session:  A third lecture in the afternoon   2.30-3.30pm

Lecturer Rosalind Whyte

DAY EIGHT  17 March 2025 FRIDA KAHLO:  IN LOVE, IN PAIN & IN LIFE

The lectures today will explore the life of one of the most famous and iconic Mexican artists of the 20c.They will situate her within an extraordinary historical context, explore her family background and her battle as a child with polio and an accident that left her physically disabled. Her marriage, divorce and re-marriage with Diego Rivera, and in the final lecture we will explore why she was known as The Great Deceiver

Afternoon session:    A third lecture in the afternoon  2.30-3.30pm

Lecturer Jacqueline Cockburn