Dr Geoff Quilley - Treasures of the National Maritime Museum

Return to the event listings

Event type: Art Talk
Date & Time: Friday 30 September, 7.00pm for 7.30pm
Location: Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, East Sussex
Admission: £8 (Members £7)
Tickets: All tickets are available from Philip Anson on 01323 411906, from the tourist information Centre in Cornfield Road, or on the door on the night.

The National Maritime Museum holds the largest collection of marine oil paintings in the world. It was originally collected to illustrate the rise of British seapower from the Spanish Armada through the period of colonial expansion in the 18th and 19th centuries. The collection includes portraiture, war art, shipping and port scenes.

The Museum's collection of portraits covering the period 1500 to the present day is unrivalled outside the National Portrait Gallery. It comprises a wide and varied range of both maritime and non-maritime sitters, naval and merchant service officers, scientists, British royalty and non-British sitters.These include the famous series of portraits painted by Sir Peter Lely, the ‘flagmen’ of the Battle of Lowestoft (1665) painted for James, Duke of York and, once in the British Royal Collection, portraits by William Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough.

Dr Geoff Quilley is a senior lecturer in art history at Sussex University. His main interest is in British art of the eighteenth century. He is a former curator of fine art at the National Maritime Museum and was responsible for two major exhibitions, William Hodges 1744-1797: the Art of Exploration (2004) and Art for the Nation: the Oil Paintings Collections of the National Maritime Museum (2006). Last year Yale University Press published From Empire to Nation: Art, History and the Visualization of Maritime Britain, 1768-1829.