Gill Hedley is a writer, an independent curator and a consultant on contemporary visual arts. The menu to the left leads to different aspects of her work. On some pages blue links in bullet points open for more detail. Below are current and recent projects, with more on the archive pages.
I am delighted to announce that Lund Humphries published The Ingenious Mr Flitcroft: Palladian Architect 1697-1769, on Nov 13th 2023.
He is best known - even nicknamed as Burlington Harry - for his work with his patron Lord Burlington and at St Giles-in-the-Fields, Wentworth Woodhouse and above all at Stourhead.
However, he worked over many decades for several families, including the Montagus and Hoares. This is the first survey of his long and wide-ranging career, with a subststanial amount of new material.
A group of architectural historians and other specialists met at Hoares Bank to discuss Flitcroft's life and works. A powerpoint presentation was created for this event, available from the Georgian Group, which featured Flitcroft as a research topic. Link to Georgian Group (www)
The Georgian Group has kindly promoted my research for the book via their website. I am giving a lecture there on Tuesday 5 December between 6.30 and 7.30 pm at 6, Fitzroy Square, London W1T 5DX.
I will outline the architect’s life, through a focus on a few key elements – his origins, relations with fellow architects, his own house in Hampstead, and many new discoveries. Images will include those that were not possible to appear in the book.
Flitcroft is now revealed as so much more than ‘Burlington Harry’
and the talk will include the sad fate of his son, the inheritance case that lasted until the 1860s,
and the surprising links between Flitcroft, G.E. Street and the Smithsons.
Tickets are £18 or £15 for Georgian Group members.
Link to Georgian Group lecture (www)
A Web link to my ArtUK article on Flitcroft, to celebrate the official publication of the biography. Link to ArtUK site (www)
Henry Flitcroft has been chosen as the subject of the inaugural lecture for the St. Giles Society,
appropriately as, at St Giles-in-the-Fields, London, ‘Flitcroft singlehandedly reinvented the
Palladian church for Georgian times.’ I am pleased to have been asked to give the lecture on
Wednesday 15 November 2023.
Link to St Giles in-the-Fields church (www)
Peter Norton with Field Marshall Montgomery
The next biography, currently at the research stage, will be of Lady Norton. Born Noel Evelyn Hughes, always known as Peter, she founded The London Gallery in 1936 until her husband’s diplomatic career took them first to Poland, then to Switzerland during the war and finally to the British Embassy in Greece.
She was a dealer, a collector, patron, fundraiser and a tireless worker for children’s charities. She was an expert skier, worked in the advertising business in the 1920s and was a supporter of Bauhaus emigrés in the 1930s, especially her close friends Marcel Breuer and Herbert Bayer, who she met skiing. Supporting artists, especially the international avant-garde, was the main function of The London Gallery. Helping people, with scant regard for propriety, was her raison d’être.
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