Reading Museum presents John Tweed: The Empire Sculptor, Rodin’s Friend an exhibition on view 23 Mar 2013 To: 08 Sep 2013.
John Tweed (1869-1933) was a hugely successful artist who worked at the heart of the London art world and produced images of many leading Victorian and Edwardian figures. His public sculptures and war memorials can be found in Britain and around the world and his promotion of Auguste Rodin led directly to Rodin’s great gift to the nation in 1914 of 18 of his sculptures for display at the V&A Museum.
This is the first major exhibition devoted to Tweed since 1934 when his retrospective at the Imperial Institute was opened by Princess Alice of Athlone and attended by many of the great and the good of a declining Empire. It is the result of a four year project to catalogue Reading Museum’s Tweed archive. A new book John Tweed: Sculpting the Empire has also been published to coincide with the exhibition and is on sale at the Museum shop.
The exhibition features many works that have not been exhibited in public since the 1930s and includes important loans from the V&A Museum.
Sir John Madejski Art Gallery, Reading Museum, Blagrave Street, Reading, RG1 1QH
www.readingmuseum.org.uk