Cezanne astonished Paris with an Apple whilst Dali perplexed everybody with his Lobster Telephone, then Meret Oppenheim provoked satisfaction and disgust by wrapping everyday objects in luxurious animal hide! The ‘lesser’ genre of Still Life painting was one of the vehicles that launched Courbet, Monet, Renoir and eventually Modern Art in the 19th century, and the obsession continued into the subsequent century with van Gogh, Picasso and even pop artists Andy Warhol and Wayne Thiebaud. Painting was replaced by the Object, often playing upon the established and traditional themes of old.

Dan Evans 

We welcome back again Dan Evans who in 2026 entertained us with his talk on the Sistione Chapel.

Dan is an educationalist with a passion for all things Italian. Dan is a Housemaster and Teacher at Cheltenham College, a full boarding and co-educational independent school established in 1841 and was formerly Head of History of Art at Wycombe Abbey School. He has been lecturing since 2001, and spent 9 years working as a senior lecturer, tutor and tour guide for Art History Abroad. He was voted the British winner of the World Guide of the Year Awards in 2008 and alongside his lectures and special interest days he also leads educational study trips for groups of friends to a range of destinations in Europe. 

Johannes Vermeer’s The Milkmaid is one of the most famous paintings in the world and regarded as one of the most beautiful, and yet it remains enigmatic and mysterious. Should we take what we see at face value or are there hidden messages to be uncovered? By placing the picture in the context of the mid-seventeenth century and its position in Vermeer’s oeuvre we can begin to understand its subject matter and why we find it so beguiling. Along the way we will discover details of 17th century Dutch domestic life, food, costume, colour, paint, pottery, servants, and even heating.

Peter Ross

Peter Ross has a BA in the History of Art, an MA in London History, and a PhD in the cultural history of the early eighteenth-century criminal, Jack Sheppard. Until 2023, he was the Principal Librarian at the City of London’s Guildhall Library. He is also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. Peter has appeared on television and radio as a consultant on crime in eighteenth-century London, the history of English food, and Shakespeare’s First Folio. Peter’s The Curious Cookbook, Viper Soup, Badger Ham, Stewed Sparrows, and a Hundred more Historic Recipes was published in 2012 by the British Library and subsequently published in the US, China and Taiwan. Insatiable Appetites: Eating Out in Georgian London was published by Bodleian Library in May 2026.

It's said in our theatrical history that there was a Golden Age of British Comedy. It ran from the 1970’s to the 1980’s and occurred as we started to drift away from theatres and radios, and found ourselves living through a wonderfully rich period of television comedy. Some say this period has never been bettered.

Tyler Butterworth

Tyler Butterworth grew up in a theatrical family and spent twenty five years as an actor working extensively in film, television, theatre and radio. He then worked as a development producer in television documentaries. Now, he produces walking audio guides to cities across Europe for private clients. He lives in Sussex where he walks on the South Downs and the South Coast.

Throughout is short but remarkable life Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dazzled and thrilled the courts, salons, concert halls and opera houses of Europe. Born at Salzburg in 1756  to a demanding and exploitative father, Mozart was a prodigy composer, keyboard player and violinist from his earliest years. After penning his first symphony in London at the age of eight, he then went on to write some of music's most iconic compositions.

Raymond Holden 

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, 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.

Lustrous flowing red and auburn hair, full and ripe lips, sumptuous drapery, moral character studies and medieval heroines. These are the images we draw to mind when we think of the women of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. What we less often realise is that beyond being models and wives, many of these women were also exhibited artists in their own right. 

With stunning art works, exquisite techniques and rarely seen pieces, my new lecture ‘Blaze and Bloom: The Women of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement’ explores the feminine energy and women’s voices within the Pre-Raphaelite movement. 

Anna Bianco

Anna Bianco (née Harnden) is a freelance curator, writer, lecturer, tour guide and art historian. She has been an accredited lecturer of The Arts Society for 14 years. She has a BA History of Art and an MA in Curating from the Courtauld Institute of Art. She has curated exhibitions and displays at The Wallace Collection, The British Museum, The Embankment Galleries and The Southwark Art Collection. She was Director of the Tryon St. Gallery on the Kings Road, and was Associate Curator at Copperfield Gallery, Southwark. She was also Senior Curator for Faith at Auckland Castle in County Durham. She has been a guest lecturer for Christies Education, Durham University, London College of Communication and the Open University. She has also been a tour guide for Context Travel across London.  Anna loves storytelling. Her greatest passion is bringing artworks and objects to life through the stories of the people who made them. 

Anna attended her first Arts Society Study Day aged 7 as the helper of her Grandfather Theophilus Peters who was an Accredited Lecturer. She has been hooked on The Arts Society ever since! 

From the early sixties, when he left the Royal College of Art more famous than his teachers, Hockney's paintings have shown a charm and humour that sets them apart from others of his generation. A naturally gifted draftsman, his love of ingenious visual devices has led him to experiment with a whole range of techniques, from stage design to coloured paper making. From the early abstract expressionist images, through his famous Californian scenes of swimming pools to the photo-montages of the mid eighties, this lecture follows the career of an artist whose wit and imagination has never faltered.  

Douglas Skeggs

Douglas read Fine Art at Magdalene College Cambridge and has been a lecturer on paintings since 1980. In that time he has given over 8000 lectures to universities, colleges and art societies. He was the director of  The New Academy of Art Studies for three years and is presently a regular lecturer at The Study Center, Christie's course 'The History of Art Studies' and other London courses. Among his more improbable venues for lectures are the bar on the QE2, MI5 headquarters, the Captain's Room at Lloyds, and an aircraft hanger in a German NATO base. Overseas he has lectured in Belgium, France, Germany and Spain, and has taken numerous tours around Europe. He has written and presented various TV documentaries, notably the Omnibus programme on Whistler and the exhibition video on William Morris. Three one-man exhibitions of his paintings have been held in England and Switzerland. He has published five novels, which have been translated into 8 foreign languages, and his book on Monet, River of Light, has sold 30,000 copies in England, America and France.

This lecture provides a visual tour of the coming together of East and West through the Age of Exploration, the opening up of the Spice Trade and the spread of trade and Christianity from Europe to Asia. These developments and experiences were amply charted by early travellers from Marco Polo who served at the 13th century court of the Kubilai Khan in China to such intrepid Victorian lady explorers as Isabella Bird who extensively documented her journeys in the East.

Marie Conte-Helm

Professor Marie Conte-Helm is a long-established Arts Society Lecturer with a BA in History of Art and an MA in Asian Art and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She was Director General of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation from 1999-2011 and has held senior academic posts at various UK universities. She has most recently served as Executive Director of the UK-Japan 21st Century Group, and as a member of the Board of Governors of the University for the Creative Arts. She is widely published and has lectured throughout the UK and abroad. She is also an experienced cruise speaker and a Resident Historian with Viking Ocean Cruises, lecturing on many aspects of Asian Art and East-West Encounters. She was awarded an OBE in the 2011 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to UK-Japan educational and cultural relations and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette by the Government of Japan in 2019.