Jessica Fahy Art Historian

Image: By Dreilly95 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=112210609

Description: Join me for an art filled day trip by private bus to the stunning Blenheim Palace and Waddesdon Manor (both local specialist guide) and a tour of Britain's first public museum and one of my favourite museums in the world the Ashmolean.

Ashmolean

Britain's first public museum and one of my favourite museums in the world. The main museum contains huge collections of archaeological specimens and fine art. It has one of the best collections of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, majolica pottery, and English silver. There are drawings by Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci and paintings by Pablo Picasso, Giambattista Pittoni, Paolo Uccello, Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens, Paul Cézanne, John Constable, Titian, Claude Lorrain, Samuel Palmer, John Singer Sargent, Piero di Cosimo, William Holman Hunt, and Edward Burne-Jones

Blenheim Palace

Built 300 years ago to reward the Duke of Marlborough for his victory in the Battle of Blenheim, this magnificent pile is a UNESCO World Heritage site, a rare and precious example of English baroque. Home of the Churchill family for several centuries, it was the birthplace of Winston Churchill and, given his love of art, it’s apt that it’s become an arena for some of the greatest artists of the modern age, from Georg Baselitz to Ai Weiwei. 

Waddesdon Manor

 Built in the 1880s, in neo-rococo style, this ersatz French Chateau was designed as a weekend retreat for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, somewhere to house his enormous art collection. Paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries by famous Dutch, Flemish and French artists subtly glowed from the walls. Baron Ferdinand also prized 18th-century British portraits by Reynolds, Gainsborough and Romney.