Lectures
For many years Clive has been giving lectures around the world. He has spoken at corporate events in the UK, France, Germany and the USA as well as on many cruise ships. He is an Accredited Lecturer with the Arts Society (formerly NADFAS) and speaks to these groups both in the UK as well as Malaysia and Holland. If you would like to book Clive for a talk on one of his regular subjects, below, or would like to arrange a specific event, please get in touch.
The Art Market
Who, What, Where and How?
After 47 years in the art market as an auctioneer, dealer, as well as a member of the Antiques Roadshow team for 23 years, Clive discusses how this dynamic industry has developed over the years. Why have collecting tastes changed so dramatically? How does the market work and who are the players today? The effects of the Internet, legislation, pressure groups, antiques fairs, television programmes and changing tastes are all discussed. The value of your antiques is ever moving, and getting it right is harder than ever.
Betty Joel
Glamour and Innovation in 1930’s Interior Design
Born in Hong Kong in 1894, Betty, the daughter of the Colonial Secretary, went on to run one of the leading furniture and interior design companies in the inter war years in London. Her list of clients and contacts was incredible, from The Queen Mother, Lord Mountbatten, and Sir Winston Churchill to eminent surgeons, hotels and factories, as well as taking in visits to Paris where she met Gertrude Stein, Picasso’s great friend and collector. The talk discusses her life and work, and focuses on the few remarkable survivals in London, Nottingham and Harrogate.
The Orientalists
Artists and Travellers to the Near East
With our complicated relationship with the Near East in sharp focus again today, this talk examines the artists and their subjects as they travelled to the Near East, from the 17th century to the late 19th century. Political intrigue, Western fantasies, rackety men and extraordinary women all play their part, none stranger than Sir Richard Burton whose final resting place is a sandstone tent in the Catholic cemetery in Mortlake. The artistic legacy of our fascination with the subject is seen in paintings, books and architecture, with some wonderful but relatively unknown examples used to illustrate the talk.
Victorian Painting
A Personal View
Using my own family’s choices of their idea of quintessential Victorian paintings as a starting point, this talk examines the myriad themes and subjects depicted in oils over the 64 years of her reign. War, class, love, fallen women, fairies, Empire, religion and travel are all covered using both well known and less familiar pictures. It was an era of huge social, political and demographic change, all played out in the art exhibitions of the day.
A Voyage of Discovery
The paintings of George Raper on the First Fleet 1788-1792
A chance discovery by Clive Stewart-Lockhart in a barn in Gloucestershire provided historians of the First Fleet with a major cache of previously unknown watercolours of birds and flowers of the Sydney area. This talk explores the voyage undertaken and the work of George Raper, a young Midshipman who, in the space of four years sailed around the world twice, was shipwrecked, survived disease and starvation, and still managed to return home with these magnificent watercolours. It is a remarkable, little known story with many endings.
John Singleton Copley
The great 18th century American portrait and history painter
Most famous in Britain for the magnificent Death of Major Pierson, now at Tate Britain, Copley was born and brought up in Boston, MA, before the American Revolution, and was thus a British subject. His early work included portraits of many of the worthy pre-Revolution citizens of Boston, notably Paul Revere holding a silver teapot. The inspiration for this talk is a pair of portraits of Clive’s forebears: Duncan Stewart and his wife Anne Erving, painted in 1793. The talk follows Copley’s life, from his early days in his mother’s tobacco shop in Boston, his election to the Royal Academy in London, and life in England. Copley was possibly the greatest and most influential painter in colonial America, leaving a great artistic legacy on both sides of the Atlantic.
Edward Barnsley and Ernest Gimson
Arts and Crafts cabinet makers and the work of the Edward Barnsley Trust
Edward Barnsley (1900-1987) was one of the most important British furniture makers of the 20th Century. Edward’s father, Sidney, together with his uncle Ernest and their friend Ernest Gimson, had been inspired by William Morris and embraced his radical ideas. In 1893, these three moved from London to the Cotswolds to put their beliefs into practice, building their own houses using local materials and traditional techniques. Today Gimson and the Barnsleys are seen as key figures in the Arts and Crafts Movement, and their influence on design has been immense. Clive was a Trustee of the Edward Barnsley Educational Trust (EBET), based at Barnsley’s workshops near Petersfield, and this talk explores both the work of the Barnsleys and Gimson, as well as the vital work of training apprentices in his tradition.
Clara
Rhino Superstar and Wonder of the Age
Brought up as a house pet from a young age by a Director of the Dutch East India Company in India, Clara was shipped to Holland in 1741 and spent nearly 20 years touring Europe as one of the wonders of the age. She visited all the major Courts of Europe, including that of King Louis XV of France, eventually dying in London in 1758. She was recorded in paintings, prints, porcelain, bronze, clocks and even hair styles. This talk explores the charming story of this magnificent beast, only the fifth rhino to be seen in Europe, through contemporary records and works of art.
George Chinnery
The Greatest Artist of British India and the Far East
Horace Walpole said in 1783, that ‘No man ever went to the East Indies with good intentions’ and George Chinnery was certainly that man! Running away from debt and his wife, who he charmingly described as ‘the ugliest woman I have ever seen’, he settled in India for 23 years, before running away from debt and his wife again to China. This talk covers his portraits of many of the leading figures of the East India Company, most notably Colonel James Kirkpatrick, his 14 year old Indo-Persian wife and their children, key figures in William Dalrymple’s ‘White Mughals’, as well as his beautiful scenes of everyday life and landscapes.
The Art of Dining
A look at dining style from Pompeii to the present day
Humans have been very good at recording how and what we eat through the ages, and this talk looks at these themes, starting with the Frescoes of Pompeii and Herculaneum up to the modern day. The talk looks at the objects involved with the eating and presenting of food and wine, beginning with a banquet in Pompeii where the guests seem to be wearing very little, to the present day, where in many houses the tables are dressed with little other than a knife, fork and ketchup bottle. Even these, however, can be given a classy upgrade.