News

There will be few who have not seen Thomas Brooke’s famous picture of RNLI’s poster girl, Grace Darling. Former curator of Greenwich Maritime Museum and writer, Dr James Taylor, gave members an interesting and well illustrated talk on why she is so famous. Grace was the seventh of nine children of an English lighthouse keeper and she gained notoriety when she and her father rescued ...

Former curator of the Museum of London specialising in the decorative arts, Amanda Herries started her lecture by showing us stark examples of how jewellery can be worn for adornment. A tribeswoman wearing many necklaces from her shoulders to her chin, representing wealth and status. A man’s face covered with lacy tattoos and heavy metal piercing — both changing their original persona. Britain from 1550 ...

Val Woodgate gave us a most interesting and comprehensive overview of the development of Art in Australia from the European period extending over the last 230 years, though she did point out that that the Aborigines had been there for 13-15 Millenia and that their art, unlike Western Art, was always religious and spiritual – never just art for art’s sake. In 1770 Captain Cook ...

Presenter, lecturer and guide Simon described how due to the growing interest in having national art collections (France opened the Louvre in 1789, the original Rijsmuseum was opened in 1798 and  the Prado in 1819), Britain decided to open a “National Gallery” in the home of John Julius Angertein in London whose eclectic collection of  38 paintings was bought by the then government in the ...

Our February lecture, ‘The Art of Trickery,’ was given by Ian Keable a former accountant now a magician. Two of the earliest representations of magicians are from the Low Countries. “The Juggler” from 1494 by the school of Bosch shows a magician performing the cup and balls trick - at the same time the foolish punter is being pick-pocketed from behind.  Bruegel’s 1565 print “Fall ...

Almost everyone has played Monopoly at sometime or other in their life as it is such a popular and well known game, but where did it all begin? Arts Society Lecturer, Photographer and current President of the Surrey Photographic Society Roger Mendham took us on a journey around the origins of this game and the named places on the board. Originally known as “The Landlord’s ...

Ernest H Shepard was an artist, illustrator and cartoonist whose illustrations to A. A. Milne’s “Winnie the Pooh” and Kenneth Graham’s “Wind in the Willows” are the most well-known and enduring of all his works. James Campbell, lecturer and author of two books on E. H. Shephard’s life and illustrations gave us a humorous and entertaining lecture on a much broader view of E.H. Shepard’s work, ...

For the first Virtual Tour of the season, we were taken by our excellent guide, Simon Whitehouse, on a journey through the life of Oscar Wilde: Writer, Wit and First Modern celebrity. Born in Dublin on 16th October 1854 to eccentric parents – Dr William Wilde, an ear, eye and throat specialist to Queen Victoria, and Jane Speranza Wilde, a published poet and nationalist, Oscar grew up ...

Despite Storm Ciaran, Rosamund Bartlett braved the weather and disrupted travel conditions to travel from Oxford to Grayshott Village Hall arriving just a few minutes late to give her lecture - and what a fascinating lecture it was. An expert on Russia and Ukraine, Rosamund, lecturer, author, translator and researcher, traced the development of Ukraine’s multi ethnic and multi faith history and culture from the ...

We were able to welcome back Bertie Pearce, but this time not on Zoom, and once again he kept the audience entranced with his dynamic personality and inspiring lecture, not to mention a lot of laughter. Bertie has a BA (Hons) in Drama from Manchester University and a Diploma Internationale from the ‘Ecole Internationale du Theatre, Jacques Lecoq.  He is also a member of the ...

On Tuesday 17th October the Arts Society Grayshott was pleased to welcome Timothy Walker, retired director of the Oxford Botanical Gardens, for our Special Interest Day:  ‘From Monochrome to Polychrome - How Colour Transformed the Art of Garden Design’. Some of the earliest gardens were those in monasteries which were planted to provide herbal remedies.  By the 15th/ 16th centuries when fortified dwellings began to ...

Jamie Hayes started his most interesting lecture on the History of Opera by quoting W.H. Auden ‘No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.’ Opera seems to have been started by a group of ‘Nerds’ artists, statesmen, and musicians living in Florence around 1561 - 1633.   They decided to recreate the storytelling of Greek drama through music - ...