Constable’s Year: Susan Owens In Conversation

If you’ve ever stood in front of a painting and wanted someone brilliant to help you understand why it moves you, Susan Owens is exactly the person you need in the room. An evening in her company promises to be anything but ordinary.

Formerly Curator of Paintings at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Susan Owens has spent her career asking the questions that make art history feel alive. She is the kind of scholar who doesn’t just catalogue the past but finds the hidden threads that run through it.

Her books have ranged across the full sweep of British art and imagination: from Spirit of Place, an exploration of the deep bond between British artists, writers, and their landscape, to The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History of Art (Yale University Press, 2024), which was awarded the Apollo Book of the Year, confirming her place among the most gifted and original writers on art working today.

On this special evening, Susan will be in conversation with Executive Director, Calvin Winner to share stories about Constable – the painter who transformed how we see the English landscape – and her major new book Constable’s Year: An Artist in Changing Seasons (Thames & Hudson, 2026).

Drawing on her experience on working on the landmark V&A exhibition Constable: the Making of a Master, expect fresh insights into one of the nation’s most beloved artists, and the world that shaped him.

Whether you come as a lover of Constable, a follower of her writing, or simply someone who enjoys a brilliant mind talking about the things that matter to them, this is an evening that will leave you seeing the world a little differently.

Tickets £15
THIS EVENT IS NOW FULLY BOOKED.
Tickets for this Event can be cancelled or transferred to another event up to one week beforehand. Changes to your booking after this date can only be made if the ticket can be re-sold.

Event information

• This event will be held in the Landscape Studio which is accessible via lift.
• There will be an opportunity for Q&A after the talk.
• Doors open at 5.45pm

A celebration of art… powered by your support. Funds raised through these events go towards sustaining our museum and gallery. Your contribution is deeply valued.

About Susan Owens

Dr Susan Owens, formerly Curator of Paintings at the V&A, is an independent scholar. She has published widely on nineteenth-century British art and culture and has a particular interest in drawing and landscape.

Susan’s work with the V&A’s drawings resulted in The Art of Drawing: British Masters and Methods Since 1600 (V&A, 2013). While researching the book she was seconded to the Courtauld Gallery as Guest Curator to work on their collection of British drawings, subsequently returning to curate the exhibition Jonathan Richardson by Himself (2015); Susan is currently assembling a database of Richardson’s self-portraits. With Nicholas Tromans she curated the Watts Gallery exhibition Christina Rossetti: Poetry in Art and edited an accompanying book (Yale University Press, 2018).