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Thursday 14th May 2026 at 2.00 pm
As its name suggests the Roaring Twenties was a loud and boisterous decade, marked by novelty, modernity and huge social, technological and economic change.
This was a period of enormous vitality not only in social but also in art and design. Fashionable society was captured by portraitists such as John Lavery and Cecil Beaton, who brilliantly captured the glamour of the age. Leisure, pleasure and the excitement of jazz, along with the speed of city and travel, were captured in paint by Burra, Roberts and Nevinson.
Following the dark days of the Great War, it spawned a generation of wealthy and privileged Bright Young Things, who were determined to shock and to break with the conventions of the past.
Furniture and decoration showed the influence of avante-garde styles, such as Cubism and Vorticism, while the discovery of Tutankhamun’s Tomb ushered in an obsession with all things Egyptian and Oriental.
Images:
Top, Maurice Grieffhagen, Piccadilly Circus, c London Transport Museum
Middle, The Original Charleston - Attache de Roger De Valerio (Poster) 1926
Collection - Josephine Baker
Courtesy Picryl
Bottom, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, 1925 Advertisment
Jo Banham is a freelance curator, lecturer and writer, and is a regular and popular speaker for Arts Societies.
She has held posts of the Head of Learning and Access at the National Portrait Gallery, Head of Public Programmes at Tate Britain and from 2006 to 2016 Head of Adult Learning at Tate Britain.
She has also been Curator of Leighton House and Assistant Keeper at the Whitworth Art Gallery. She is a Director of the Victorian Society Summer School and has published on many aspects of Victorian and early 20the century decoration and interiors.
All are welcome – free for members, £8 fee for visitors
Refreshments are available at the end of the lecture