'Lost' artwork on display as community invited to free art classes

Free drawing classes are taking place in Reading town centre this weekend, linked to a new joint exhibition at Reading Museum featuring some of the University of Reading’s prize artworks.

Rubens to Sickert: The Study of Drawing is in the Sir John Madejski Gallery at Reading Museum until 7th August. It explores how we learn to draw, and the lessons that drawing teaches. It is linked to Reading Museum and the University of Reading’s joint history as home to an important regional art school, and explores the rich, wider history of drawing in modern British art schools.

The exhibition features rare artworks from the University of Reading’s art collection that are not often on public display, including a sketch of Maria di Medici, Queen of France, by 17^th century artist Peter Paul Rubens, rediscovered in 2013 in a folio among the University’s archives. The Rubens sketch has only previously been displayed to the public once.

Key loans from national collections help tell crucial, missing and surprising parts of the story of drawing. The British Museum is loaning drawings by Henry Moore - who also has a little-known connections with the University, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1959 - Blair Hughes-Stanton, Leon Underwood and Reading Professor of Fine Art, James Anthony Betts (1897-1980).

Betts was responsible for amassing the University of Reading’s master drawing collection in the 1950s. The Art Council Collection are contributing Rita Donagh’s 1971 Life Size. Donagh was a tutor at the University of Reading School of Art under Claude Rodgers in the 1960s.

Reading Museum events

A range of free and exciting events are taking place in and around Reading Museum this weekend and later this summer as part of the current Museums Partnership Reading exhibition.

Led by professional artists, the events include Urban Sketching and performances in front of the Museum to create drawings - some you can take an active part in, some just watch and enjoy - no experience required.

Visitors will be able to join workshops with 'Drawing Diversity' artist in residence, Saranjit Birdi who uses the whole body as an innovative drawing tool and explores issues of diversity in today’s intercultural society, and meet emerging artist duo Jerome. and Sae Yeoun Hwang in the gallery as they use play to explore drawing, otherness and power.

Please see Reading Museum What's On for details: https://www.readingmuseum.org.uk/museum/whats-on