Trees have always caught the human imagination and nowhere more powerfully than in Britain. We descend from tree-worshippers, and that sense of the sacred has always remained to make trees, and especially forests, at once alluring and alarming. This lecture investigates the manifestations of this literally deep-rooted fascination from Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden to our own day. Along the way we shall pass through Gainsborough’s half-imaginary woodlands and Constable’s remembered groves, enjoy Samuel Palmer’s exultant celebrations of blossom and bough and the meticulously observed trees of the Pre-Raphaelites, encounter the fantastical forests of Tolkien and explore the abstract creations of Ivon Hitchens and the living sculptures of David Nash and Andy Goldsworthy.
Dr Justine Hopkins is a writer and freelance lecturer in Art History, and has given talks for Bristol, London, Oxford and Cambridge Universities; Tate Britain and Tate Modern; the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery; the Victoria and Albert Museum; Sotheby’s, Christies’, The Arts Society and assorted independent institutions. She has an MA in Art History from the Courtauld Institute and a PhD from Birkbeck College, University of London for her research into the relationship between science, religion and landscape painting from the French Revolution to Darwin’s Origin of Species. Justine is the step-granddaughter of the sculptor and painter Michael Ayrton, published Michael Ayrton: A Biography (Andre Deutsch, 1994), and handles the artist’s estate. She also writes historical fantasy fiction, and is currently working on the series Foundling Angels, based on post-Roman history, the Arthurian legends and the Welsh myths of The Mabinogion. Her article on trees in art and literature will be published in the Arts Society Magazine this spring.
Maximum number 100. £4 members, £5 guests
Booking available here.