‘A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War’
In 1910 Paul Nash, a former pupil at St Paul’s School, went to the Slade School of Art in London. There he joined a hugely talented group of young students that included Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler, C.R.W. Nevison and Stanley Spencer: they would all go on to become some of the most important British artists of the first half of the twentieth century. Based on his 2009 book, A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War, in this lecture Dr. Haycock will look at how these five young students learnt from each other, how they responded to a revolutionary new period in art, and how their work and lives were irreparably changed by the impact of the First World War.
Dr. David Boyd Haycock is a freelance art historian and curator, and a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes University. A specialist in Modern British Art, he is the author of a number of books, including A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War (2009), Brilliant Destiny: The Age of Augustus John (2023) and Lucy Kemp-Welch: Painter of Horses (2023). He has curated numerous exhibitions, including at Dulwich Picture Gallery, Poole and Salisbury Museum, the Russell-Cotes Museum, and the National Horse Racing Museum.
Find out more about St Paul’s Arts events here.