The Pre-Raphaelites in Oxford

From a base in Oxford, this tour takes as its focus Victorian art, taste and design. We will concentrate on Morris & Company, the Pre-Raphaelites and the Gothic Revival’s medievalist Victorian vision in and around the ‘city of dreaming spires’.

Highlights will include the stained glass at Christ Church and Harris Manchester Colleges, the sumptuous Victorian chapel at Exeter College, and William Butterfield’s assertive Keble College with its intimate chapel, which houses William Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World.

The Oxford Union, containing early and important murals by William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones, will be explored alongside the world-class collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings and drawings at the Ashmolean Museum. A visit to the galleries and Print Room will set Oxford’s Victorian architectural highlights in a broader artistic context.

From Oxford, we will make an excursion to Buscot Park, which includes an excellent collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings in Victorian surroundings. We will also visit 13th century Great Coxwell Barn, a favourite of Morris’s, who described it as “unapproachable in its dignity”. Our tour will end with a visit to the Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum, a fitting conclusion to our exploration of the time period, given the influence of the natural world on the work of the Pre-Raphaelites.

We will stay at the three-star Mercure Oxford Eastgate Hotel, situated in the heart of the city.

This tour will be led by Stella Lyons, BA, MA, a freelance art history lecturer and speaker accredited with the Arts Society, who lectures regularly throughout the UK, Europe and in Asia. Stella studied at the universities of Bristol and Warwick, and at the British Institute of Florence. Her particular interests include the Italian Renaissance, American figurative art from the 20th century and 19th century British art.