From Susan Mockler

LOCAL ARTIST INVITES OTHERS TO WALK & SKETCH IN TURNER’S FOOTSTEPS AROUND MALMESBURY

 Latest news from the Athelstan Museum

Local artist Anne Hayhoe will lead a free walk and workshop for budding artists focussing on the time spent in Malmesbury by the famous landscape artist JMW Turner on Saturday August 13.

The interactive workshop ‘In The Footsteps of JMW Turner’ will begin with a short talk at the Athelstan Museum in front of the Turner painting of Malmesbury Abbey. Anne will then lead the participants on a walk around the Abbey, stopping in some of the places where Turner was known to have made his exploratory sketches.

Whilst visiting the Abbey, participants will have time to make their own sketches at these iconic viewpoints using their own materials.

Anne said: “It’s a fantastic opportunity to imagine the landscape and the Abbey in the way that Turner did and to ‘have a go’ at capturing it with our own eyes, or in this case pencils!”

To finish, the group will study their sketches and discuss the contemporary artworks that can be created following this inspirational sketching tour.

Developed from Turner’s early sketches and painted in about 1827, the watercolour is one of the 96 which make up Turner’s set of ‘Picturesque Views in England and Wales‘ (1825-38). These views have long been celebrated as the finest of Turner’s topographical projects and noted examples of the picturesque movement.

It is believed to be the only finished watercolour of that particular aspect of Malmesbury Abbey and shows it from the north, early on a glorious summer morning with the foreground flooded with light and cattle warming themselves in the early sun.

Contact: 01666 577526 or call in at the museum to book a place.