Welcome
Welcome to the Exe Decorative and Fine Arts Society. We are based in Topsham, and cover the towns and villages on both sides of the Exe estuary south of Exeter. Our purpose is to give our members opportunities to appreciate the arts.
We have a programme of ten lectures on various aspects of the arts, held monthly on Thursday mornings, from September to June. The lectures are illustrated and given by experts in their field. These lectures are supplemented by special interest days where we look in greater detail at a particular topic.
We also have visits to places of interest in the south west, and tours further afield, including abroad. Some of our members take part in activities such as Heritage Volunteering, Church Recording and Young Arts, where we try to involve young people in the arts through initiatives in local schools and colleges.
In 2017, most decorative and fine art societies changed their names to The Arts Society, following the rebranding of the national body NADFAS. We as a society decided to retain our name ExeDFAS while remaining affiliated to The Arts Society.
We welcome new members at any time, although we currently have a waiting list. We invite anyone who is interested to come along to one of our lectures, to see how informative and entertaining they are. Please let our membership secretary know in advance so that a place can be reserved.
Rob Forster, Chairman 2018-21

The Picture of the Month at the National Gallery.
January 2021: The Drunkard by Joaquin Sorolla
In a shadowy tavern, a man stares out at us, drunk and bleary-eyed.
A fellow drinker slides a glass of cider towards him, egging him on.
Crowded around the table are three other men, in varied states of drunkenness. One, a youth, looks out at us menacingly, as if warning us off. We, who judge, are unwelcome here.
The canvas edges abruptly cut off two figures on both the left and right, giving the sense, that we have just rounded a corner and entered the scene.
The Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla is best known for his sparkling, sun-soaked Mediterranean coastal scenes. Here, however, he plunges us into the dark, fetid depths of a tavern in the Basque coastal town of Zarauz.
The picture marks a turning point in Sorolla’s career. After a decade of painting carefree scenes of women and children at leisure, he spent the summer of 1910 frequenting local bars, and creating impromptu oil sketches such as this, in situ.
It is one of Sorolla’s saddest works: a penetrating and compassionate observation of the devastating effects of unemployment, poverty and addiction. Certainly, the artist was satisfied with it – later including it in his second major American exhibition, at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Sorolla painted the central man central in this scene, several times. Sorolla understood his name to be Moscorra but, as the word means ‘drunkard’ in the Basque language, he may have misunderstood something the locals told him!
The painting was acquired by the Gallery in 2019, and is the first painting by Sorolla to enter the collection.
Galleries everywhere are endeavouring to bring their great art treasures to the public who are unable to get to galleries and museums as once they did. Their curators have prepared short lectures, and the genius of modern technology can give us ‘Virtual Tours’.
Just a ‘taster’ of these facilities is now available on this website starting with lectures provided by our ‘parent body’ – The Arts Society. The section is called The Arts Society plus and has its own drop down menu accessible at the top of this page.
The January Lecture
This lecture is to be Zoomed at 11.00 a.m. on January 14. it will also be available on YouTube for a further two days.
The Lecture is entitled
The Genius of Stradivarius

The lecturer on this occasion is to be Toby Faber,
“I had always been interested in Stradivari since my days as a schoolboy violinist. There is a central mystery to him: how come his violins are still the best in the world, despite three centuries of technological progress. There and then I had the idea for a book that addressed that central mystery by following the fortunes of five of Stradivari’s violins from his workshop to the present day.”

Toby Faber was formerly Managing Director of the publishing house Faber & Faber. He was born in Cambridge in 1965, and now lives in London with his wife and two daughters. He is the author of Stradivarius and Faberge’s Eggs, ‘Faber & Faber: The Untold Story’ and ‘Close to the Edge’ (a novel).
