About

Stella Grace Lyons is an art historian, writer and Arts Society accredited lecturer, known for bringing works of art vividly to life through storytelling.

With over fifteen years’ experience as a professional speaker, Stella has lectured widely throughout the UK, Ireland, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Malta and Malaysia. She has spoken for organisations including the National Trust and Goldsmiths’ Fair, at London’s private members’ clubs including The Hurlingham Club, the Royal Automobile Club, the Royal Over-Seas League, and internationally for cultural travel companies including Road Scholar, Noble Caledonia and Hebridean Island Cruises.

Currently

She is the founder of Stella Talks, her programme of live online art history lectures, established during the pandemic and now enjoyed by audiences across five continents. While her lectures encompass many of art history’s major figures, Stella is equally drawn to overlooked and underappreciated artists. Her particular interests include Scandinavian and Nordic art, women artists and American art, as well as the forgotten symbolism hidden within paintings.

Alongside her lecturing, Stella has written about art for a range of respected publications and contributed to books on the subject. In 2022, she was invited to lecture for the fortieth anniversary of Goldsmiths’ Fair, where her exploration of the overlooked role of jewellery in paintings sparked the research that became her debut book, The Secret Language of Jewellery in Art. Ahead of its publication, the book was featured in The New York Times.

Education

Stella studied History of Art at the University of Bristol and holds a Master’s degree in History of Art from the University of Warwick.

She undertook further specialist study of Renaissance art at the British Institute of Florence and trained at the Charles H. Cecil Studios in Florence, one of the leading ateliers dedicated to traditional methods of drawing and painting from life. This gave her a practical understanding of artistic techniques, materials and processes that continues to inform her work as an art historian. Several years spent modelling for the respected artist Harry Holland offered a further, unusual insight into the workings of the artist’s studio.

Stella also lived and studied in Venice, developing a first-hand understanding of the art and visual culture of the Renaissance.

‘Without sacrificing scholarship, Stella Lyons has a most engaging way of hooking an audience into sharing her passionate interest in art history, drawing three dimensional human stories and experiences from the two-dimensional canvas’

– Maev Kennedy, writer and Arts correspondent for the Guardian