Take a Closer Look: Online Art Appreciation Courses 2024

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Bookings for the Autumn Course may still be made until Wednesday 23 October. To book call Joanne Drum on 016633505 or e-mail [email protected]. 

Take part in these very special online courses – wherever you are.

Scheduled for winter, spring and autumn, these 8-week evening courses are the perfect way to learn more about art. Discover little-known works from the Gallery’s collection, get to know old favourites in more depth, and explore other great collections of the world with our expert art historians and guest speakers.  

Each course will take place online using Zoom webinar and will include time for a question and answer session where you can put your questions and comments to the facilitators.

Not available every week? Each session will be recorded and made available to participants for two weeks afterwards to allow you to catch up, or watch again. Each session will be closed captioned live. 

Each course has a 1 week break in the middle. See exact dates below.

Upcoming course:

Autumn 2024: A Life Less Ordinary - Evolution of the Everyday 

Tuesdays, 18.00-19.15
1 October to 26 November 2024
1, 8, 15, 22 Oct 5, 12, 19, 26 Nov (note there is a break on 29 October)

Take a walk through any gallery or museum and you will meet countless gods, kings and legends. However, hanging alongside these larger than life characters are scenes that explore the banality and complexity of human nature. Depictions of ordinary people in everyday settings have the power to arouse our curiosity, empathy and disgust. They add colour and texture to our understanding of the past.

This course is an exploration of everyday subject matter across cultures, and will move beyond the traditional understanding of genre work. Each session will cover a different theme: from the ancient world and the Dutch masters of genre painting, to Japanese ukiyo-e prints, the New York Ashcan, and Socialist Realism in Soviet Russia. Join Dr Sarah Wilson for an eight week course which proves that works of everyday life are anything but ordinary.

About the tutor:
Dr Sarah Wilson is an art historian specialising in Roman antiquity and religious identity. She has an undergraduate degree in Fine Art (DIT) and completed her postgraduate studies in Art History (UCD). She has developed several lecture series for the National Gallery of Ireland that encompass a broad range of topics from Classical influences to Japanese and Aboriginal art. Her essay on Magna Mater and the pignora imperii was published in Late Antique Palatine Architecture: Palaces and Palace Culture: Patterns of Transculturation (Brepols) in 2020.

Tickets on sale now:

Book here

Buying this course as a gift? 

Once you have purchased the ticket, contact [email protected] to confirm the name of the recipient, and we will ensure they are sent all correspondence. If you would like us to send them an e-mail confirming that this was purchased as a gift for them, we can also do this.

About the Course: 

Take a walk through any gallery or museum and you will meet countless gods, kings and legends. However, hanging alongside these larger than life characters are scenes that explore the banality and complexity of human nature. Depictions of ordinary people in everyday settings have the power to arouse our curiosity, empathy and disgust. They add colour and texture to our understanding of the past. 

This course is an exploration of everyday subject matter across cultures, and will move beyond the traditional understanding of genre work. Each session will cover a different theme: from the ancient world and the Dutch masters of genre painting, to Japanese ukiyo-e prints, the New York Ashcan, and Socialist Realism in Soviet Russia. Join Dr Sarah Wilson for an eight-week course which proves that works of everyday life are anything but ordinary. 

Sessions:

1. Introduction: Ordinary Beginnings

The ancient Greek and Roman artists are commonly remembered for their monuments dedicated to gods and Emperors. But amongst these grand works are pieces that turned away from heroic idealisation and explored what it meant to be an ordinary person in the ancient world. Within this small group of funerary and genre art, we find the origins of ideas that later artists built their practice on. 

2. Dutch Morality 

The sixteenth and seventeenth century Netherlandish painters are frequently regarded as masters of genre painting. Beginning with Pieter Bruegel the Elder, commonly known as the “Peasant Painter”, this session will trace the medieval, religious and economic influence that led to an increase in depictions of everyday life, culminating in the highlife genre scenes of Johannes Vermeer and his contemporaries.  
    
3. The Floating World 

Guest speaker Dr Ai Fukunaga, Curator of East Asia Collections at the Chester Beatty will discuss how Japanese prints and paintings depicted everyday life and people during the Edo period (1603–1868). The economic growth in this peaceful era allowed common people to enjoy social life, festivals, and entertainment. The lifestyle of ordinary people inspired artists to capture beauty in life.

4. Rise of the Realists 

In the early seventeenth century, a new category of painting emerged in Spain, the bodegones. As exemplified by the works of Velázquez, bodegones brought an opportunity to illustrate the cultural and social realities of the time through the depiction of everyday life and objects. Velázquez’s honest and realistic portrayal of ordinary life and its complexity was a key influence on the French Realist movement, spearheaded by Gustave Courbet. 

5. The New York Ashcan 

In the early twentieth century, a group of maverick painters emerged in New York City. Known for their innovations in subject matter, the Ashcan Painters rejected the suffocating influence of the genteel tradition in art and embraced the world of immigrants, dockworkers and nightclub performers.    

6. Soviet Russia and Socialist Realism

Drawing on the French Realist influence, the Russian painters of the late 1800s emerged from a strong Romantic tradition. Initially celebrating Russian culture and land, their work soon began to reflect the world and its frequent injustices. While this began as an individualistic endeavour, following the Communist Revolution of 1917, it became a grotesque distortion. Artists were frequently compelled to produce work that portrayed an idealised vision of socialist society. 

7. 20th Century New World Order 

As a result of World War I, the Great Depression and the Great Migration, many people were displaced from their homes. This led many to question their identity. Where do people from old world traditions fit into the new world of Modernity? And what does it mean to be American? In response, some artists turned away from European influences and embraced subjects of the American heartland. The American Regionalists were dominated by Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry, while Edward Hopper, a pupil of the Ashcan, explored themes of isolation in everyday urban life

8. Ordinary Decent Women

This session will discuss the depiction of ordinary women from three different historical eras. 
Guest speakers: Janet McLean, Curator of Modern Art, National Gallery of Ireland and Jessica Fahy, Art Historian

About the tutor: 

Dr Sarah Wilson is an art historian specialising in Roman antiquity and religious identity. She has an undergraduate degree in Fine Art (DIT) and completed her postgraduate studies in Art History (UCD). She has developed several lecture series for the National Gallery of Ireland that encompass a broad range of topics from Classical influences to Japanese and Aboriginal art.

Guest speakers: 

Jessica Fahy is a freelance Art Historian, she is on the lecturer and guide panels for the National Gallery of Ireland, UCD Access and Lifelong Learning Centre and the Hugh Lane Gallery. She gives talks and tours across Ireland, abroad and online on all areas of Western Art from the 14th century to the present day.  Over the past few years she has become a regular contributor on RTÉ radio for Arena. She has a MLitt in Art History from UCD where she also received her undergraduate degree with English as her joint major. She completed her MA in Italian Renaissance Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London in 2007.

Dr Ai Fukunaga is Curator of East Asian Collections at The Chester Beatty. She received her PhD in History of Art and Archaeology from SOAS, University of London in 2021. She was the former Ishibashi Foundation Assistant Curator for Japanese Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she was involved in the reopening of the Japanese arts galleries and in the exhibition, Toshiko Takaezu: Shaping Abstraction (2023–2024). She is curating the Chester Beatty’s upcoming exhibition Zodiac Netsuke: Animals of the Japanese Zodiac in Miniature (6 December 2024 – 23 March 2025). 

Janet McLean is Curator of Modern Art at the National Gallery of Ireland.

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