Horsham Museum reopens with Vincent Lines: The Sussex Years

To mark the reopening and refresh of the Horsham Museum and Art Gallery on Saturday 2 October, the first temporary exhibition will celebrate the life of Vincent Lines during his time in Sussex.

Appointed Master in Charge of Horsham School of Art in the mid-1930s, Lines would spend the next decade living within the town, capturing Horsham and the surrounding area within his artwork.  As well as painting in oils and watercolours, Vincent Lines was a masterful lithographer, which is the practise of capturing an image on paper using a stone block.

The Sussex landscape was not the only subject of his work.  Vincent’s portrait lithographs portray a brilliant likeness of his contemporaries and collaborators.  From a series of signed prints of the war time BBC Salon Orchestra, to a portrait of the nomadic puppeteer Walter Wilkinson (complete with a marionette in the background) these portraits detail the diverse network of people who Lines met during his Sussex years.

The exhibition would not have been possible without the generous donation by the family of Vincent Lines and their valuable insight into his life.  Amongst the works gifted to Horsham Museum & Art Gallery is a sketch by John Constable, the popular 19^th century landscape artist. The sketch will be amongst the artworks featured as part of the exhibition which will open on 2 October and run until early Spring 2022. The exhibition space will be open the same hours as the Museum, Thursday – Saturday, 10am – 4pm.

Commenting on this significant new exhibition Horsham District Council Cabinet Member for Leisure and Culture Cllr Roger Noel said:

I am delighted that our Museum and Art Gallery is reopening with such a high profile exhibition and it is quite fitting that the artist had such special connections to Sussex.

We are pleased to be given this opportunity to display Lines’ work and are extremely grateful to the Lines family for allowing us to do so and for sharing their intimate knowledge of the artist .

This exhibition presents a rare opportunity that you do not want to miss, so do please come along.

Horsham District Council’s Horsham Museum and Art Gallery reopens on Saturday 2 October and will be open initially from Thursdays to Saturdays, though on the opening weekend it will also be open on Sunday 3 October from 10am to 4pm. This allows our team of volunteers to be welcomed back after 18 months away.