We are delighted to be launching a Somerville Art History Network for alumni (similar in form to the Somerville Gardening Network, launched in February), and who better to launch this than Dr Susan Owens (English, 1990).
Her talk will be entitled ‘A Year with Constable’.
Susan Owens spent January to December of 2024 writing a book linking John Constable’s life and work to the four seasons. In this talk she will look at how the annual cycle of the natural world drove his creative and emotional life. She will discuss Constable’s vivid on-the-spot sketches and ask how, in the wintry light of his London studio, he created such enduringly powerful images of summer.
Susan is a writer and art historian. Her books include The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History of Art, which was named Book of the Year in the 2024 Apollo Awards, and Spirit of Place: Artists, Writers and the British Landscape (2020). Constable’s Year: Art and Life in Changing Seasons will appear early in 2026. As Curator of Paintings at the V&A, a post she held until 2013, Susan had responsibility for the national collection of works by John Constable. Before arriving at the V&A she was a curator in the Print Room of the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. She lives and writes in Suffolk.
This event will take place at 2pm on Sunday 6 July, and will be hybrid. In-person attendees will meet in the Margaret Thatcher Centre for the talk, followed by afternoon tea. Alumni and guests across the world can join online. Please book for either option below. If you book for the online option, the link will be sent out to you shortly before the event.