Portraits of London: 10 leading artists interpret the city through 2 Centuries – Charlie Forman

This is a change of speaker / topic to the programme originally published.

View London – a city that has dazzled, enchanted, unsettled, appalled.  So how did it motivate the great artists who have lived and worked there?  And how do their paintings enrich our understanding of the city?  This lecture takes a long look.  Picking five periods between 1750 and 1920 and five pairs of artists it compares and construes their take on the city.  Hogarth and Canaletto had studios a few minutes walk apart, but their Londons were unrecognizably different.  While Constable looked down on a dim city under a louring sky from his Hampstead eyrie, Turner’s rare artistic incursions are ablaze with light.