Chill October: The landscapes of John Everett Millais

Artist and art historian Martin Beek will examine Millais’s lifelong association with Perthshire and its hauntingly beautiful landscapes. Following the huge public success of ‘Chill October”, a haunting windswept Tayside view at Kinfauns. Millais went on to paint a further twenty-five large-scale autumnal and wintry landscapes. These paintings are now seen as a high point of Millais’s later career. Martin illustrated this history and artworks with location photographs from Birnam, Murthly, Strathbraan and Tayside. This talk will be a fascinating tour of Perthshire through the eyes of Victorian Britain’s most celebrated painter.

Biography

Martin Beek is both a practising artist and an art historian. He recently gave a series of talks on Artists’ Collectives for Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, which included two talks on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In 2024, Martin led a course at Marlborough College summer school entitled “The Genius of Victorian Painting. 1870-90.’” He has also recently lectured on Sir Edwin Landseer’s “The Monarch of the Glen” at the Ellis Theatre in Marlborough.

Martin regularly gives a wide range of online art historical lectures for Ardington School of Crafts, and he also actively leads artistic groups in Oxfordshire. Martin has a passion for bringing art history alive with original research and location photos. Martin lives in Oxford.

Please arrive no earlier than 10 minutes before the start time.