Orientalist Artists Study Day - ASTENE and Friends of Leighton House on Saturday 4th October
Following the exhibition at Tate Britain in the summer, Janet Rady has organised with Leighton House, Kensington (home of the 19th century artist Lord Leighton) a study day to consider the background and impact of the exhibition.
A booking form for the study day is enclosed with the Bulletin and can also be downloaded here.

ASTENE Dahabeeyah journey and Cairo Conference, November, 2008
Anthony Sattin and ASTENE Events Organiser Elisabeth Woodthorpe are organising an ASTENE journey on the Nile by restored dahabeeyah.

On Saturday, 22 November those who have been on the tour will be staying in Cairo at the Nile Hilton and holding the usual short conference - of half-a-dozen 20 minute papers. All ASTENE members living in Egypt are invited to contribute to the conference and then to dine together as ASTENE's guests. If any other members will be in Cairo at this time and would like to join us, please let Elisabeth Woodthorpe know. If you want to offer a 20 minute conference paper, please send your title and an abstract (about 100 words) to Deborah Manley (deb@dmanley.plus.com - note new address) not later than 1 September..

ASTENE Conference, Durham University 10 - 13 July 2009
We have booked Collingwood Hall at Durham University (the site of the very first pre-ASTENE conference in 1995 - from which the whole organisation grew ) for the 2009 conference.

The Conference Organiser is Janet Starkey who can be contacted at j.c.m.starkey@durham.ac.uk She is arranging special access for ASTENE to the wonderful Sudan Archive of Durham University. The next Bulletin will include more information about this Archive and the Call for Papers for the Conference.

ASTENE members are already planning the papers they propose to give at the conference. Among the proposals being considered are the travels of Emperor Hadrian (perhaps linked to a visit to the Wall); a 14th century royal pilgrimage to Jerusalem. We will welcome papers on desert travel and accounts of the oases. For example, J.C. Ewald Falls and the Kauffmann expedition, or Sir Archibald Edmonstone and his companions in the western desert in 1819. Papers on travellers' observations of flora and fauna will be welcome.

We would be pleased to receive advance information on your plans - although, of course, you may not be able to fulfil them. Such plans help us to begin to consider the programme emphases, and to plan the Call for Papers which will be issued with the Autumn Bulletin.
If any group want to propose a special session please let the Conference Organiser, Janet Starkey, know.

LEBANESE LUNCH AND LEIGHTON HOUSE
A group of twenty ASTENE members and friends met at Leighton House, 12 Holland Park Road, London W14 on a sunny afternoon on 14th February after a splendid Lebanese lunch in Kensington High Street, arranged by Elisabeth Woodthorpe.

Our host, Daniel Robbins, Senior Curator at Leighton House, greeted us warmly. He has been at Leighton House for just over eight years and has seen changes at the House. He took us on a guided tour and, as we went, gave us an insight into the life of Frederic, Lord Leighton. He was born in Scarborough in 1830, the son of a doctor. His grandfather - James Leighton - also a doctor, had risen to become surgeon to their Imperial Majesties in St Petersburg, and also Physician-General to the Imperial Fleet. He was rewarded with a personal fortune.

All this had a bearing on the life of Frederic and his sisters. At eight, he and his family left Scarborough for the Continent, and spent time in Italy, Germany, Belgium and other countries. Frederic's European background gave him a wide outlook on life, with his grandfather's fortune providing for him comfortably.

He returned to London and wanted his own house. In Rome he had met George Aitchison, who was later to become not only a friend, but the designer of Leighton House. The house was completed in 1866, with further additions following in 1869 and 1877. The last addition was the Arab Hall - which had drawn us here. It is this Arab Hall which makes the house so exciting. Many of the Damascene tiles on its walls were collected by Frederic and by Richard Burton when he was Consul in Damascus.

To give a full account of the life of Frederic, Lord Leighton and his work as a traveller and artist could take up all the pages of this Bulletin and more. Suffice it to say that his house, a living museum, is well worth a visit for anyone interested in him as an artist, in his contemporaries, and in his eclectic collection of artefacts. We were lucky enough to be there when many of his oil sketches of his Middle Eastern travels were on display. They are about to move around the country over the next months.

The exhibition of paintings and drawings from Leighton House which we saw is moving on around Britain:
24 March -3 June Scarborough Art Gallery
22 June - 2 September Bristol Museum
16 October- 6 January Russell-Cotes Art Gallery, Bournemouth
25 January, 2008 -17 April Hunterian Museum,Glasgow

Lord Leighton
Those who recently visited Leighton House under ASTENE's auspices, will be interested to know that portraits of Leighton and others of his circle can currently be seen in the newly-opened Madejski Rooms in the Royal Academy.
This grand series of rooms with fine gilded ceilings is on the first floor. Apart from portraits of Academicians, it holds a large and languorous male nude statue, entitled The Sluggard, by Leighton, and in the current show there is an interesting painting of the RA selection committee for 1875, in which Leighton and Millais, among others, are scrutinising a contender for the forthcoming annual exhibition. Tom Re

April 2007