Born at Whitworth, Lancashire, UK, within a cotton-mill-owning family,
Joan Hargreaves studied drawing and painting with mural art
at the Municipal School of Art Manchester. In 1946 she was awarded
a Royal Scholarship on entrance to London’s Royal College of Art,
where she studied until1949.

Early in her career she was a member of the Manchester Group.
L.S. Lowry was a member too; an acquaintance whom she recalled
attending meetings, and occasionally giving lectures after his
rounds as a rent collector. The Group, chaired by her friend the
wood engraver Margaret Pilkington of the philanthropic Pilkington
Glass family, met at the Whitworth Art Gallery, also run by Margaret Pilkington. Joan exhibited regularly with the Manchester Group, at
Ned Owen's Mid-Day Studios and the Manchester Ballet Club, in
travelling Arts Council exhibitions, the Manchester Art Gallery, and
the Whitworth Gallery. She also designed murals for UMIST. She
stayed in London until 1953, where her exhibitions would include
those at The Royal Albert Hall, and with the London Group, while
still exhibiting at Manchester. She moved back to Lancashire until
the mid-1960s, when she returned to London.

She taught in various art schools and colleges and lately lectured
on anatomy with movement at the Slade School of Fine Art Summer School. In fact she was an acknowledged authority on combining
these disciplines informed by her association with the ballet; an
expertise rarely found nowadays. These were encouraged for many
years within her own course ‘Anatomy, Life and Movement,' the
only one of its type in London, perhaps in the UK.
To her classes she attracted prosessional painters, sculptors,
architects, and those studying within higher and adult education,.

Joan Hargreaves never ceased working, lately mainly drawing.
As a respected source on art anatomy and movement in figure
drawing, she offered instruction regularly.
She continued to exhibit, with others and in one-woman shows.