The new membership starts 1st January 2025 Meetings take place at the Uppingham Town Cricket Club, Castle Hill, Leicester Road Uppingham, LE15 9SP at 11am please be seated before then. Coffee will be available from 10.15 with Hugh the Membership Secretary ready at the desk to welcome you as you come in and register. April 17th Mark Bills G F Watts and the Watts Gallery George Frederic Watts RA OM (1817-1904) was one of the greatest artists of the Victorian age. From 1897 until 1938 Watts had a permanent room devoted to his work at the Tate Gallery and was the first living artists to be given a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This lecture will explore the life and work of this extraordinary artist from his first works at the Royal Academy in 1837 when Queen Victoria came to the throne, to his creation of a purpose built gallery in Compton at the heart of a Surrey village, a year before his death in 1903. Watts Gallery, Len Williams. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 May 15th Jennifer Toynbee Holmes The Ballets Russes: When Art Danced with Music When Diaghilev created ballet in the west in the early twentieth century, he brought extraordinary revolutionary energy from Russia. Daphnis et Chloe- Pirates. A band of pirates from the Ballets Russes premiere of Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, Scene II. "Walérv" (Photo taken in France, 1912) Public domain June 19th Mary Alexander At Home everywhere and nowhere. Travelling with John Singer Sargent In childhood and throughout his life, Sargent was described as being 'at home everywhere and nowhere.' Born in Florence to itinerant American parents, he adopted a frenetic pattern of international travel throughout his life. The range and duration of his travels are truly staggering. Renowned as a society portraitist, in 1909 his dramatic decision to refuse further commissions provided a new found freedom. Sargent also indulged his fascination for all things 'curious' - a favourite word. Accommodation was variable - ranging from the White House in Washington DC to a tent in the mountains. Street in Venice. John Singer Sargent1856–1925) National Gallery of Art, Washington DC September 18th Tessa Boase Art Deco and the Department Store Bold publicity stunts, statement architecture, suave dining: the 1930s was a supreme era for London’s great emporia. Starting on Piccadilly with Joseph Emberton’s Moderne masterpiece, Simpsons, we’ll explore the capital’s department stores through an Art Deco lens – from Selfridges’ fabulous elevators, whizzing us up to roof garden fashion shows, to the jaw-dropping interiors of D.H. Evans, ready in time for the 1937 Coronation, to the live flamingos atop Derry & Toms. Then off to the suburbs where superb Deco buildings were springing up in surprising locations: Shinners of Sutton, Holdrons of Peckham, Bodgers of Ilford. Shinner & Sudtone, Sutton, London Tony Monblat, Creative Commons Attribution October 16th Barry Venning With a Little Help from their Friends: the Beatles and the Art World A journey through the 60s in music and images, following the Beatles from the Hamburg Reeperbahn in 1960 to Abbey Road in 1969. The band was always fascinated by the visual arts - the ‘fifth Beatle’, Stuart Sutcliffe, was a much better painter than he was a bass player - and they also learned very early on that artists and designers could help promote their image and their music. Their rise to global fame was aided and recorded by an impressive roster of photographers, including Astrid Kirchherr, Bob Freeman, Robert Whitaker, Angus McBean and Linda McCartney. November 20th 2025 Rosalind Whyte Antony Gormley: a Body of Work Antony Gormley’s career spans nearly 40 years, during which time he has made sculpture that explores the relationship of the human body to space, often using his own body as his starting point. His work has been shown throughout the world, in galleries including the Tate in London and the Hermitage in St Petersburg, but is also often on open display, as public art, such as Another Place at Crosby Beach, near Liverpool. As well as works that he is well known for, like the iconic Angel of the North, this lecture will look at some of his earlier and less well-known works, to give an overall view of the development of his work across his whole career, up to the present. Attribution: WyrdLight.com January 15th 2026 Jacky Klein A Picture a Day': Peggy Guggenheim and the Birth of Mid-Century Modernism This is the story of how the socialite and muse Peggy Guggenheim became one of the greatest collectors in the history of modern art. Friends with the leading cultural figures of her day – including Cecil Beaton, Jean Cocteau, Barbara Hepworth, Scott Fitzgerald, Ian Fleming, Djuna Barnes and Igor Stravinsky – she was photographed by Man Ray and André Kertesz, took advice from Marcel Duchamp and married – among others – the artist Max Ernst. She moved with ease between the social elites of New York and the bohemia of Paris. This talk asks why it was that – seemingly out of the blue – Guggenheim started collecting contemporary art in the 1930s?