The Snowman has become an integral part of the British Christmas, with its come-to-life hero taking a small dressing-gowned boy for an adventure Walking in the Air . It's a 20th-century equivalent of Charles Dickens's tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim. When The Snowman 's creator, Raymond Briggs, applied to go to art school at the age of 15, his interviewer was horrified to hear that he wanted to be a cartoonist. Today, he might be even more horrified to find out about Bloomin' Brilliant: The Life and Work of Raymond Briggs at the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft in East Sussex. Briggs, who died two years ago, lived just a mile down the road from Ditchling, in the shadow of the South Downs. This joyful celebratory show looks back on a 60-year career that also gave us Fungus the Bogeyman , Father Christmas , When the Wind Blows and the story of his parents, Ethel and Ernest . Cartoons, picture books, graphic novels, for children perhaps, but actual
The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is reviving Pre-Raphaelites: Drawings & Watercolours , a show that closed after just five weeks last year due to the Covid pandemic. On from July 15 to November 27, this exhibition features more than 100 works from the museum's own outstanding Pre-Raphaelite collection; Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Holman Hunt and Millais are the big names. There are two new exhibitions coming to the Lightbox in Woking, a venue we always enjoy visiting. Starting on July 9, Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden are the stars of a collaboration with the Fry Art Gallery in Saffron Walden that looks at the story of the artists' colony at Great Bardfield in Essex; more than 30 paintings and drawings will be on display. The Ingram Collection & the Fry Art Gallery: 'Bawden, Ravilious and the Art of Great Bardfield' runs until October 9. The second show, beginning on July 16, sets 20 paintings, prints and drawings of Venice and England by Canaletto alongside wor