A roundtable featuring  a panel of experts exploring how British artists, writers and travellers have imagined and portrayed Spain in both textual and visual representations over the last two centuries.

Inspired by their current exhibition, Leighton and Landscape: Impressions from Nature, topics discussed will include Frederic, Lord Leighton’s travels to Spain alongside a spotlight on intrepid and adventurous women travellers from the 19th century. 

In their new collaboration, Leighton House and Instituto Cervantes London are exploring the image of Spain through history, from the 19th century to its current portrait on social media and digital platforms.

Useful Information

• Doors open at 6:30pm for the chance to explore the historic house and exhibition.
• Roundtable will take place in Leighton’s studio from 7-8:30pm.
• A paid bar will be open throughout the evening.
• Please note that Cristina Morató will present her section of the talk in Spanish; an interpreter will facilitate English translation.

Meet the Panel

Cristina Morató is a renown Spanish  journalist and writer. She has been travelling the world as a reporter for over twenty years and has visited more than sixty countries, writing numerous articles and reports. Her books highlighting women’s travel literature include: Intrepid and Adventurous Travellers, The Queens of Africa, and The Ladies of the East.  Cristina Morató is a founding member of the Spanish Geographical Society and belongs to the prestigious Royal Geographic Society of London. She has just been included in the Forbes List of the 30 Most Influential Women in Tourism in Spain for her great work rescuing great forgotten travelers and explorers from oblivion. 

Alberto Egea Fernández-Montesinos is an associate professor in English Studies in the Department of Philology and Translation at Universidad Pablo Olavide in Seville, Spain. His research reflects on the social impact of the study of the image of nations in the development of their economies, specifically on the image of Spain in literary representations by British and American writers during the last two centuries. He has published and lectured on travel literature and the Image of Spain, British and American women writers, and nation branding in various universities in Britain, the United States, Australia, Brazil, Cuba, France, and Spain. He has published over 50 works, including monographs, articles and book chapters, and has curated various exhibitions both, onsite and online, on the topic of the image of Spain. Currently, he is the curator of the series “Travellers to Spain, a Cultural Tour: From 19th Century Views to Social Media Today” (2024-2025), which includes the fourth lectures session at Leighton House, and also for the 2026 exhibition “The Alhambra of Women Romantic Travellers” for the Patronage of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain.

Daniel Robbins is Senior Curator, Museums, with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and is responsible for Leighton House and Sambourne House. He led the award-winning refurbishment of Leighton House, which reopened in October 2022, and has organised many exhibitions and contributed to numerous catalogues and publications on 19th-century art, architecture and design. 

Véronique Gerard Powell, formerly associate professor in History of Art at the Sorbonne, is a French art historian specialising in Spanish art from sixteenth to early twentieth century. She has published the catalogues raisonnés of Spanish paintings in the museums of Grenoble (2000) and, with Claudie Ressort, of the Louvre (2002). She is also interested in history of collecting, particularly the nineteenth-century European taste for Spanish art. Among her recent publications are two exhibition catalogues of Antonio Pérez Simón’s collections of Spanish and Victorian paintings, articles about the French art dealer Jean-Baptiste Lebrun, Paul Durand-Ruel and Spanish Old Masters, and collecting El Greco. She is preparing a study of French collecting and the art market for Spanish Old Masters from 1800 to 1914.

Book tickets