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VERMEER AND MUSIC: THE ART OF LOVE AND LEISURE
 

About a third of 17th century Dutch paintings feature musical instruments or scenes of music- making. Music was celebrated as a means of social or familial bonding and as an expression of love, while also feared for its seductive, immoral connotations. A strict etiquette surrounded the act of performing music by men and women and the middle and lower classes. This talk includes musical excerpts played on original period instruments, illustrating particular instruments shown in paintings. 

Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure, will be a rich visual and aural experience. Lydia Bauman was born in Poland and studied for her BA in Fine Art at University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (John Christie Scholarship and the Hatton Award), and an MA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. She has since divided her time between painting and exhibiting as well as lecturing widely to adult audiences. She has taught at London's National Gallery for more than 35 years, and intermittently at London’s Tate Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, as well as collections such as Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Hermitage and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the latter as a guest speaker for travel companies. After the pandemic began in March 2020, Lydia devised and delivered a programme of upwards of 180 online lectures to her own group ‘Art for the Uninitiated’.

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