Our October 2026 Study Day will be held at Nayland Village Hall, Church Lane, Nayland CO6 4JH, 11.00am - 3.00pm (coffee is served from 10.30am). There is a car park at the hall, and behind the hall on the meadow. The cost is £35 per person, which includes morning coffee and lunch. The booking form can be downloaded here.
Bathed in sunlight this Study Day is themed around the colour yellow, as it weaves its way through pigment, plants and painting. We will commence our exploration by tracing the use of yellows in art and textiles from the ancient ochre pigments of cave art to sacred yellow jades. Egyptian orpiment, and Georgian silks, through to the yolk-coloured interiors of Victorian fashions. The Sunflower will take us on our next journey tracing its divine arc through art and culture from the Aztecs, to Apollo, to the canvases of van Dyke and van Gogh, a symbol of the divine and the cycle of life. Bringing heaven to earth will be the topic of the final part of our day as we expand our colour palette and weave the threads of painting, planting and Impressionism - reaching back into the earth where we started.
Lecture 1: From Earth to Heaven: Yellow
From prehistoric earthy ochres to glinting golds and canary yellow jasper, the colour yellow evokes emotional and aesthetic responses and cultural meaning across time, from joy to jealousy, from decadence to delight. We trace its histories in art and culture, textiles and ceramics, bringing sunshine to the start of our Study Day. As van Gogh said ‘How beautiful yellow is, it stands for the sun’.
Lecture 2: From the Divine to the Mortal: The Sunflower in Art and Culture
Tracing its origins from South America, we follow the sunflower’s association with the god Apollo, to its role in art as personification of kings starring in depictions by artists from van Dyke to van Gogh. Worshipped by the aesthetes it found favour in the gardens of the Impressionists, and lent a touch of magic to the humbler cottage garden. Lining the roads of Southern Europe, it still lifts the soul, providing inspiration for artists, writers and gardeners. From Clytie to Klimt this is the extraordinary tale of an extraordinary plant that links heaven and earth, the divine and the mortal.
Lecture 3: Impressions of Gardens: Gardens of the Impressionists
Planting and painting, cultivating and creating: inspired and influenced by their dedication to painting ‘en plein air’ artists of the Impressionist movement had a special relationship with gardens, landscape, light and colour, most famously expressed by Claude Monet (1840-1926) at Giverny. In this talk we will explore that relationship, drawing on the wide range of gardens created and depicted by artists including Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Édouard Manet, Gustav Caillebotte, and Pierre Bonnard, as well as briefly the artists of America and Northern Europe, placing Giverny and Monet in a wider perspective.
Twigs Way is a garden historian, writer and researcher fascinated by the past and intrigued by the role of flowers, gardens and landscape in art and culture of all kinds. Her talks reflect themes of, class and gender, politics, art and literature along with the quirky and unusual. Twigs is Course Director of the MA/PhD in Garden History at Buckingham University and an accredited Arts Society lecturer. Her history of the Chrysanthemum in art and culture was published by Reaktion (2020) and the new edition of The History of Women in the Garden was published by Bloomsbury in 2023.