Special Interest Day – Wed 22 March 2023 – Cornard Wood to Fanghorn Forest. British trees in art and literature

This special day of three lectures by Justine Hopkins will demonstrate the interest of artists and writers in forests, glades and woodlands from Shakespeare‘s forest of Arden right through to modern times.

Trees have always caught the human imagination and nowhere more powerfully than in Britain. We descend from tree-worshippers, and that sense of the sacred has always remained to make trees and especially forests at once alarming and attractive. These lectures investigate the manifestations of this literally deep-rooted fascination from Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden to our own day. Along the way we shall pass through Gainsborough’s half-imaginary woodlands and Constable’s remembered groves, enjoy Samuel Palmer’s exultant celebrations of blossom and bough and the meticulously observed trees of the Pre-Raphaelites, encounter the fantastical forests of Tolkein and explore abstract creations of Ivon Hitchens, David Nash and Andy Goldsworthy.

Dr. Justine Hopkins is a writer and freelance lecturer in Art History,currently living in Bristol. Justine took a BA in English and drama at Bristol before studying the history of art for an MA at the Courtauld Institute and later gaining a PhD from Birkbeck College, London for her research into the relationship between science, religion and landscape painting from the French Revolution to Darwin Origin of Species. She now lectures at the Tate Britain and Tate Modern, the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery and the V and A, as well as universities, auction houses and other institutions. She has also spoken on Radio 4 woman hour.

10:00 coffee.

10:30 Growing in the human brain: Trees in imagination and reality from the Bible to William Blake.

Why trees fascinate us and why artists paint them; the earliest tree legends and images; trees as religious, patriotic and cultural metaphors; trees of life and death.

11:45 Light and shadow never stand still: Painting trees from Constable to Sargent.

The rise of naturalism – painting trees real; observation and artistic licence; trees beyond reality: mysterious and amazing.

12:45 Lunch

14:00 Enchantment and terror. Modern trees from Picasso to Hockney.

Trees in abstract art and the art of war; the artist in nature and as nature; environmental issues and artworks; “The word for world is forest”

Morning coffee and wine or a soft drink, fruit and coffee or tea will be provided at lunch time. Bring your own packed lunch.