lectures at york georgian society

York Georgian Society offers a varied selection of lectures covering many different aspects of Georgian society and culture. Our lectures normally take place during the winter season from autumn to spring, and are open to everyone. There is no admission charge though we do ask for a donation from non-members.

The recent changes in the Covid rules and regulations mean that our autumn 2021 and spring 2022 lectures will be in -person events rather than being delivered online. Please check this page for updates should the situation change. No advance booking is required for these lectures. We do request that, for everyone's protection, all attendees wear face coverings while inside the lecture venue (unless exempt).

The talks will take place on Saturday afternoons at the Quaker Meeting House, Friargate, York YO1 9RL. Each lecture will start at 2:30pm. Please click here for the Meeting House website which contains full information about the venue.

Lecture programme 2021-22

Saturday 2 October 2021: 'The last works of J. M. W. Turner' - Sam Smiles, Honorary Professor, University of Exeter, Professor Emeritus, University of Plymouth.

This talk explores Turner's final years of productive effort: his work of the late 1830s and 1840s. For many of his admirers these last paintings are regarded as intensely personal statements from an artist who was heedless of the aggressive criticism mounted against him and painting for himself alone. Their style is similarly presumed to somehow foreshadow developments in modern painting. Both approaches tend to detach Turner from the world in which he was working. On the contrary, what he achieved is better understood as intimately connected with it.

Saturday 6 November 2021: 'Bad Girls and their intoxicating habits in 18th-century England, or don't blame the gin!' - Dr Angela McShane, Honorary Reader in History, University of Warwick.

In Hogarth's famous Gin Lane and Beer Street prints, gin was held responsible for almost all eighteenth- century London's ills. But, far from being an accurate depiction of conditions in 1751 London, Hogarth's images were part of a concerted and fear-driven attack on the pleasures of the poor, especially poor women. This talk reviews the historical evidence and offers a more balanced and encouraging account of eighteenth-century women and their role in the world of intoxicants and intoxication.

Saturday 4 December 2021: 'Vernacular furniture from the Lake District, 1600-1750' - Adam Bowett, independent furniture historian, Chairman of the Chippendale Society.

This lecture examines the furniture traditions of the English Lake District in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. They arose out of unique circumstances of climate, geography and topography which shaped the history of the region and the lives of those who lived and worked there. Remarkably, much of the furniture has survived the ravages of both time and the antiques trade and remains in situ in the houses for which it was made. It constitutes a legacy unrivalled by any other area of Britain which is only now beginning to be fully understood.

Saturday 8 January 2022: '18th-century silver and relics at the Bar Convent, York' - Dr Jan Graffius, Curator of Collections, Stonyhurst College.

(The speaker has not provided a summary of this lecture.)

Saturday 12 February 2022: 'James Gibbs's training in Italy and the establishment of his career in England' - William Aslet, Research Student, Pembroke College. University of Cambridge.

James Gibbs, the Scottish-born architect of St Martin's-in-the-Fields in London, the Senate House in Cambridge and the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, was the most prolific architectural designer of his age. Along with his impressive range of commissions, Gibbs was particularly remarkable for being the first British architect to have received a formal training in Europe. He had initially travelled to Rome to study for the Catholic priesthood but, after abandoning his vocation, instead found himself apprenticed to Carlo Fontana, successor to Bernini as the architect to the papacy and one of the leading architectural figures in Europe of his date. In an age before the Grand Tour had reached its height, Gibbs's training was unique among his peers, few of whom had even travelled to Italy let alone having studied there. It also marked him out as a figure of international standing alongside the many other architects working in Europe who had also received their training in Fontana's studio. This talk takes as its focus Gibbs's unprecedented training and discusses the ways in which it provided the foundation for Gibbs's later professional success.

Tuesday 15 February 2022: Joint York Georgian Society and University of York Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies seminar with talks from the Nuttgens Award Winners 2021-2. Katie Crowther (Department of English and Related Literature, University of York) will speak on 'Fractured Stories and Fragmented Archives: Women's Paper Traces and the Eighteenth-Century House', and Gemma Shearwood (Department of the History of Art, University of York) will speak on 'Commemorating Imperialism in Westminster Abbey after 1660'.  Tuesday 15 February at 4:30pm, York Medical Society, 23 Stonegate York YO1 8AW. All welcome, free entrance. Tea, coffee and biscuits will be available before the lecture from 4:00pm.

Saturday 12 March 2022: 'John Aislabie 1670-1742, the genius of the place' - Mark Newman, Archaeological Consultant, National Trust.

Between them, over three generations the Aislabie family created one of the world's greatest designed landscapes, at and around Studley Royal near Ripon, between 1670 and 1781. In this talk Mark Newman, the National Trust’s archaeologist at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal since 1988, explores the life and particular contribution of John Aislabie (1670-1742) whose intimate understanding of Studley Royal's topography would underpin his visionary development of this unique and ground-breaking designed landscape.

For previous lecture seasons please see our lectures archive.