British Art from Egg to Bacon

A survey of a hundred years of Art in Britain from the Victorian Leopold Augustus Egg to Francis Bacon. Lydia’s talk examines ways in which Britain’s isolated position resulted in an art which, while occasionally showing European influences, for most part remained steadfastly and uniquely British. Expect a tongue in cheek analysis of such popular British archetypes as the "stiff upper lip", a "nice cup of tea", "no sex we are British" and of course "the weather"! Lydia Baumann was born in Poland. She studied for her BA in Fine Art at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (John Christie Scholarship and the Hatton Award) and obtained an MA in History of Art from Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Lydia has since divided her time between painting and exhibiting as well as lecturing. She has taught at London's National Gallery for more than 35 years, and intermittently at Tate Gallery and National Portrait Gallery as well as collections such as Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Hermitage and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the latter as a guest speaker for travel companies. Since the pandemic began in March 2020 Lydia had devised and delivered a programme of upwards of 180 online lectures to her own group Art For The Uninitiated.