To be held on 21 May 2025
This lecture tells the fascinating tale of how the simple tulip came to dominate Dutch flower painting during the first half of the sixteenth century, a genre which had already come into its own as a form of Vanitas painting. It looks in detail at the depictions of its cultivation and display by artists such as Ambrosius Bosschaert and Balthazar van der Ast and examines the circumstances behind the bubble that by the 1830s had inflated the price to a preposterous and unsustainable level.
Brian Healey
Previously a senior modern languages teacher in an independent grammar school for many years, Brian has also enjoyed a successful parallel career since the 1980s as a professional artist and interior designer. Since 2006 he has been regularly appointed to a number of prestigious ocean and river cruise lines, either as resident artist, guest lecturer on art history or as destination speaker for many countries, Most recently this work has successfully extended to art guiding through important towns and museums in France, Belgium, Holland and Spain.