The horse is so rooted within the psyche of the Western imagination that it has maintained its expressive power, as the current production of War Horse so eloquently testifies. The lecture traces major themes from Stubbs, the greatest horse painter of all time, to Degas. It features Duchamp-Villon’s Large Horse, a modern metaphor of horsepower, Munning’s horses as defining images of Englishness, and Picasso’s agonised horse in its death throes in Guernica (1937), which expresses the horrendous destruction of the city in the Spanish Civil War. The lecture concludes with the very diverse ways in which our leading contemporary artists have made use of the expressive power of the equestrian image. Mark Wallinger’s gigantic 50 metre high horse will soon loom over the Kent countryside in Ebbsfleet. 

Nicholas Watkins is Emeritus Reader in the Department of the History of Art and Film, University of Leicester, curator, critic, author and lecturer. His numerous publications include Matisse (1984), Bonnard (1994), Bonnard Colour and Light (1998), The Genesis of a Decorative Aesthetic (2001), Marino Marini (2007), Behind the Mirror: Aimé Maeght and His Artists (Royal Academy, London 2008), Bonard Peindre L'arcadie (Musee D'Orsay, Paris 2015). TV 'Pierre Bonnard: A Love Exposed' (1998). Regular contributor to The Burlington Magazine and other leading art journals. Lectures extensively to universities, museums, art galleries and art societies.

Our lectures start at 8pm.