SARUM U3A MARCH 2012
The March coffee morning with AGM was a busy meeting. Gordon Pardy, our excellent retiring Chairman reported on a very successful 18th year. We have a flourishing membership, wide subject variety in our 65 groups, and interesting visits planned, including a foreign holiday. The Groups Organiser made a plea for more group leaders. Retiring Committee members and Chairman were thanked; Jenny Mawer, our new Chairman, and the new Committee, were elected.
There are a few photographs taken at the AGM that can be seen HEREThe speaker, Felicity Herring, historian and Master of Fine Arts, spoke about Lady Elizabeth Butler, the first female member of the Royal Academy. Born the daughter of a Nineteenth Century socialite, traveller and man of independent means, she soon developed an interest in art. Partly self-taught, she attended the Female School of Art in Kensington, and on one of her visits to Italy, received tuition from Bellucci.
Elizabeth Butler became a renowned war artist, quite an achievement for a woman in the Nineteenth Century. She chose not to glorify war but rather to show its cost in the exhaustion, bravery, and sacrifice of the ordinary soldier. The images of her paintings from her first major success, “Roll Call”, 1874, to “Balaclava”, 1876, and “Scotland for Ever”, show her amazing attention to detail and accuracy of uniform and equipment. Thousands went to see her paintings at the Royal Academy and she became a favourite of Queen Victoria, who commissioned “Rorke’s Drift” in 1879. What an informative talk!