The Nation’s Mantlepiece:
A History on the national gallery in ten Paintings
5 june 2024
Digby hall , hound street, sherborne at 3 pm and 7 pm
The National Gallery Facade
The Arnolfini Marriage by Jan Van Eyck
The Chair by Vincent Van Gogh
In the bicentenary year, The National Gallery houses one of the world’s finest collections of European paintings, including such favourites as Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Marriage, Sandro Botticelli’s Venus and Mars, John Constable’s Cornfield and Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. This lecture uses highlights from the National Gallery’s collection to show how our vision of the “ideal” art collection has evolved over time.
Jonathon Conlin
Dr Jonathan Conlin is a cultural historian of modern Britain and Professor of Modern History at the University of Southampton. His books include Tales of Two Cities (2014), a comparative history of Paris and London, and biographies of Adam Smith and the Anglo-Armenian oil baron Calouste Gulbenkian. Born in New York, he studied History and Modern Languages at Oxford, subsequently moving to the Courtauld Institute and Cambridge for his MA and PhD. In 2023 he was commissioned by the National Gallery to write its official bicentenary history.