# Lady Lever Art Gallery

The Lady Lever Art Gallery is a museum founded and built by the industrialist and philanthropist William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme and opened in 1922. The Lady Lever Art Gallery is set in the garden village of Port Sunlight, on the Wirral and one of the National Museums Liverpool.
The museum is a significant surviving example of late Victorian and Edwardian taste. It houses major collections of fine and decorative art that are an expression of Lord Leverhulme's personal taste and collecting interests. The collection is strong in British 19th-century painting and sculpture, spilling over to include late 18th-century and early 20th works. There are important collections of English furniture, Wedgwood, especially jasperware, and Chinese ceramics, and smaller groups of other types of objects, such as Ancient Greek vases and Roman sculpture. The majority of objects were part of the original donation, but the collection has continued to expand at a modest rate. The museum displays mostly mixed paintings, sculpture and furniture together, and there are five period rooms recreating typical period interiors from large houses.

## History

Lever began collecting art in the late 19th century, largely to use in advertising for the popular Sunlight Soap brand (manufactured a few minutes' walk from the gallery) that helped to create his fortune. As he grew richer his collections began to expand, his confidence grew as well and he developed a taste for collecting. He mostly collected British art, but he was also fascinated by Chinese art, Roman sculpture and Greek vases, which he had chosen to collect to show styles that had influenced British artists in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries.
He endowed the gallery to showcase his collection. It is named in memory of his wife Elizabeth Hulme (Lady Lever) who had died in 1913.

## The building

Commissioned in 1913 from architects William and Segar Owen, the Lady Lever Art Gallery was built in the Beaux-Arts style. The building was opened in 1922 by Princess Beatrice, the youngest daughter of Queen Victoria.
In 2015 a touring exhibition visited museums in Japan and elsewhere. The redeveloped South End galleries were restored to their original architecture style as part of a £2.8 million restoration project in 2016. The work included opening up original doorways to increase the circulation of visitors, improving the lighting and restoring some of the original vaulted ceilings.
* Gallery Rooms
* Main Hall
* Room 19, Classical and 18th century sculpture, Greek pottery
* Room 21, Adam room

## Collection

The Gallery has good representation of several trends in Victorian painting, including the Pre-Raphaelites, both during the period of the Brotherhood and in their subsequent careers. Concern with social conditions, classical revivalism and later historical painting are all represented. There are important works by Millais, Ford Madox Brown, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Lord Leighton, and many others. The museum has what appears to be the largest display in any museum of paintings by William Etty. Earlier works include those by Turner, Constable, Gainsborough and Reynolds.
Much of the Wedgwood collection was from the collection of Dudley Marjoribanks, 1st Baron Tweedmouth, bought in 1905. This in turn was partly formed from the collection of Charles Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood's grandson. It is probably the best collection of jasperware in the world.
The collection includes several examples of New Sculpture including works by Edward Onslow Ford, John Gibson, William Goscombe John, and F. W. Pomeroy.

## Gallery of works of art in the collection

* Antinous circa 130–138 restored (circa 1795) as Ganymede
* Emperor Hadrian 18th century
* Johan Zoffany Robert Baddeley as Moses in Sheridan's 'The School for Scandal' 1781
* Joshua Reynolds Mrs. Peter Beckford 1782
* George Stubbs Selfportrait on Horseback 1783
* John Flaxman Cephalus and Aurora 1789
* Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun Emma, Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante circa 1790
* William Etty The Triumph of Cleopatra 1821
* William Etty The Judgement of Paris 1826
* after Lorenzo Bartolini Venus 1830
* John Constable Cottage at East Bergholt 1833
* J. M. W. Turner The Falls of the Clyde circa 1845
* Franz Xaver Winterhalter Prince Albert 1846
* William Holman Hunt The Scapegoat 1854
* John Everett Millais A Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford 1857
* John Everett Millais Spring (Apple Blossoms) 1858 – 1859
* John Everett Millais The Black Brunswicker 1860
* Arthur Hughes A Music Party 1864
* Frederick Walker The Bathers 1866 – 1867
* Edward Burne-Jones The Beguiling of Merlin 1874
* Ford Madox Brown Cromwell on his Farm 1874
* Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Blessed Damozel 1875
* Hubert von Herkomer The Last Muster 1875
* Frederic Leighton Daphnephoria 1876
* Lawrence Alma-Tadema Tepidarium 1881
* John Everett Millais Bubbles 1886
* William Holman Hunt May Morning on Magdalen Tower 1890
* Frederic Leighton The Garden of Hesperides circa 1891
* John Henry Frederick Bacon The Wedding Morning 1892
* Edward Onslow Ford Echo 1895
* Desiré Maurice Ferrary (fr) Leda and the Swan 1898
* Desiré Maurice Ferrary Salambo 1899
* Edward Onslow Ford The Snowdrift 1901
* John Singer Sargent On his Holidays, Norway 1901
* Clovis Delacour (fr) Andromeda circa 1901
* F. W. Pomeroy The Wood Nymph 1908
* John William Waterhouse The Decameron 1916
* John William Waterhouse The Enchanted Garden 1916 – 1917