Lectures

This lecture deals with aspects of Nightingale’s life and thought before, during and after the Crimean War. The war occupied just two years of Florence Nightingale’s long life (1820-1910). Much of the rest of it was employed in passionate writing.  In later life her topics were demanding and tough – sanitation reform; nursing reform: the health of the British army; hospital construction and even the nature of God. But she writes about herself too, vividly and often with biting wit.

Despite the popularity of Impressionism today, the ground-breaking shifts that occurred in French painting at the end of the nineteenth century were not immediately embraced by collectors, dealers, or the public. A vital figure in the rise of Impressionism was Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922). This talk aims to retrace the critical years from the late 1860s to 1905.