A very warm welcome to Armchair Art History. I’m Kate Dunton and I’m an art historian with almost thirty years’ experience teaching in art museums and universities here in the UK. I’m a passionate believer that art is best approached in a natural and intuitive way as part of everyday life. My role is to help you hone your eye, and offer you exciting and fascintating ways into the artworks that will be authentic and meaningful to you.
“I absolutely loved the course. It’s been brilliant. See you on the next one in the new year.”
“Kate is a great animator of art. Showing us how to really look at a painting and giving historical context to bring it alive. I shall certainly sign up for more!”
“I absolutely loved the course. It’s been brilliant. See you on the next one in the new year.”
Deepen you appreciation of some of the greatest painters in Western art in these relaxed and friendly four-week courses. Together, we’ll focus on a stunning new masterpiece each week, honing our eye and taking time to build a deep relationship with the artworks. We’ll look at the context in which the artworks were made, understanding how they responded to, challenged, and changed the artistic and social cultures of their time. By the end of each course, you’ll have everything you need to approach that artist, and that era confidently. Moreover, you’ll have picked up a whole range of techniques for getting to know any artwork, on your own or with others. Whether you’re a beginner or an old hand, I can’t wait to meet you.
LEONORA CARRINGTON
Art as Alchemy
June 2026
Wednesdays, 6.30-8pm GMT
Spend time with the deeply beautiful and mysterious works of Leonora Carrington. We’ll focus on four masterpieces that represent different moments in the artist’s life and career. We’ll use these to learn about Carrington’s trail-blazing life that took her from rural England to Mexico via Surrealist Paris. Importantly, we’ll take time to enter the artist’s magical imaginative world, tapping into our own store of myths, dreams, and enchanted stories.
Wed 3 June
Wed 10 June
Wed 17 June
Wed 24 June
HENRI MATISSE
The Birth of Modernism: Part 1
September 2026
Wednesdays, 6.30 – 8pm GMT
Discover how and why Matisse rejected his traditional art training, leading a new young generation of avant-garde artists towards an explosive use of colour that baffled the critics and almost ended his career. In this course, we’ll look closely at the early part of Matisse’s career, up to the famous Salon D’Automn when ‘The Fauves’ emerged, wielding colour like ‘sticks of dynamite’ and changing art forever.
Wed 9 September
Wed 16 September
Wed 23 September
Wed 30 September
£35.00
PABLO PICASSO
The Birth of Modernism: Part 2
November 2027
Wednesdays, 6.30-8pm GMT
Following on from ‘Matisse: The Birth of Modernism I’, this course continues our journey to Bohemian Paris around the turn of the twentieth century. We’ll follow in the footsteps of Picasso as he overturns five centuries of western artistic tradition, and opens the way for generations of future modernists. In this course, we’ll look closely at Picasso’s early years, up to his groundbreaking Les Demoiselles D’Avignon and the beginnings of Cubism.
Wed 4 November
Wed 11 November
Wed 18 November
Wed 25 November
£35.00
Discovering Kees Van Dongen’s portrait of Modjesko, the drag soprano, takes me on a fascinating journey into the red-light districts of Paris and Rotterdam around the turn of the twentieth-century where freedom is everything and nothing is quite as it seems.
