Josefa de Ayala, better known as Josefa de Óbidos (1630–1684), is the only female artist to stand as the defining figure of an entire national tradition. Her paintings, associated with the visual culture of Baroque Portugal, are remarkable for their intimacy, technical refinement and spiritual feeling.

This half-day symposium brings together leading scholars to explore Josefa de Óbidos’s art from multiple perspectives: touching on artistic exchange in Iberia, female artists working during the 17th century and Portugal’s global material culture.

This event coincides with the National Gallery’s exhibition on Francisco de Zurbarán, one of Spain’s leading 17th-century painters. Josefa, who was born in Seville but worked in Portugal, bridged traditions from both locations in her art, and especially in her celebrated Agnus Dei paintings, which suggest Zurbarán’s influence.

The symposium also celebrates the recent publication of Carmen Ripollés’s book on Josefa – the first monograph on this important artist in English.

Generously supported by Gaudium Magnum Foundation - Maria and João Cortez de Lobão and organised in collaboration with its director, Valentina Rossi, the event welcomes specialist and general audiences alike.

Speakers:

Susana Varela Flor is a researcher at the Instituto da História da Arte, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

Salvador Salort-Pons is the Mary Anne and Eugene A. Gargaro Jr. Director, President, and CEO of the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Charlotte Chastel-Rousseau is Chief Curator of Spanish and Portuguese Paintings and Frames at the Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Carmen Ripollés is Professor, Schnitzer School of Art + Art History + Design at Portland State University in Oregon.

Daniel Sobrino Ralston is the CEEH Associate Curator of Spanish Paintings at the National Gallery.

Please book your free tickethere.

You are invite to join us on one of only three short, guided tours to see the exhibition “Josefa de Óbidos and the Portuguese Baroque: selected works from the Gaudium Magnum Collection”. It’s a private viewing presenting three works by Josefa de Óbidos and one work by Balthazar Gomes Figueira (Josefa de Óbidos’ father). This is linked to the symposium the following day at the National Gallery and the celebration of Carmen Ripollés’s book on Josefa. 

There is limited space and please choose which tour you would like to join:

Sign up for the 10.30 am tour.

Sign up for the 11.30 am tour.

Sign up for the 2 pm tour.

Join us for a tour of the impressive Victorian library and historic rooms at the Society of Antiquaries. Highlights include the Hans Eworth portrait of Mary I, an exhibition of prints and drawings, and the galleried library with important antiquarian collections.

 Tickets cost £20 including a drink. They support Past Matters - Developing Plans for the future of Burlington House.

Book your ticket here.

Form and Function of European Picture Frames from the 15th - 20th century

Due to the success of previous talks, Paul Mitchell gallery will continue to offer visitors an immersive and memorable experience into the fascinating world of picture framing. 

Company directors Paul and Mark are giving guided tours of their unique collection of European picture frames, many of which are rare works of art. 

Supported by Powerpoint presentations various frame styles will be shown, their origins, types of ornament and finishes.  Followed by selected paintings of all genres and periods our firm has framed for public collections worldwide, examining the previous frame’s shortcomings and criteria for selecting a suitable replacement. Before & after images vividly reveal the transformative impact of historically authentic presentation.

The production of handmade replicas by their highly skilled team of carvers and gilders will be shown and compared to their period models. 

The tour concludes with viewing the Paul Mitchell photographic archive comprising over 50,000 photos of framed paintings and related decorative arts from museums, houses and churches in 24 countries. Its research benefits will be outlined including sources for the firm's two ground breaking books on frame history, essays in exhibition catalogues, journals, magazine articles and identification of frame patterns. 

See here to learn more about Paul Mitchell and view a selection of the distinguished works they have framed over 47 years.

Register.

A guided tour around the Floris scent trail around the galleries with a special behind the scenes tour of the Jermyn Street Perfumers.

The tour is limited to 12 participants.

The tour has reached capacity, but please email us here to be put on the waiting list.

Country Life is pleased to announce a special panel event which brings a twist to one of the magazine's most beloved sections: The Piece I'd Never Part With.

Join art adviser Patrick Monahan and top London art and antiques specialists Geoffrey Munn, Lennox Cato, Rupert Maas and Matthew Haley for a lively discussion answering these and other pressing art world questions:

If you had to live with a single work of art in your collection forever, which would it be?

If you could acquire one work of art at this moment, regardless of budget/availability, what would you choose?

If you had a second chance to purchase a work of art, which is the one you missed?

Media partner Country Life magazine is supporting this entertaining evening and proceeds from ticket sales for this talk go directly to the Society’s 'Past Matters’ appeal.

Patrick Monahan is a writer and art advisor with a special interest in Victorian art. He advises the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico, which holds the most important collection of Victorian paintings outside the UK, including Flaming June by Frederic, Lord Leighton. From 2022-24, he arranged the loan of Flaming June to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and to the Royal Academy of Arts, London. His written work appears in Country Life, Vanity Fair, Airmail, and in the exhibition catalogue Flaming June: the making of an icon (Leighton House, London, 2016). He is also a regular lecturer on British art and architecture at The Royal Oak Foundation, New York. Patrick lives and works in New York City, with frequent visits to London.

Geoffrey Munn OBE, MVO is a jewellery specialist, historian and writer but is probably best known as a television presenter on the BBC Antiques Roadshow. His first and only permanent position has been with the court jewellers Wartski which he joined at 19. It is from this old established firm that his expertise in art and antiques is derived and his foremost specialty is nineteenth century jewellery and especially the work of the famous Russian goldsmith Carl Fabergé. Geoffrey has written a history of his hometown, Southwold-An Earthly Paradise and through his researches for this book he was able to expand on the history of JMW Turner, Edward Lear and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Geoffrey Munn has made a study of the life and work of the painter Richard Dadd and is a trustee of the Bethlem Museum of the Mind. Geoffrey is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

Lennox Cato DL has always been passionate for 18th and 19th century English furniture and this led him to become one of the furniture specialists on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow. In 2015 Lennox was proudly admitted as the 100th Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars. In 2020 he was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of Kent and in 2021 was accepted onto the panel of the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF). Always with a keen eye on quality and design, Lennox Cato has built up an international reputation with clients from around the world, selling to both private clients and interior decorators as well as museums and institutions.

Matthew Haley FSA is Managing Director of Bonhams Knightsbridge and has been Head of Bonhams UK Books & Manuscripts Department since 2013. In 2004, he joined Bonhams in London as a specialist in the Books Department, and his baptism of fire was one of the finest libraries of angling books ever to have been offered at auction. Soon Matthew branched out into 19th Century photography - particularly of India. Between 2008 and 2013, Matthew worked in Bonhams New York office, and created a series of Space History auctions, initially commemorating the 40th Anniversary of man's first steps on the Moon. Matthew graduated from Oxford University with an M.A. in English Literature, and also appears on the BBC's Antiques Roadshow.

Rupert Maas was born in 1960, the same year the gallery in Mayfair, London was founded by his father Jeremy Maas. After a BA in Art History from Essex University, he sailed the Atlantic, in an attempt to avoid his responsibilities. On his return he was tricked by his father into joining The Maas Gallery. Following the death of his father in 1996, he runs the Gallery, which remains family-owned and deals in Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite, Romantic and Modern British art, along with the work of one living artist, Sarah Adams, who paints the rugged landscape of the north Cornish coast. Since 1995 Rupert has made regular appearances on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow as a picture expert.  

This is a fundraising event and income will support Past Matters - Developing Plans for the future of Burlington House.

Tickets cost £20, include a drink and are available here.

This event is a collaboration with the Gaudium Magnum Foundation and a great opportunity to find out more about private foundations and collections and their work in the UK and internationally. Speakers include Valentina Rossi, Managing Director and Head of Collections at Gaudium Magnum Foundation, Amparo Martinez-Russotto, curator of The Klesch Collection, Caterina Badan, curator at The Schroder Collection and Anita Sganzerla, curator of the Katrin Bellinger Collection.

Moderated by Marie Tavinor, who is the Programme Director of Royal Academy of Arts’s flagship Executive MA in Cultural Leadership programme and co-chair of The Society for the History of Collecting.

There will be an opportunity to network after the panel discussion.

Speakers:

Dr Caterina Badan is an art historian and Curator of the Schroder Collection. She holds an MA in Gallery Studies and a PhD in Art History from the University of Essex. She has published on the subject of early book illustration, as well as curated exhibitions dedicated to Albrecht Dürer’s woodcuts and early printed books at the Holburne Museum and Strawberry Hill House (2023–2024). She played a leading role in the conception, planning, and installation of a Kunstkammer-inspired gallery for the display of Renaissance works from the Schroder Collection at the Holburne Museum, Bath, as well as of a seventeenth-century picture gallery within the same institution. She edited and co-authored the accompanying catalogue, A Renaissance Treasury: The Schroder Collection at the Holburne Museum. She has also collaborated with Saatchi Gallery, contributing a historical framework to its recent exhibitions Flowers - Flora in Contemporary Art and Culture (2025) and The Sun and the Moon: Art Inspired by the Celestial (2026) through the loan of objects from the collection.

Valentina Rossi is the Managing Director and Head of Collection of the Gaudium Magnum Foundation in Lisbon. An art historian, lecturer and curator, she holds an MA in History of Art and a Postgraduate Specialisation in Art History from the University of Florence. Before her current role, she worked across the art market and the non-profit cultural sector, most recently as Gallery Director at Galleria Carlo Orsi in Milan. At Gaudium Magnum, Rossi develops cross-disciplinary programmes linking art history, cultural heritage, research, public engagement, and digital access, with a focus on transforming a private collection into a public-facing cultural project. In the UK she is working on the research initiative Gothic Trajectories between Portugal and England, which explores the impact of the Monastery of Batalha on the development of the English Neo-Gothic and revolves around a very interesting chapter of the history of the Society of Antiquaries and has since been incorporated into the forthcoming Global Gothic conference (2027), organised by Strawberry Hill House & Gardens and Yale University. Rossi is leading the Foundation’s Open Collaborative Catalogue project, and is also developing a Cultural Leadership project titled Private Passion / Public Project, exploring how private cultural initiatives can evolve into structured, publicly engaged institutions.

Anita Viola Sganzerla has an MA and PhD from The Courtauld Institute of Art. She is curator of the Katrin Bellinger Collection. Recent exhibitions she has worked on include Connecting Worlds: Artists & Travel (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Kupferstich-Kabinett, 2023) and Artists at Work (The Courtauld Gallery, 2018). A specialist in early modern Italian art, she has a particular research interest in the technical and conceptual complexity of works on paper, and the relationship between painting and the graphic arts. Amongst her current projects, Magic & Mess: The Artist’s Studio Revealed is scheduled to open at Leighton House in October 2026. She previously lectured at the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Courtauld Institute and the University of Kent, and was a print room assistant at the Courtauld Gallery.

Register.

Join us at Stephen Ongpin Fine Art for a guided tour of the gallery’s exhibition, Drawing by Design: Drawings for Architecture, Ornament, Design and the Decorative Arts, from the 16th to the 20th century, which will run from the 22nd of June until the 24th of July. 

The exhibition focuses on decorative drawings and works on paper and explores the crucial role of drawing in the artistic production process. Across a selection of nearly sixty drawings spanning some five centuries, the exhibition includes a wide range of works, from embroidery and tapestry designs to drawings for furniture, metalwork, interior decorations, stage designs and mural paintings.

Stephen Ongpin Fine Art looks forward to welcoming you to the gallery for a tour of the exhibition and its highlights across three floors of the gallery's space in a Mayfair townhouse.

To join us for the tour please sign up here.

Dr Rachel Sloan, Courtauld Gallery, will discuss the work of Harriet Lister (1751-1821) and other women artists in the exhibition devoted to the work of British women artists. She curated ‘A View of One’s Own, Landscapes by British Women Artists 1760-1860' at the Courtauld Gallery, 28 January - 20 May 2026. She organised a conference 'Rediscovering and Re-presenting the Work of Women Artists' at the Courtauld Institute in March 2026 which investigated the challenges and opportunities presented by the recovery and re-presentation of historic women artists whose work and reputations have fallen out of art historical narratives.

Register

Please join us at Darnley Fine Art, coinciding with their selling exhibition on Women Artists and a special display of portraits of Shakespeare’s patrons. Enjoy refreshments as you discover the history of women in art from Mary Beale to Henrietta Rae, and learn about the importance of patronage for Elizabethan playwrights.

The gallery offers two opportunities to find out about both exhibitions with the curators talking 15 minutes each on the following subjects:

- Celebrating the women in this exhibition who were fortunate enough to subvert societal expectations of marriage, childbirth and housekeeping to continue producing artworks. This talk will focus in particular on the works of Mary Beale, Adriana Verelst, and Henrietta Rae.

- Discussing the ‘sister arts’ of fine art and literature in relation to cultural patronage and production in Elizabethan England. Learn about the men who provided Shakespeare with crucial financial support, whose portraits will be on display.

Sign up for the 11.30 am talk

OR

the 3 pm talk.

Please join us for a tour around the galleries to discover how some works represent one of the five senses. Some pictures convey the sense of smell or taste perfectly. We will find out from the dealers what makes the particular work so special.

Register.

If you are new to collecting art, you may want to join us on a tour around some of our galleries to discover what the trends in collecting are. From Nordic to British art, Women artists to drawings in all areas, we will introduce you to some galleries that offer a wide range of works that are ideal for new collectors.

Register.

Form and Function of European Picture Frames from the 15th - 20th century

Due to the success of previous talks, Paul Mitchell gallery will continue to offer visitors an immersive and memorable experience into the fascinating world of picture framing. 

Company directors Paul and Mark are giving guided tours of their unique collection of European picture frames, many of which are rare works of art. 

Supported by Powerpoint presentations various frame styles will be shown, their origins, types of ornament and finishes.  Followed by selected paintings of all genres and periods our firm has framed for public collections worldwide, examining the previous frame’s shortcomings and criteria for selecting a suitable replacement. Before & after images vividly reveal the transformative impact of historically authentic presentation.

The production of handmade replicas by their highly skilled team of carvers and gilders will be shown and compared to their period models. 

The tour concludes with viewing the Paul Mitchell photographic archive comprising over 50,000 photos of framed paintings and related decorative arts from museums, houses and churches in 24 countries. Its research benefits will be outlined including sources for the firm's two ground breaking books on frame history, essays in exhibition catalogues, journals, magazine articles and identification of frame patterns. 

See here to learn more about Paul Mitchell and view a selection of the distinguished works they have framed over 47 years.

Register.

Curator Daniel Sobrino Ralston talks about Zurbarán at the National Gallery

Daniel Sobrino Ralston talks to Nicola Jennings about the visionary paintings by Francisco de Zurbarán on display at the National Gallery

Join us online on 25th June at 6pm for a discussion between Dr Daniel Sobrino Ralston and Dr Nicola Jennings about the fabulous paintings by Francisco de Zurbarán currently on display at the National Gallery.

Daniel is CEEH Associate Curator of Spanish Paintings at the National Gallery and co-curator of the gallery's new exhibition, Zurbarán. Nicola is a historian of Early Modern Spanish art and former Associate Lecturer at the Courtauld. There will also be the chance to ask your own questions to our speakers in a short audience Q&A section at the end of the event.

A Spanish artist and contemporary of Velázquez and Murillo, Francisco de Zurbarán (1598 - 1664) is known for combining vivid naturalism and heavenly visions of saints who he often dressed in gorgeous textiles. We will be discussing works on display in the exhibition including the beautiful Santa Casilda, Saint Luke Painting the Crucifixion and the National Gallery's own Cup of Water and a Rose.

In association with the Athena Art Foundation, this is a free online talk and you can register here.

The Limner Company is hosting a talk to find out why portrait miniatures are so popular.

The Netflix phenomenon, Bridgerton brought Georgian glamour to a new, global audience. But was it accurate or a fashion history fantasy?
Join us for a talk by dress historian Jacqui Ansell, who will explain the key features of dress - and the more surprising fashion trends - of the period. Jacqui will also discuss decoding portraits in terms of hairstyle, shape and colour of garments and trimmings, and what can a sitter's (or character's) fashion choices indicate about their personality or profession.

Jacqui Ansell gained an M.A. In History of Art from the Courtauld Institute, studying for two years under Professor Aileen Ribeiro to specialise in dress history. She has since honed her expertise through three decades of research, writing and lecturing for the National Gallery, V&A, Wallace Collection, Arts Society and Christie's. Her book 'Fashion' has recently been published by Yale and the National Gallery, offering insights into the depiction of dress and the language of clothing.

Register here.

The Burlington’s editor Christopher Baker will moderate a panel to celebrate Constable at 250 that will include Annie Lyles, Susan Owens and Emma Roodhouse.

Christopher Baker is the Editor of The Burlington Magazine and an Hon. Professor at Edinburgh University. He served as a Director at the National Galleries of Scotland for ten years and has also worked at Christ Church, Oxford, and the National Gallery in London. His research has focused on 18th and 19th-century British and European art, works on paper and the history of collecting . He has curated numerous exhibitions across the U.K. and internationally.

Anne Lyles is an art historian and independent curator specialising in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century British landscape painting. She worked at Tate Britain for twenty-five years, and has co-curated, and contributed to the catalogues of, many exhibitions on the art of J.M.W.Turner, John Constable and British watercolours. These include The Great Age of British Watercolours 1750-1880 (Royal Academy of Arts, London, and National Gallery of Art, Washington 1993); the Constable exhibition in Paris in 2002 selected by Lucian Freud; Constable: the Great Landscapes (Tate Britain, London, National Gallery of Art Washington and Huntington Art Gallery, San Marino, 2006); and Late Constable ( Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2021). More recently she wrote about David Hockney’s Yorkshire paintings as assessed within the context of earlier British landscape art (for an exhibition at the Vuitton Foundation, Paris, 2025). To coincide with the 250th anniversary of Constable’s birth in 2026, she has selected and edited a number of the artist’s famous letters for a volume recently published by Pallas Athene (2026). She is a trustee of the Constable Trust.

Dr Susan Owens is a writer, art historian and former Curator of Paintings at the V&A. Her book Constable’s Year: An Artist in Changing Seasons was published earlier this year. Her previous books include The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History of Art, which won the Apollo Book of the Year award in 2024, and Spirit of Place: Artists, Writers and the British Landscape. 

Emma Roodhouse is an art curator and researcher, with a special interest in Suffolk artists. Emma has curated many exhibitions for Colchester and Ipswich Museums, including Constable 250, a year of celebrations to mark the 250th anniversary of Constable (2026), which includes a focus on portraits and landscapes; Landscape Rebels: Turner, Constable and Monet (2022); Creating Constable (2021); Made in Suffolk: Ed Sheeran (2019); Kiss and Tell: Rodin and Suffolk Sculpture (2018); Women 100 (2018); Twists and Turns, Hairstyles in Art (2017) and A Year of Constable (2015).  She is the recipient of awards for research into Constable’s paintings at the Yale Centre for British Art and Constable’s early career through a research grant from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Her publications include the first publication on the Colchester and Ipswich Museums Constable collection, Creating Constable and Constable 250: A Cast of Characters (Amberley);  the award winning, The Art of Doris and Anna Zinkeisen (Unicorn) and contributions to Discover Constable & The Hay Wain (National Gallery) and Turner and Constable (Tate). 

Register

A talk on Tudor portraits moderated by Alexandra Ault, Society of Antiquaries, with Charlotte Bolland, National Portrait Gallery, Edward Town, Yale Centre for British Art and Lawrence Hendra, Philip Mould & Co.

Speakers:

Dr. Alexandra Ault (FSA) is the Head of Collections and Library at the Society of Antiquaries. She joined the Society from the British Library, where she was Lead Curator of Manuscripts (1601-1850) and has worked on major exhibitions, collection management and academic heritage projects. She started her career at Bonhams Auctioneers before moving to the National Portrait Gallery.

Dr. Charlotte Bolland (FSA) is Senior Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, responsible for the acquisition, research and interpretation of portraits dating from the sixteenth century, with co-ordination of research activity across the Gallery. She joined the National Portrait Gallery in 2011 as Project Curator for the Making Art in Tudor Britain project and manages the display of the Tudor collection and provides guidance on Tudor portraiture to statutory bodies. She has curated a number of exhibitions at the Gallery, including The Real Tudors: Kings and Queens Rediscovered (2014), The Encounter: Drawings from Leonardo to Rembrandt (2017), and Six Lives: The Stories of Henry VIII’s Queens (2024).

Dr. Edward Town (FSA) is the Associate Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut. His recent display “Loyalists and Sons of Liberty: America 250” runs to the end of the year at the YCBA. He is also the curator of “John Constable: The Landscape Reimagined” which opens on September 3 this year, and “Elizabethan Splendor: Portraiture in England 1580-1620” (Fall 2027). He has published extensively on British Art of the early modern period and previous edited volumes include: Painting in Britain 1500-1630 and Marking Time: People, Objects and Their Lives: 1500-1800.

Lawrence Hendra is Head of Research at Philip Mould & Company, which he joined in 2011 after graduating with a degree in Art History. Prior to working at the gallery, Lawrence worked for a number of years as an independent art dealer in the South-West working in conjunction with public galleries and museums as well as auction houses and private galleries. His expertise covers British art from the Tudor period to the present day. Over the years Lawrence has curated numerous exhibitions for the gallery including John Smart: A Genius Magnified (2014), Cedric Morris: Beyond the Garden Wall (2018), Love’s Labour’s Found: Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture (2020) and Charleston: The Bloomsbury Muse (2020/21). In 2023 he was  appointed Trustee of The Walpole Society, a charity established in 1911 which promotes the study of British art.

Register

America 250 is certainly on our minds and we have a great line-up of speakers on Anglo-American Art - Paul Staiti, Professor at Mount Holyoke College, and author of Of Arms and Artists: The American Revolution through Painters' Eyes; Adam Chen of Harvard University and co-curator of ‘Life and Liberty: American Painters and the 'Revolution' in Art, 1770-90’ which opens at Tate Britain in June; and Anna Reynolds, Surveyor of The King's Pictures at the Royal Collection Trust. Moderated by Thomas Ardill, curator of paintings, prints and drawings at the London Museum.

The panel is part of Talks Thursday at the Society of Antiquaries.

One exhibition entirely dedicated to the theme will be 'One People, Two Shores: Anglo-American Art in the Age of Revolution' at Ben Elwes Fine Art.

Speakers:

Paul J. Staiti, Alumnae Foundation Professor of Fine Arts at Mount Holyoke College, is the author of books and essays on John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Samuel F. B. Morse, William Michael Harnett, and Winslow Homer. He has lectured at the Louvre, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and has been the recipient of senior fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities three times. He teaches courses on American art and architecture, as well as American cinema. In 2009 he was honored with Mount Holyoke’s Distinguished Teacher award.

Anna Reynolds is Surveyor of The King’s Pictures at Royal Collection Trust, where she oversees the curatorial, conservation and art-handling departments responsible for oil paintings, watercolours, prints, drawings and photographs. Anna has worked at Royal Collection Trust since 2008. Anna’s experience combines twenty years of art history with a background in business strategy and a degree in psychology. She completed her Master’s degree in Dress History at the Courtauld Institute, and her research has continued to explore the relationship between Western portraiture and material culture during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. In 2017 Anna was awarded the Polaire Weissman fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where she studied the role of fashion in the paintings of John Singer Sargent. Her exhibitions and associated publications include In Fine Style: The Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion (2013), Portrait of the Artist (2016) and Style and Society: Dressing the Georgians (2023).

Adam Chen is an art historian and curator with a focus on British and American art of the late-18th and early-19th centuries. His projects include ‘Life and Liberty: American Painters and the 'Revolution' in Art, 1770-90’ (June 2026 – June 2027) at Tate Britain, a show examining the history paintings of the Anglo-American artists Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley. Adam graduated summa cum laude with a BA and MA from Yale University and is currently pursuing a doctorate in the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard.

Thomas Ardill was recently made curator of London, 1700-1815 at London Museum, having been curator of paintings, prints and drawings since 2016. He previously worked at Tate Britain where he catalogued the Scottish sketchbooks and drawings in the JMW Turner Bequest and curated several displays in the Clore Gallery. He curated of A World of Care: Turner and the Environment at Turner’s House in 2024, and has published widely on the artist, most recently a survey of ecocritical scholarship in Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals (Tate Publishing, 2025). He holds an MA and PhD from the Courtauld Institute, and his thesis examined religious painting in Britain, 1800-1832, including the work of Benjamin West and his followers.

Register

Exhibition:

One people, Two Shores: Anglo-American Art in the Age of Revolution 

22 June – 11 September 2026

“Our geniuses all go to Europe. In England, at present, the best history painter, West; the best portrait painter, Copley; and the best landscape painter, Taylor, at Bath, are all Americans.”

Benjamin Franklin

16 May 1783

Marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Ben Elwes Fine Art takes a visually rich and historically significant look at the Anglo-American artists who enriched London in the eighteenth century. “One People, Two Shores: Anglo-American Art in the Age of Revolution” brings together works on canvas and paper by Benjamin West (1738-1820), John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), and John Taylor (1735-1806), three artists singled out by Benjamin Franklin as the best in England in their respective genres: history, portraiture, and landscape. Amongst the additional works which complement the exhibition are an eighteenth-century portrait by the leading artist of New Orleans, Jose Francisco de Salazar y Mendosa (1750-1802), Robert Smirke’s study for an engraving that appeared in Joel Barlow’s epic poem, The Columbiad, and the terracotta maquette by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904) for Liberty Enlightening the World. 

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a newly available painting by Taylor that is the single most outstanding landscape by an American in the eighteenth century, and one of the best in Britain. The Philadelphia-born Taylor painted his large River Landscape with the Ruins of an Abbey in 1792, after his move to London from Bath, where he had been a friend and neighbour of Thomas Gainsborough.  It is a culminating work.  There is a spectacular silvery effect in the delicate foliage that is being teased by a breeze that gives the picture a sense of real time.  The ruined abbey evokes twelfth-century Tintern on the River Wye in Wales, a subject being painted by J. M. W. Turner at the same time.  Taylor’s work was added to the collections of George III and George IV, praised by David Garrick, and extolled by the Scottish novelist, Tobias Smollett, who considered him “the best landscape-painter now living.”

The exhibition takes place at Ben Elwes Fine Art, 45 Maddox Street, London, W1S 2PE

Opening hours during Classic Art London: Monday to Friday, 9:30am-5:30pm, Saturday to Sunday, 10am-4pm 

Please join us for a talk about how best to protect art in times of war, a subject that is more relevant to the art world now than it has been for decades. Moderated by James Ferrer from Lockton, the panel includes Peter Stones from Blue Shield International, Anne Webber from the Commission for Looted Art and James Ratcliffe from the Art Loss Register.

Professor Peter G Stone FSA OBE

Peter is President of the Blue Shield, the independent, impartial, neutral, & not-for-profit international NGO dedicated to the protection of heritage in the event of armed conflict or disaster (https://theblueshield.org/). He is also the UNESCO Chair in Cultural Property Protection (CPP) & Peace at Newcastle University, UK, the only such designation in the world. Since 2003, he has focussed on working with the heritage, humanitarian, and uniformed sectors on the protection of heritage in times of conflict, stressing the importance of heritage as a contributor to peace. He argues that tangible and intangible heritage provide a sense of place, belonging, and identity supporting individual and communal dignity and well-being. Such heritage reflects our differences but, of far greater importance, it celebrates and emphasises our similarities. Before joining the University, he worked for English Heritage, as a field archaeologist, and history teacher. Peter worked in honorary roles for the World Archaeological Congress for 24 years and was its Honorary CEO 1998-2008. He worked with colleagues in China 2007-2014 on the better management of the historic environment and heritage sites.

Anne Webber CBE

Anne is founder and Co-Chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe (CLAE), a non-profit expert representative body set up in London in 1999. The Commission negotiates restitution policies with governments, institutions and the art trade internationally, conducts research, acts for families, institutions and governments to identify, locate and recover their looted cultural property, and advises private collectors on the provenance of works in their collections. She is also founder and Director of the Central Registry of Looted Cultural Property 1933-1945 at www.lootedart.com, an online repository of news, research, information and publications from 49 countries and a database of over 25,000 objects.

James Ratcliffe

James is the General Counsel and Director of Recoveries at The Art Loss Register. Before joining the ALR 13 years ag, James practiced as a solicitor in commercial litigation in London. Prior to that, his academic background was in archaeology. James now manages the recoveries team at the ALR, working to secure the recovery of stolen and looted art and cultural property across the globe.

James Ferrer

James is an experienced leader in the art insurance market with over 20 years of related experience. He oversees and is responsible for arranging insurance on both a retail and wholesale basis, for Fine Art risks globally.
James has extensive experience in insuring a diverse range of clients including art foundations, art dealers, auctioneers, museum collections and exhibition programmes around the globe. He works with fine art valuers, shippers and loss adjusters to provide clients with a broad range of support services. He is based in London and arranges insurance solutions using Lloyd’s of London specialist fine art markets.
James has worked for Sotheby’s auctioneers; as an appraiser for Chubb and he has been a fine art insurance broker for over 15 years.

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A discussion focusing on Orazio Gentileschi’s St Jerome, lead by Keith Chritsiansen. Please email us if you would like to be notified when tickets become available.

Megan King (Benjamin Franklin House, London) and Paul Staiti (Mount Holyoke College) engage in a spirited conversation sparked by a Robert Smirke painting of the murder of Jane McCrea. The killing, perpetrated by two Native Americans in 1777, was used in two propaganda campaigns: one was meant to increase support for the American cause on both sides of the Atlantic, the other was to demonize Indians during an era of westward expansion.

Paul J. Staiti, Alumnae Foundation Professor of Fine Arts at Mount Holyoke College, is the author of books and essays on John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Samuel F. B. Morse, William Michael Harnett, and Winslow Homer. He has lectured at the Louvre, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and has been the recipient of senior fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities three times. He teaches courses on American art and architecture, as well as American cinema. In 2009 he was honored with Mount Holyoke’s Distinguished Teacher award.

Megan King is the Public Engagement Manager at Benjamin Franklin House. Drawing on her research, which focuses on practices of nonviolent resistance in pre-Revolutionary America, and her experience as an educator and a youth advocate, Megan aims to develop innovative, inclusive programming for visitors of all ages and interests. Megan also serves as the project coordinator for the Age of Revolution project, which provides free educational resources to school students across the UK.

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A tour by the archivist to see some of the hidden art at Fortnum & Mason, including works by Bouguereau, HM King Charles III, a 16th century tapestry, 18th century Chinese prints, Murial Pemberton, and Roger Bissiere. You will also see reproductions of Edward Bawden's original work in store, but also some of his original catalogues from the archive collection and the ones by Rex Whistler, which are usually hidden away.

This tour has now reached capacity, if you would like to be put on the waiting list, please register here.

Join Country Life’s art market editor Huon Mallalieu for a tour around some of the highlights at Classic Art London.

This tour has now reached capacity, if you would like to be on the waiting list, please email us.

Hosted by Fine Art Commissions Gallery and Rountree Tryon to discuss the ever-evolving ‘English style’ and traditional country house aesthetic and its art collections.

Their exhibition for CAL, Lasting Impressions, conveys the different techniques of curating a collection of both landscapes and contemporary portraits, and how to create a balanced interior that successfully blends the past with the present. A parallel discussion will look at the tradition of portraiture of ‘the sitter at home’ and on the growing trend for commissioning a painting of one’s interior space. 

Join Fine Art Commissions and Rountree Tryon for a morning event specifically for curators and interior designers.

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Join Charles Beddington for an evening to see some of the highlights in his exhibition, drawings as well as works on canvas.

He will be discussing this year’s exhibition, which includes an interesting group of 18th and 19th century drawings of Venetian subjects from the celebrated collection of the late Ambassador C. Boyden Grey of Washington, D.C., drawings of Venice from other sources and major oil paintings by Francesco Guardi, Giambattista Tiepolo and others.

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Form and Function of European Picture Frames from the 15th - 20th century

Due to the success of previous talks, Paul Mitchell gallery will continue to offer visitors an immersive and memorable experience into the fascinating world of picture framing. 

Company directors Paul and Mark are giving guided tours of their unique collection of European picture frames, many of which are rare works of art. 

Supported by Powerpoint presentations various frame styles will be shown, their origins, types of ornament and finishes.  Followed by selected paintings of all genres and periods our firm has framed for public collections worldwide, examining the previous frame’s shortcomings and criteria for selecting a suitable replacement. Before & after images vividly reveal the transformative impact of historically authentic presentation.

The production of handmade replicas by their highly skilled team of carvers and gilders will be shown and compared to their period models. 

The tour concludes with viewing the Paul Mitchell photographic archive comprising over 50,000 photos of framed paintings and related decorative arts from museums, houses and churches in 24 countries. Its research benefits will be outlined including sources for the firm's two ground breaking books on frame history, essays in exhibition catalogues, journals, magazine articles and identification of frame patterns. 

See here to learn more about Paul Mitchell and view a selection of the distinguished works they have framed over 47 years.

This talk has now reached capacity, but there are two more talks available on the 26th June and 1st July. Please do get in touch, if you would like to be on the waiting list.

Brian Allen will discuss Benjamin West’s King Alfred dividing his last loaf with a Pilgrim owned by the Stationers’ Company, London, since it was painted in 1779. He will examine the context of the artist’s career and the rise and development of history painting in 18th-century Britain. It is likely the first reunion of both the Stationers’ painting and the grisaille of 1778 by West - on loan from the Collection of Stiles Tuttle Colwill to Ben Elwes Fine Art’s exhibition One People, Two Shores: Anglo-American Art in the Age of Revolution – since their conception.  

Brian Allen was Director of Yale University's Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London for twenty of the thirty-six years of his employment there before joining the Old Master dealers Hazlitt Ltd in 2012. He has taught courses in the history of art at a number of universities and was Adjunct-Professor of Art History at Yale University for twenty years. He has published widely on the history of British art, especially of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and over the past forty years has held numerous public appointments in the museum and university worlds. He was Chairman of the UK's largest private art charity, The Art Fund, between 2002 and 2004; served as Chairman of the Compton Verney Collection Settlement Trust; as Chairman of the Hermitage Foundation UK; as a trustee of the British Sporting Art Trust and as a trustee and former Chairman of Modern Art Press. He was a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery from 2012 to 2020 and a trustee and Deputy-Chairman of the Holburne Museum, Bath from 2011 to 2020. Other past appointments include trusteeships at Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury; the Foundling Museum in London, the Strawberry Hill Collection Trust, Dr Johnson’s House and the Buildings Book Trust. He was a member of the Advisory panel of the National Heritage Memorial Fund from 2012 to 2021 and served on the Arts Council's Acceptance-in-Lieu panel between 2012 and 2021.

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The Art of Adornment at Colnaghi brings together a group of artworks spanning from Antiquity to the 20th Century, presented alongside jewellery and belts by luxury costume jewellery brand Sonia Petroff, including a first presentation of its Spring/Summer 2026 collection. Conceived as a collaboration, the exhibition explores adornment not simply as decoration, but as a recurring language through which identity, beauty, craftsmanship and cultural ideals have been expressed across three millennia.

Join us for a special evening in collaboration with WAAW, as Maria Leoni Sceti, Founder of Sonia Petroff, joins Arianna Leoni Sceti, Senior Research Specialist at Colnaghi, in conversation about the art, jewellery, and selected highlights from the exhibition.

Tickets are limited, please register here.

In partnership with Classic Art London, Claire Davies, lead curator at Handel Hendrix House, discusses the newly published book, The Ear of the Beholder, with the author, Huon Mallalieu. Huon’s book explores how artists have represented sound in paintings throughout time, from the literal depiction of musical instruments to the sights and sounds of landscapes. Claire and Huon will together look at Handel’s own art collection and how his favoured artists represented the sounds of the scenes they were painting. Tickets include a look around the house and doors will be open from 5.30 pm.

Huon Mallalieu is a historian, who after four years at Christie’s cataloguing watercolours became a freelance writer specialising in art and antiques, and for a time the property market. He has been a ‘regular casual’ with The Times since 1976, art market writer for Country Life since 1990, and writes on exhibitions in The Oldie. His Biographical Dictionary of British Watercolour Artists, 1976, went through several editions. Other books include Understanding Watercolours, 1985, the best-selling Antiques Roadshow A-Z of Antiques Hunting, 1996, and 1066 and Rather More, 2009, recounting his 12-day walk from York to Battle in the steps of King Harold’s army. His In the Ear of the Beholder was published by Thomas Del Mar in 2025. Other interests include Shakespeare and cartoons.

Tickets: £25

To book, please visit the Handel Hendrix House website.