"An Artists’ Village, Compton, England: A Center of Nineteenth Century Art and Design"
Lecture by Richard Ormond and Perdita Hunt
Wednesday, October 3, 2012, 6 p.m.
The Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, New York, NY
Sponsored by the William Morris Society in the United States
G. F. Watts, OM, RA and Mary Seton Watts were bright lights in Victorian art and the Arts and Crafts movement. These two creative artists left a great legacy in Compton, Surrey--a splendid Ernest George house and studios, an ornate cemetery chapel (considered by many to be a fin-de-siecle masterpiece), a pottery which was a center for social enterprise, and the remarkable Watts Gallery, the only purpose-built art gallery for a single professional artist as well as a hostel for apprentice ceramicists. The Watts Gallery has just been restored and re-opened by HRH The Prince of Wales to universal acclaim.
Richard Ormond CBE, Chairman of the Watts Gallery Trust, and Perdita Hunt, the Gallery Director, who together have led the restoration and the renaissance of this artists' village and national museum, will describe the founders’ lives, ethos, and vision, and how this translates into the 21st century and beyond.
Tickets $12 for members of the William Morris Society, $18 for others. To order go to the William Morris Society's website:
http://morrissociety.org
or send a check to:
William Morris Society
P.O. Box 53263
Washington, DC 20009