Leighton and his circle: Victorian art and society
Art history weekend
1 June 2024 10am - 5pm2 June 2024 10am - 5pm
Wolfson British Academy Room | Burlington Gardens
£420. Includes light refreshments and a wine reception at the end of day one.
Friends of the RA book first
Flaming June
With the arrival at the Royal Academy of Flaming June, Frederic Leighton’s most celebrated masterpiece, join us for a weekend exploring Leighton’s life and work.
Frederic, Lord Leighton served as President of the Royal Academy for 18 years (1878-1896). Ever since his first submission to the Summer Exhibition in 1855 was acquired by Queen Victoria on the opening day, it was clear that he would make an important contribution to British Art and to the future of the Royal Academy.
Flaming June, one of his most iconic paintings, will be on loan from the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico, from February 2024. This loan presents a rare opportunity to bring the work ‘home’ to the Academy – the first time since our major Leighton exhibition in 1996, twenty-eight years ago.
This course will take Flaming June as its starting point and will uncover Leighton’s life and work. It will explore his influences and painting techniques, his relationship with the Royal Academy as well as his place within Victorian society. We will look at the home studio he built – now the Leighton House Museum – and the artistic community there which became known as the “Holland Park Circle”.
The course will be led by art historians, curators and experts on Leighton and Victorian society. No prior knowledge is required but debate and discussion are encouraged.
If the course is sold out, please contact public.programmes@royalacademy.org.uk to join our waiting list.
Minimum age 18. If you have any access requirements that you’d like to discuss, please contact public.programmes@royalacademy.org.uk.
£420. Includes light refreshments and a wine reception at the end of day one.
Friends of the RA book first
Flaming June
About the speakers
Dr Hannah Higham joined the Royal Academy of Arts as our new Senior Curator of Collections in April 2023, having previously worked as the Senior Curator of Collections and Research for the Henry Moore Foundation. Formerly, she has worked for Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norfolk, and the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham. She holds an MA from the Courtauld Institute and a PhD from the University of Birmingham on early sixteenth-century Florentine Sculpture.
Rebecca Lyons is the Director of Collections & Learning at the Royal Academy. For the last three years Rebecca has been Director of the Attingham Trust’s prestigious Royal Collection Studies based at Windsor Castle. She was Curator for the National Trust at Knole and Ightham Mote, and prior to this was Director of the Fine & Decorative Art MLitt and MA programmes at Christie’s Education, London/University of Glasgow where she taught for fifteen years. She contributed a chapter to the Royal Collection exhibition book for George IV: Art and Spectacle (2019).
Patrick Monahan is a writer and independent art advisor, with a special emphasis on Victorian paintings, drawings, and sculpture. A native New Yorker, he is consulted by collectors and museums on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico, whose loan of Flaming June to the Royal Academy he helped to arrange. His written work appears in Country Life, Vanity Fair, Air Mail, and Town & Country, as well as in the exhibition catalogue “Flaming June: the making of an icon,” Leighton House, London, 2016. He holds an MPhil from the University of Cambridge as well as a BA from the University of Chicago, both in art history. He lives and works in New York City, with regular visits to London.
Dr Gursimran Oberoi is an art historian who specialises in the international reception histories of British Victorian painting and sculpture. Gursimran has published on wider themes of nineteenth-century art, reception, gender, race, and radicalism and has an upcoming book, Global Watts: Symbolism, Fame and Activism (1880-Present Day). She recently wrote about the earliest iconoclasm against art in the name of Women’s Suffrage in ‘Victorian Paintings Under Attack: The Earliest Act of Suffrage Iconoclasm (1913)’ and Pre-Raphaelitism in ‘The Collective Self-Portrait: Drawing Elizabeth Siddal in the New Woman Sisterhood’ in the catalogue accompanying Tate Britain’s 2023 exhibition, The Rossettis.
Mark Pomeroy has been Archivist of the Royal Academy since 1998. He completed post-graduate training in Archive Administration at Aberystwyth University in 1996 and was then appointed the first ever records manager to the UK Parliament. Since joining the Royal Academy Mark has extended records management to every corner of the RA, overseen the conservation of the RA's archives, developed an innovative on-line catalogue to serve the needs of a global research community, and provided a home for the archives under his care with the completion of a bespoke repository.
Professor Elizabeth Prettejohn is Professor of History of Art at the University of York. Her research is motivated by curiosity about the vexed status of British art within art-historical narratives about modernism and modernity. Her books include The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites, Beauty and Art 1750-2000, Art for Art’s Sake, and most recently Modern Painters, Old Masters: The Art of Imitation from the Pre-Raphaelites to the First World War. She has co-curated exhibitions on Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John William Waterhouse. Her co-curated exhibition, Preraffaelliti: Rinascimento Moderno, is on view at the Museo Civico San Domenico Forlì until 30 June 2024.
Annette Wickham is Curator of Works on Paper for the Royal Academy Collection and co-curator of the current Angelica Kauffman exhibition. She has curated and contributed to numerous displays and exhibitions at the Academy including Daniel Maclise: The Waterloo Cartoon and Constable, Gainsborough and Turner and the Making of Landscape. Annette has published on aspects of the Royal Academy’s history, its Collections and its Schools. She studied History of Art at Manchester University and the Courtauld Institute and was previously an Assistant Curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Our courses and classes programme
Our varied programme of short courses and classes provides an opportunity to explore subjects ranging from life drawing to the history of exhibitions and arts management, led by expert tutors and practising artists. These courses introduce traditional art-making processes, as well as perspectives on art history, theory and business.
Give this course as a gift
All of our courses can be purchased as a gift for a friend or family member – giving the gift of education and a remarkable experience. To arrange a personalised Gift Voucher, please contact the Academic Programmes Team by emailing academic.programmes@royalacademy.org.uk
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