In 1934 Arthur Rigden Read gave fifteen of his colour woodcuts to Hastings Art Gallery. I don't know of any of his contemporaries who was quite so generous. Read's prints were by no means cheap in the thirties and if he had been thinking about posterity, the British Museum or the V&A would have been the places for them to go. But, no, Read kept it local and I assume the fifteen colour woodcuts form the basis for the current exhibition at Hastings.
The exhibition also includes prints by Eric Slater who is nowhere near as good a printmaker as Read, but he will help to bring in the crowds. It would be fair to say they formed a local school of sorts in the late twenties and thirties, but the Reads lived in Sussex for twenty years only and many of his subjects were French or Londoners or people like the Romanies who came from nowhere, so it's a shame curators try to give a minor artist this duff local slant. Read may be minor but he deserves better. As does his wife, who appears in a number of his woodcuts.
The show runs from 27th May to 3rd September and will appeal to the summer crowds as well as local cognoscenti. It will be worth going simply because I know that Read bequested a number of prints that are rare enough to be unavailable anywhere online. Certainly I have never seen some of them, but they have not been included in the booklet that has been published to coincide with the exhibition. But the less said about that little effort the better.