Lecture Access

This lecture will be available to view until 4 May 2026

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OVERVIEW

Watch on Demand | Online Lecture


For centuries, Paris has drawn artists with its distinctive light, its urban and river landscapes, salons, and galleries. 

Following the Revolution, the city became a site of both opportunity and upheaval, where artistic training, patronage, and exhibition were reshaped alongside political life. The founding of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in the early nineteenth century accelerated this process, encouraging the growth of private academies and attracting students from across Europe and beyond.

Artists arrived not only to study but to explore new ways of seeing the city. Museums, streets, cafés, and suburbs became subjects in their own right, as painters experimented with colour, movement, and atmosphere. From early nineteenth-century encounters with the Louvre to the radical rethinking of form and perception in the decades that followed, Paris emerged as both a setting and a catalyst for artistic change.

In this lecture, art historian Patrick Bade examines how shifting social conditions, artistic education, and urban experience combined to shape modern interpretations of Paris through the works of artists who helped define its visual identity.

Lecturer

Biography

Patrick Bade holds a BA in History and History of Art from University College London and an MA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute. For many years until 2016 he was senior lecturer at Christies Education (in conjunction with Glasgow University). He has worked for the Art Fund, Royal Opera House, National Gallery and V&A Museum, and has taught courses on Fine and Decorative Arts Renaissance to 20th century as well as course on the history of opera. He has led many tours to Paris, Munich and Vienna and to other German cities, Brussels, Barcelona and Madrid and opera tours to Milan and Parma.

Patrick Bade

Art Historian