Our events are recorded and on-demand to ticket holders for one month. Proceeds from ticket sales benefit UK museums, galleries and other arts-based organisations.
Roger Fry, Boats in a Harbour (St-Tropez), South of France, 1915. The Hepworth Wakefield.
In his new book La Belle France. British Artists Abroad from Walter Sickert to David Hockney, Simon Morley explores the influence of France and its culture on British artists from around 1880 to the present day. For British Francophiles, Parisian culture was the most powerful expression of the spirit of modernity and profoundly inspirational, helping to free them from what they perceived as the straitlaced parochialism of their homeland. But France was for them much much more than just Paris. In his talk, Simon focuses on the love of British artists for the French provinces - Normandy, Brittany, Provence - and recounts how from his house in central France he travelled in the footsteps of artists like Francis Bacon, the Bloomsbury Group, Edward Burra, Leonora Carrington, David Hockney, Walter Sickert, and Christopher Wood.
La Belle France by Simon Morley is published by Yale University Press (26 May 2026). Ticket holders will receive a special offer of 20% off when purchasing the book via their website (includes free P&P, UK orders only).
This is an online event hosted on Zoom which can be watched live with Q&A, or on-demand for one month afterwards. You will receive your link to access the event in your email confirmation and the on-demand link after the event ends.