About

Join MonLife Heritage Museums’ art history course to discover ten paintings, ten artists, in ten weeks – delve into the world revealed by a different painting each week, exploring the artist and the subject matter in depth with our popular Monmouthshire lecturer Eleanor Bird.

Course Length - 10 weeks of two hour afternoon lectures (one week off at midpoint)
Course Dates - Monday 25th September - Monday 4th December (no class Monday 2nd October)
Time - 2:00pm - 4:00pm
Medium - In person at the Drill Hall Chepstow (with the option to catch up on any missed session with recorded online lectures available for a limited period). Click here to book the online version of this course.
Course fee - £100

NB there will also be the opportunity to access a recording of one of the live lectures, which will usually be available for a week following, so you should not have to miss any

This wide-ranging course covers pictures and painters from across the ages, some you may know, many you may not, and includes several female artists. It begins with the intricate detail of early Renaissance masters Petrus Christus and Jean Fouquet, bringing alive the networks of trade and ideas in 15th century Europe, then moves on to Lucas van Leyden whose print-making genius was the Netherlandish counterpart to Dürer’s work – and makes a fascinating contrast to Florentine sophisticate, Bronzino. 

The course moves on via the extraordinary world of Vermeer, so recently celebrated in a huge Amsterdam exhibition, into the 18th century with the great portraitist, Elizabeth Vigée Lebrun. The French realist painter Jules Bastien-Lepage was influential on a whole generation of 19th century painters around Europe, while Gabriele Munter’s contribution to the 20th century German Expressionist movement is now seen as just as important as her partner Kandinsky’s. We end with the joyful and innovative art of Margaret MacDonald, key to the Art Nouveau scene in Scotland. The whole course is a veritable smorgasbord of delights!