We are looking forward to seeing you for the Special Interest Morning on Wednesday, 14th October at the Fisher Theatre.  I

10.00am - Doors of the Fisher Theatre open, but not before!

Arrival - Please check in at the desk to say you have arrived.  We are not issuing tickets.

10.30am - Lecture No 1 - The Life & Work of Sir Joseph Paxton

11.30am - Coffee (included in the price of your ticket) to be collected from the bar

12.00pm - Lecture No 2 - Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire

1.15pm - Finish

Our first lecture will explore the work of Joseph Paxton, the 19th century architect, landscape gardener and creator of the gardens and conservatory at Chatsworth.

The second lecture will focus on the profound influence Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire had on Chatsworth and how we see it today.

Simon Seligman is a well-known and experienced lecturer who has worked at Chatsworth for many years and toured abroad lecturing with the Duchess.  There is nothing that Simon does not know about this wonderful house, its estate, the collections and its family history.

Tickets for the two lectures to include filter coffee in the interval are £25.00 per person.

The application form to apply for tickets is available in Documents

From Morris to IKEA

The name IKEA is made from the initials of its founder, Ingva Kamprad, his home farm and his village. Thus an idea of local craftsmanship became associated with flat pack furniture sold in shopping malls and by global mail order. How and why did this happen?

 The day tells the fascinating history of how a Victorian avant-garde revival became the lynchpin for new design ideas for the next hundred years. There are three sessions, forming three chapters of one story:

William Morris' modernisation of craft demonstrated that the way things were made was of value in itself. But the price of the new artisan furniture was beyond the pocket of artisans, and we start to see various solutions to this problem.

Frank Lloyd Wright's work of the 1900s applied craft values to industrial materials, as did the pioneer designs of the Vienna Secession. This approach became mainstream between the wars, and designers experimented with versions of modernity from the architecture of Le Corbusier to the popular furnishings of Art Deco. 

Post war Scandinavian design re-introduced natural materials to contemporary taste, enabling craft values to be transferred to mass produced furniture. And with a little help from Swedish domesticity, IKEA was born.

Reference will be made to Morris’ Red House, Voysey’s The Orchard, Joseph Hoffman and Villa Stocklet; Alvar Aalto’s Villa Mariea as well as current IKEA design.

Stephen Taylor is an artist and art historian. He studied John Constable as a post-graduate at Essex and Yale, and has been Head of Painting at The Open College of the Arts and Course Director at the Inchbald School of Design in London. In 2000, Stephen turned to landscape painting and he now has pictures in private collections around the world. His book: Oak: One tree, three years, fifty paintings was featured in the Guardian and was an Oprah Winfrey Book of the Week.

The day includes morning tea or coffee and a two-course lunch with wine or soft drinks at a cost of £46.

Timings:

10.00 Arrival

10:30 Session 1

11:30 Break

12:00 Session 2

13:00 Lunch

14:15 Session 3

The application form to apply for tickets is available in Documents

Special Interest Day: Sunlight, Sunflowers and Cultivating Colour

Wed 29 Apr 2026 10:00 AM - 3:00 PMAssembly House, Theatre Street, Norwich, NR2 1RQ

Book Tickets

Special Interest Day: Sunlight, Sunflowers and Cultivating Colour

Wed 29 Apr 2026 10:00 AM - 3:00 PMAssembly House, Theatre Street, Norwich, NR2 1RQ

Book Tickets

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Bathed in sunlight this Special Interest Day is themed around the colour yellow, as it weaves its way through, pigment, plants and painting.

We will commence our exploration by tracing the use of yellows in art and textiles from the ancient ochre pigments of cave art to through sacred yellow jades. Egyptian orpiment, and Georgian silks, through to the yolk-coloured interiors of Victorian fashions. 

The Sunflower will take us on our next journey tracing its divine arc through art and culture from the Aztecs, to Apollo, to the canvases of van Dyke and van Gogh, a symbol of the divine and the cycle of life. 

Bringing heaven to earth will be the topic of the final part of our day as we expand our colour palette and weave the threads of painting, planting and Impressionism - reaching back into the earth where we started.

Price for the day, including lunch: £60.00pp

Schedule for the day
10.00am Start with coffee + biscuits/cakes                        1:00pm Lunch
10:45am Session 1                                                                    2:00pm Session 3
11:45am Short break                                                                 3:00pm (approx.) End
12.00pm Session 2

Lunch Menu (you can select your chosen menu options from dropdown lists as part of your check out process)
Main
Option 1A - Slow-cooked Norfolk beef, smoked mash potato, bourguignon garnish of bacon lardons, baby onions, button mushrooms and red wine, glazed carrots and petit pois, watercress, GF DF
Option 1B - Herb-baked salmon fillet, puff pastry, roasted new potatoes, roasted provencal vegetables, salsa verde, GFa DFa
Option 1C - Caramelised beetroot, artichoke, new potato, apple and red onion tarte tatin, warm mustard, pine nut and raisin vinaigrette, wilted spinach, VG DF GFa
Dessert
Option 2A - Soft Italian chocolate cake, sea salt caramel, honeycomb, white chocolate fudge, raspberries, crème fraiche, V GF DFa
Option 2B - Pavlova of Norfolk summer berries, elderflower syllabub, raspberry dressing, GF VGa DFa

Location

Assembly House, Theatre Street, Norwich, NR2 1RQ

In this study day we examine the artistic tastes and art collections of three Kings. Without King Charles I’s passion for collecting we would not have the Royal Collection, the largest privately owned art collection in the world. Without King Charles II we would have lost the magnificent collection his father had amassed, and King Charles III is the owner of the Royal Collection today.

Session 1: King Charles I: On becoming King, Charles I purchased the fabulous art collection of the Gonzaga Dukes of Mantua. He engaged Rubens to paint the ceiling of the Banqueting House and he appointed Van Dyck as his court artist, but in amassing his great collection he bankrupted England and alienated his people. Charles I was our most tragic monarch and yet he’s also our single greatest royal collector of art.

Session 2: King Charles II: On being restored to the throne in 1660 King Charles II’s first act as monarch was to recover as much as possible of his father’s magnificent collection of art. During his reign he amassed over 1000 paintings and was instrumental in creating his own image as King. He transformed Windsor Castle into a magnificent Baroque palace in the manner of his cousin King Louis XIV’s Palace of Versailles and used art as a symbol of power.

Session 3: King Charles III: King Charles III is a keen artist and has painted watercolours since the 1970s. In 2000 he co-founded the Royal Drawing School to address the lack of observational drawing in education and he has set up a Traditional Skills Centre at Dumfries House. King Charles III is our most culturally attuned monarch in over a century.

10.00 Arrival and coffee

10.30 Session 1

11.30 Break

12.00 Session 2

1.00 Lunch

2.15 Session 3. The day will end at approximately 3.30.

The cost is £45 to include a two-course lunch. Wine and soft drinks will be available to purchase from the bar. Please see the separate page for booking information in Documents, including details of the lunch

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in America, Marie-Anne will explore 25 iconic works of American art, including Grant Wood’s American Gothic, Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, and Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. She will trace the history of America through paintings, sculpture, land art, and photography that exemplify vital moments in American history, such as the Gold Rush, the Civil War, the Civil Rights movement, and so forth. Marie-Anne will look at key styles/movements like the Hudson River School, Regionalism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, showcasing ground-breaking artists from the indigenous Native American peoples through to virtuoso portrait painter John Singleton Copley, Thomas Eakins, Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Kara Walker and many more. It should be an absorbing day! There will be three presentations starting at 10.30 am, and the day will include a delicious two-course lunch with wine, provided by our usual caterer, Catherine Ross. Marie-Anne trained as an artist before gaining a PhD in Art and Critical Theory from the University of Sussex. She has lectured in art history for the City Lit, Tate Modern, the Course, Art in London, London Art Salon, Dulwich Picture Gallery and HENI films. She also runs art history study tours abroad for ACE and is a Director of InFems art collective for whom she curates exhibitions and writes.

Diss Corn Hall, St Nicholas Street, Diss, IP22 4LB.

Please see Booking Information in 'Documents'

Lecture 1 Looking with the Eyes Wide Open  

 We can stand for minutes in front of a painting and think we are seeing it, but how much have we actually noticed? How much more could we take in if we have a mental check list of things to look for, if we know how to know what is significant to notice. In this first session, we will consider many of the basic stylistic features of a painting, from colouring to the uses of lighting, to analyse how different artists tend to use them at different times and in different art centres  

 Do we ever notice any technical aspects of the piece – is it on canvas or on panel, for instance, - and does it matter? What can an awareness of the pigments used, or the artist’s choice of ground colour, tell us about where and when something was painted?

Lecture 2 Family likenesses, significant characteristics 

When we receive a letter from some one we know well, we can often identify the writer from the handwriting on the envelope. Such instant recognition of an artist’s hand is the goal of a connoisseur, but how can the novice start to do this? This lecture will unpick some of the ways in which artists give away their identity, and demonstrate methods for learning to identify the hand of different artists.  

Chantal Brotherton-Ratcliffe has an MA in History of Art from Edinburgh and a PhD from the Warburg Institute, London University. With 40 years' experience as a lecturer, Chantal has taught at Sotheby's Institute of Art on the MA in Fine and Decorative Arts since 1989, and as a freelance lecturer for a number of societies and institutions in London, including the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection. Having also trained as a paintings conservator, she brings an understanding of the making and the physical painting to her lectures and study sessions.

Venue: Millennium Hall. Southwold.

Please see Booking Information in 'Documents'

Session 1: In Memoriam - British Artists in WW1 In 1916 the first official war artists were appointed, initially to record aspects of the war effort, but as the conflict continued, painters became increasingly anxious to communicate the horror of what they witnessed. Paul and John Nash, John Singer Sargent and others created, deeply affecting works that have served ever since as memorials to the lost. Created a decade later, Stanley Spencer’s murals for the Sandham Memorial Chapel are more extraordinary still.

Session 2: Laughter and Loss - British Artists in WW2 In 1939 Kenneth Clark persuaded thegovernment that the nation’s foremost artists should be employed as war artists. While Graham Sutherland and Henry Moore portrayed the living nightmare of the Blitz, Laura Knight celebrated the role of women in wartime industries and Eric Ravilious showed the strange beauty of coastal defences and aerodromes. Exhibited in Britain and abroad, such works boosted morale and helped convince neutral countries to support us. 

Session 3 - Art and the war at Sea During WW2, The artist, Muirhead Bone, explored life at sea. Anthony Gross and Eric Ravilious were war artists who made perilous journeys aboard troop ships voyaging to the Cape or warships bound for Norway. At regular exhibitions of war art around Britain, people could see what life was like aboard a submarine, on a trawler in the North Atlantic, in the engine room and the chain locker, as well as on the bridge. Shipwreck and rescue were also shown.

10.00 Arrival and coffee

10.30 Session 1

11.30 Break

12.00 Session 2

1.00 Lunch

2.15 Session 3.

The day will end at approximately 3.30.

Please go to 'Documents' for Booking Form.

Ray has had a life-long love of art. From 2014 to 2017, he studied art history at the Open University, and then at the University of Buckingham, from where he has an MA in the History of Art. Since 2011, he has been a guide at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, where he leads public tours of all the permanent displays and also undertakes exhibition tours. In his twenties, Ray studied social sciences at the London School of Economics and the School of Oriental and African Studies, from where he was awarded a BSc and a MSc 

The lecture will place Vanessa Bell’s paintings – which travelled from gentle impressionism to avant-garde abstraction to a celebration of 19th century European masters – within the context of both her own appreciation of modern art and the tangled web of her relationships, including the setbacks she endured in later life. The lecture will aim to leave you with a sense of a life well lived, but according to her own rules, and a body of work that is sometimes abstract and sometimes deeply personal. One of her key friendships was with her sister, and the lecture will give a good account of how that ebbed and flowed over the course of their lives.

To book please go to 'Documents'.  Click on Vanessa Bell Special Interest Day and fill out the form and forward to Pam Wood - Visit Secretary.