We are privileged to welcome one of our earliest graduates, Ann Garrould (Diploma 1953) back to The Courtauld.  Ann will be speaking about how her time studying here was influenced by, and influenced her relationship with, her uncle, the renowned sculptor Henry Moore.  As his only surviving niece, Ann will speak from a unique and very personal viewpoint about this giant of British art. 

She herself gives a taster for her talk as follows:

‘Had it not been for my uncle I would probably have followed the advice of my French professor and gone on to study for a Ph.D. in French Philology.  Henry suggested that a degree in History of Art would open the doors to many different worlds - history, geography, religions, other languages, social customs.   I took his advice and began post-graduate studies at 20 Portman Square in the Golden Age of Blunt, Wilde and Whinney with Peter Murray as my first-year tutor.

I look back on those years and also the two years I spent working in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' section of the Witt Library as a wonderfully rewarding period, even though whenever I went to see him Henry would subject me to intensive viva voces on what I had just been studying.

Talking about art has taken me all over the world doing something I loved doing.   I've written books on Henry's drawings and on his tapestries and edited the seven-volume catalogue raisonne of his [5,000+] drawings as well as setting up exhibitions of his work in places as far apart as Seoul and Columbus, Ohio.

My talk will be illustrated with slides of Henry's work - sculpture, drawings and graphics - but what I say will not describe his development as an artist.   It will be about Henry as an individual and a much-loved uncle who, as I discovered when I was going through some of his private papers shortly after his death, had kept for over 50 years a drawing I had done for him in 1934 or 1935 – "TO UNCLE HENERY” (his wife Irina's trisyllabic way of pronouncing his name).’ 

The talk will be followed by drinks in the foyer.