‘Engraved on Man’s Skin’: The Auld Alliance, Much More than a Military Alliance
TALK
PAST EVENT (THURS 23 OCT AT 3PM)
‘For this bond was not written on parchment but engraved on the living flesh of man’s skin, not in ink but with their mixed blood.’
As the Society of Friends’ contribution to the various Auld Alliance celebrations held at and around the Institut on Thursday 23rd October, we invited art historian Dr Bryony Coombs to give a lecture drawn from the subject of her book. Her lecture,’“Engraved on Man’s Skin”: The Auld Alliance, Much More than a Military Alliance’, introduced us to four representative figures from the early modern period whose lives and patronage of the arts gave valuable insights into the workings of this ancient Franco-Scottish alliance at the political, military, religious, or dynastic level. It was well attended (around 50), and the questions and buzz of chat afterwards showed how appreciative the audience was. Our thanks to Bryony, whose focused topic admirably complimented the historical sweep of the lecture that followed by Professor Clarisse Godard-Desmarest, President of the Association franco-écossaise, France.
Dr Bryony Coombs is Renaissance Teaching Fellow at The University of Edinburgh lecturing on the art of the northern Renaissance. Her first monograph entitled, Visual Arts and the Auld Alliance: Scotland, France and National Identity c.1420-1550 was published by Edinburgh University Press in September 2024 and has been shortlisted for the Berger Prize.
Location: Institut français d’Écosse W Parliament Sq, Edinburgh EH1 1RN
From Toulouse to Saint Tropez: regional painters and visiting painters, 1885-1905
TALK
PAST EVENT (THURS 29 MAY AT 6PM)
Richard Thomson was Watson Gordon Professor of Fine Art (1996-2018) at the University of Edinburgh, to which he remains attached in retirement. He has published widely on late 19th century French art, his most recent book being The Presence of the Past. Modernity and Continuity in French Art, 1870-1905 (2021). He has also curated many exhibitions in Britain and abroad, including the major retrospectives on Toulouse-Lautrec (1992) and Monet (2010-11) at the Grand Palais, Paris.
His lecture will cover the ‘discovery’ of the Midi and the Mediterranean coastline at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries by painters, a process made possible by the spread of the railways. He will set that against the often rather little-known work being done by painters native to Provence and the Languedoc, showing the quality of their art. The lecture will cover well-known figures such as Paul Cezanne and Paul Signac and unfamiliar ones such as Henri Martin and Achille Laugé. It will explore tensions between Paris and the regions, interplay between artists from north and south, and the often arresting (and sometimes amusing) results that arose.