Discover images of Swindon and its surrounding countryside from the last hundred years, and see just how much the town has changed.

Lunchtime talks start at 12.30pm and last for approximately 30 minutes.

Join our curator for a free lunchtime tour of our exhibitions before they finish on Saturday 20th July.

Lunchtime talks start at 12.30pm in the Art Gallery and last for approximately 30 minutes.

Please note that the Art Gallery will be closed from 4.30pm on Saturday 20 July for exhibition changeover and will reopen on Tuesday 30 July with Connections and Touring the Swindon Collection, 60 years on.

The Museum will be open as usual during this period.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Ann will discuss his famous tennis painting in the context of artists who have been drawn to depict the game of tennis from the 1870s onwards, beginning with British artists such as John Lavery through to Laura Knight and Eric Ravilious, before exploring European depictions of tennis particularly by French, Italian, Spanish and German artists and then considering American and South American examples of the genre.

The talk is planned to mark the publication of Routledge’s Handbook of Tennis. The Swindon painting was selected to be on the cover of this new book. Her talk will be introduced by Carol Osborne, of Leeds Trinity University who is Assistant Editor of the Routledge book.

Doors open at 7pm.

Tickets can be purchased online, via 01793 466556 or in person at Swindon Museum and Art Gallery.

Tickets: £8 / £6

From Falmouth to Sunderland, Southend-on-Sea to Bolton, thousands of museum visitors were introduced to paintings by Paul Nash, LS Lowry, Gwen John and Graham Sutherland. This new exhibition celebrates the sixtieth anniversary of this tour, which introduced the people of Britain to Swindon’s remarkable art and established the reputation of the ‘Swindon Collection’.

This exhibition brings together the 44 works of art sent ‘on tour’ in 1959 and presents them alongside some of the most important acquisitions we have made in the decades since. The exhibition explores the history of the collection and the ambitions and challenges of touring so many pictures to so many places.

Image: John Nash, The Dredgers, Bristol Harbour, c.1924, Oil on canvas, Gift of the Contemporary Art Society, 1954