Professor Rod Phillips will give his annual talk on wine and art at the Timken Art Museum in San Diego, California, on 13 August. He was first invited to give a talk on wine in art there in 2019, and he was then invited to return annually. The pandemic prevented talks in 2020 and 2021, but Rod gave one in 2022, and this month’s will be the third. His talks focus on the Old Masters, who painted in Europe from about 1300 to 1800.
The title of this year’s talk is “The Artist as Sommelier.” Rod asks if the Masters can point us to wine and food pairings, just as restaurant sommeliers guide diners to wines that suit their meals. He looks at depictions of wine and food in still lifes and dining scenes to see if we can draw any conclusions about the way foods – fruit, fish, bread, cheese, meats, and so on – were paired with red and white wine and sparkling wine. He also looks at the wine and food portrayed in paintings of the Last Supper as a special genre of food and wine pairing.
The Timken Art Museum is a privately owned gallery, located in San Diego’s Balboa Park, with free access to the public. It has a fine collection that includes many Old Masters. Information on the talk is here: https://www.timkenmuseum.org/calendar/event/wine-masters-the-artist-as-sommelier/