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Wednesday, May 31, 2006
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How to.. Appreciate fine art
WHEN it comes to art I’m very much the sort of person who doesn’t know much about it, but knows what they like.
I’m not averse to wandering around an art gallery, but rather than being the guy spouting off platitudes to the people in the near surroundings I’m more likely going to be the guy inspecting the fire extinguisher trying to work out whether or not its an installation.
The Peterborough Decorative and Fine Arts Society is aimed squarely at both types of art gallery visitors and everyone in between.
The group, which has 240 members on its books, meets once a month for 10 months of the year, both as a social group and to listen to a wide variety of lectures covering all different aspects of the arts.
It is a member society of the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies (NADFAS), meaning its lecturers come from a national pool of experts.
I went along for the group’s January meeting at the Fleet Centre in Old Fletton, Peterborough, where the subject in question was Horatio Nelson – His Life and Loves.
It was a subject close to my heart as he is one of my fellow Norfolk countrymen, and I have to confess, by the end of the lecture I felt like I almost knew the great admiral personally.
The talk was informative, but it was also a lot of fun.
The slides used to illustrate it covered not only classical portraits of Nelson and his various lovers but also cartoons and caricatures from across history.
And the historical facts were interspersed with the sort of trivia you can’t help but find fascinating, like the whereabouts of the musket ball that killed Nelson and the original message the admiral was going to send out to his troops - which had to be changed to “England expects” after his signalman said he didn’t have a flag for “confides”.
The society was founded 29 years ago by president Lotti Gillatt after hearing about NADFAS at a luncheon club. She and eight friends got together and began the year-long process of getting the group started. It was worth the effort, though with at one stage the society having a waiting list of 70 people wanting to join.
Lotti said: “Of all the speakers we have had in our 29 years, I can only think of two that weren’t good speakers. It is a wonderful thing to go on for so long.”
The speakers are booked up to two years in advance by programme secretary Mary Pritchard, who attends a national meeting in March to hear which speakers are on offer for the following years.
Maritime art expert James Taylor, who spoke on the morning I was there, was the curator of paintings at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, as well as working as an auctioneer, a freelance art dealer, lecturer and writer.
He had been chosen as an official NADFAS speaker after going through a long selection process in front of a panel.
He said: “The talks should be a combination of information and entertainment. It’s not like giving a university lecture or academic lecture.”
The club holds regular study days and trips which are organised by Audrey Shelley and chairman Annette Beeton including visits by experts from the Antiques Roadshow and trips to Prague and Vienna.
And another aspect of its work is a series of projects to record the whole inventory of individual churches in the area for posterity, from inscriptions to silverware to stained glass windows.
The project, which is just finishing its work at Castor church and is currently working in Wittering, is led by Kate Kralevich.
Chairman of the group Annette said: “We average about 170 to 180 members at each meeting.
“NADFAS was started by Patricia Fay in 1968, there are more than 300 societies now across the country.
“We’re growing all the time – we had 25 new members this year!”