The Arts Society Falmouth
Our 2025-2026 Discovery Days
During Discovery Days members have the opportunity to look at a subject in more depth than is possible in a lecture. The group size is often smaller which can allow for a more informal approach.
Future Discovery Days
22
January
2027
RADICALS AND RIVALS - HOW HENRY MOORE, BARBARA HEPWORTH AND BEN NICOLSON CHANGED ART IN BRITAIN
Jo Walton
Synopsis:
Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson are three of the most important British artists of the last century. Friends, neighbours and artistic rivals, their lives were intertwined through their personal relationships as well as through their shared determination to make new and radical forms of art in mid-twentieth century Britain.
Full details to be advised later
10.30 Part 1: In the Beginning
In this first lecture we’ll explore the backgrounds of the three artists. Hepworth and Moore grew up in Yorkshire, training at the Leeds School of Art, then at the Royal College of Art, in London. Nicholson came from a highly artistic (although dramatically dysfunctional) family, and his fractured relationship with his father proved a catalyst for his own artistic development. In the rapidly changing art world of London before the Second World War they began to make their mark as avant-garde artists.
11.30 Coffee
12.00 Part 2: Mid-century Crisis
During the war Sir Kenneth Clark and the War Artists Advisory Committee encouraged artists to make work that reflected the differing experiences of war. Henry Moore created powerful images of sleepers sheltering from the Blitz in the London Underground, before leaving London after his studio was bombed. Nicholson and Hepworth, now with a young family, also left London for Cornwall. Here Ben Nicholson began to create new forms of painting that mixed landscape, abstraction and still life.
13.00 Lunch
14.15 Part 3: Honour and Success
With the reconstruction that followed the end of the war all three artists became sought-after figures, exhibiting internationally and becoming important members of the artistic establishment. Although the marriage between Nicholson and Hepworth failed, their rivalry continued and the little town of St Ives, in Cornwall, became a magnet for young artists hoping to meet and work with the pair. Henry Moore sculptures would appear in public spaces across the world. As well as being a remarkable story of artistic achievement, this is also a very personal story of three extraordinary people who, across the length of the twentieth-century, made art that changed the way we think about painting and sculpture.
15.15 Q & A
15.30 Close
(Regretfully no refund for non-attenders)
Venue: The National Maritime Museum Cornwall
Organised by: The Arts Society Falmouth
Cost: TBA to include mid morning coffee and hot buffet lunch with a vegetarian option
Time: 10.30 a.m. - 3.30 p.m.
Contact: Email dd@theartssocietyfalmouth.org
Please note if you click on the email link and it does not automatically open up a new email for you, you can send an email in your usual way addressed to dd@theartssocietyfalmouth.org
Previous Discovery Days this year
16
January
2026
FROM COALBROOK DALE TO THE CRYSTAL PALACE
Jo Walton
Time: 10.30 a.m. - 3.30 p.m.
Synopsis:
In 1709, in a small riverside town in Shropshire a Quaker Industrialist, called Abaraham Darby, became a pioneer of the industrial Revolution and inaugurated the building of the world’s first ever iron bridge, over the River Severn.
In this discovery Day we will explore how inventors and designers like the Darbys, Josiah Wedgwood, Matthew Bourne and the Stephensons are reflected in the art of the 19th Century. See how new techniques affected design, and consider how mass production and the changing landscape affected life for rich and poor. The apogee was the Crystal Palace Great Exhibition of 1851.
We will look at the Palace, its buildings and contents as well as the legacy for art and design and architecture through the 19 Century and beyond.
10.00 Registration opens
10.30 Part 1: Meeting the Revolutionaries
We begin by introducing some of the remarkable innovators, designers and scientists who where part of the transformation of society in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, many of whom were part of the Lunar Society, based in the English Midlands. Their ideas and discoveries would change commerce, design and the idea of the ‘home’.
11.30 Coffee
12.00 Part 2: Looking in the Mirror
In an era before photography it was the painter and draughtsman who could show people the world beyond their own surroundings. By exploring the paintings of the period, we can see first-hand evidence of the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution, from the landscapes of Turner and Constable to watercolours and satirical political prints.
13.00 Lunch
14.15 Part 3: The Crystal Palace and Beyond
The Great Exhibition of 1851 brought together over 14,000 exhibits in one gigantic and innovative glass and iron building. Here the results of industrialization could be seen, alongside treasures from across the globe, celebrating a century of mechanization and the ways in which both work and home life had changed for ever.
15.15 Q & A
15.30 Close
(Regretfully no refund for non-attenders)
Venue: The National Maritime Museum Cornwall
Organised by: The Arts Society Falmouth
Cost: £45 to include mid morning coffee and hot buffet lunch with a vegetarian option
