THE QUEEN OF INSTRUMENTS-THE LUTE WITHIN OLD MASTER PAINTINGS, by Adam Busiakiewicz Tuesday 11 January 2022. Doors open 10:00 am.
We meet at The New Windmill Hall, St Mary’s Lane, Upminster, RM14 2QH, door open from 10:00 AM, every 2nd Tuesday morning of the month apart from July and August.
Please contact our Membership Secretary, via if you think you may be interested in joining us. Alternatively, have a look at our website:
Web site: https://tashavering.org.uk/AboutUs/AboutUs.aspx
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/199870022175485
The lute holds a special place in the history of art: painters of the Italian Renaissance depicted golden-haired angels plucking its delicate strings, evoking celestial harmony; in the sixteenth century, during the rise of humanism, the lute was a becoming pastime of educated courtiers, as depicted by the likes of Holbein and Titian; throughout the seventeenth century, the instrument continued to play a key role in emphasising the intimate, debauched and transient pleasures of interior scenes by Jan Steen and portraits by Frans Hals. This lecture looks at the lute, and other musical instruments, as devices to express various aspects of the human character throughout the ages.
Adam Busiakiewicz is an Art Historian, lutenist and lecturer. After completing his Bachelor’s Degree in History at UCL in 2010 he held the position of Head of Historical Interpretation (curator) at Warwick Castle. He left the castle in 2013 after winning a full AHRC studentship to pursue a Master’s Degree in Fine and Decorative Art at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London. He is currently pursuing his doctorate in Art History at Warwick University after winning a CADRE Postgraduate Scholarship in 2017.
Earlier in December 2014, he became the youngest Guide Lecturer at the Wallace Collection, where he regularly gives talks, tours and lectures to both public and professional audiences. He has also given lectures at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London, and is organising a series of talks there on the lute in paintings in 2018.
Adam is currently planning a publication on the Grevilles of Warwick Castle and has had articles published by the British Art Journal, The Sidney Journaland Hispanic Lyra. He was also the Editor of the Georgian Group’s 80th Anniversary Exhibition catalogue entitled Splendour! Art in Living Craftsmanship (2017).
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Caravaggio: Murderer or Genius? by Julia Musgrave
Tuesday 08 February 2022. Doors open 10:00 AM.
We meet at The New Windmill Hall, St Mary’s Lane, Upminster, RM14 2QH, door open from 10:00 AM, every 2nd Tuesday morning of the month apart from July and August.
Please contact our Membership Secretary, via if you think you may be interested in joining us. Alternatively, have a look at our website:
Web site: https://tashavering.org.uk/AboutUs/AboutUs.aspx
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/199870022175485
Caravaggio’s paintings inspired many artists during his lifetime and would go on to influence many more, from Orazio Gentileschi to Peter Paul Rubens, Gerard van Honthorst and Rembrandt.
Each absorbed a different aspect of his work. His style spread across Europe and gave rise to the international movement known as ‘Caravaggism’. Yet for many, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is famed as much for his art as for his criminal record. Was it the violence of his times or his own violent spirit that inspired the dramatic lighting and intense naturalism of his work? This lecture follows the dramatic incidents of the artist’s life and looks at why and how his influence spread so far.
Julia Musgrave got her first degree in Chemical Engineering and went on to become a Chartered Information Systems Engineer and IT project manager. In 2008 she decided that life was too short for just one career and decided to become an art historian.
She now has a Graduate Diploma in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art and an MLitt in ‘Art, Style and Design: Renaissance to Modernism, c.1450 – c.1930’ from the University of Glasgow. She is currently working towards her PhD at the University of York the involvement of Roger Fry and the Bloomsbury Group in the development of the Contemporary Art Society from 1910 to 1937. She is a lecturer in Art History at the City Literary Institute (City Lit).
William Kent trained as an artist before spending ten years in Italy, where he studied painting, classical buildings and Italian gardens. Back in London in 1719, he became part of Lord Burlington’s household and his career flourished. As well as painting ceilings for Chiswick House and Kensington Palace, he worked as an architect, garden designer and interior decorator, and designed some impressive pieces of furniture. His gardens at Rousham (Oxfordshire) and Stowe (Buckinghamshire) are the finest surviving examples of the new landscape garden.
Caroline Knight is an architectural historian, trained at the Courtauld and specialising in 16th to 18th century English and Scottish architecture. Lecturer at the V&A on year courses and short courses, and lecturer for the Art Fund, and for the Royal Oak Foundation in the US. Researched and wrote a history of Kensington Palace. Contributed to a book on the Cecil family, and has written several articles on architectural and social history and the history of travel. Wrote London’s Country Houses (2009). Contributed a chapter to a history of the Royal Academy (Yale, forthcoming).
