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.