5 Paintings in Manchester That Aren’t Mancunian

Painter and sculptor Peter Lanyon was born in the small English seaside town of St. Ives in Cornwall, an area that had attracted painters since the late 1800s. Yet when pioneering artists Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, and Naum Gabo settled there in the late 1930s, it was placed firmly on the progressive art map. Lanyon avidly absorbed the creative input of St. Ives’s new inhabitants, taking lessons with Nicholson and establishing himself at the heart of the “St. Ives School.” The form of Lanyon’s nude has been abstracted to some extent, but, characteristically for the St. Ives school, he retains a strong naturalistic element. His image exudes a powerfully sculptural curvaceousness, aided by the flowing quality of both the composition and its broad strokes. The fact that he also worked as a sculptor is clear here, as is the influence of Hepworth’s curving forms. Lanyon’s painting is in the Whitworth’s collection. (Ann Kay)

Paul Nash was the son of a successful London attorney. His brother John became a painter, illustrator, and engraver without formal training, but Paul studied at the Slade Art School and had his first solo show when he was 23. As a lieutenant in World War I, he sketched life in the trenches and produced a series of well-received war paintings after being invalided home due to a nonmilitary-related injury. On the strength of these, he was recruited as a military artist in 1917 to document the fighting on the Western Front. When he returned from the war, Nash championed the aesthetics of Abstraction and Modernism as a founding member of the influential modern-art movement Unit One, along with fellow artists Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and art critic Henry Read. When World War II began, Nash was enlisted by the Ministry of Information and the Air Ministry and created a series of paintings documenting the fighting. Perhaps in contrast to the tension, tedium, and terror of war, Nash painted a series of innovative, geometric, Surrealist English landscapes, inspired by locations that articulated a sense of permanence and long-reaching history, such as burial mounds, Iron Age hill forts, or Bronze Age megalithic sites such as Stonehenge. Nocturnal Landscape, in the Manchester Art Gallery, transforms an actual physical place into dreamlike terrain, distilling reality down to geometry and symbolism. This mystical abstraction of reality reflects the turbulence of his era, as if he longed for the seemingly impossible serenity and permanence of the places he painted. (Ana Finel Honigman)

William Holman Hunt is most renowned for his links with the Pre-Raphaelites but, in his own time, he gained even greater fame as a leading religious painter. The Scapegoat, in the Manchester Art Gallery, is one of his earliest and most unusual ventures in this field. In 1854 Hunt embarked upon a two-year stay in the Middle East. His aim was to endow his religious scenes with an authentic flavor by producing them in genuine Biblical locations. This picture, for example, was painted by the Dead Sea, close to the original site of Sodom. The subject is taken from the Jewish rites relating to the Day of Atonement. Two goats were chosen as sacrificial animals, in a symbolic act of expiation for the sins of the faithful. One of the goats was sacrificed in the temple, while the other was cast out into the wilderness, bearing away the people’s sins. The ritual was also seen as an echo of Christ’s sacrifice. To stress this further, a red ribbon was placed around the goat’s horns, as a symbolic reference to the crown of thorns. Hunt went to considerable trouble to make the scene as realistic as possible. He took great pains to find a rare white goat—the color was vital, to indicate that the animal was free from sin. Then, when his model died on the return journey to Jerusalem, Hunt had to find a second animal. This time, he painted it while it was standing in a tray of salt and mud, taken from the shores of the Dead Sea. (Iain Zaczek)

Ford Madox Brown provided inspiration for the young artists who founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and, in turn, was influenced by their ideals. This, his most elaborate painting, demonstrates his close links with the movement. Initially at least, the Pre-Raphaelites wanted to paint scenes of modern life that were true to nature, as well as morally improving. Brown’s picture accords well with these aims. On one level, it portrays workers installing the new sewerage system in Hampstead, north London; on another, it is a parable about the value of labor. Brown began the painting in 1852 but then laid it aside for several years, until he found a definite buyer. This patron, T.E. Plint, asked for a number of alterations, to bring the painting into line with his own evangelical beliefs (among them, the addition of the woman on the left, handing out religious pamphlets). For modern commentators, the painting is remarkable for the freshness and originality of its composition and as a detailed document of Victorian social life. Ironically, its reputation has been slightly undermined by the artist’s exhaustive explanations about its symbolism. Brown intended to highlight the moral worth of labor. This was exemplified by the naval workers in the center and the two “brainworkers” standing on the right—the writer and philosopher Thomas Carlyle and F.D. Maurice, the founder of a notable Working Men’s College. In contrast, the chickweed seller on the left represents the poor, and the lady with the parasol and the couple riding behind her are the idle rich. Work is in the collection of the Manchester Art Gallery. (Iain Zaczek)

This is one of John Everett Millais’s most poetic scenes. It was painted after the initial furor over the Pre-Raphaelites had died down, and the artist was replacing the complex symbolism of early works, such as Isabella, with subjects that were more ambiguous and evocative. As the 1850s progressed, Millais was increasingly drawn to themes that revolved around a paradox. In The Blind Girl, a sightless woman is juxtaposed with the visual splendor of a rainbow; in The Vale of Rest, a nun is engaged in back-breaking labor. In a similar way, Autumn Leaves (in the Manchester Art Gallery) depicts a group of young girls—the epitome of youth and innocence—in a setting that is redolent of decay and death. The smoke, the dead leaves, and the setting sun are all images of transience, and the gloomy expressions of the girls confirm this. Millais began work on this picture in October 1855. It was set in the garden of his home at Annat Lodge in Perth, Scotland—the outline of the local church can just be seen in the misty background. He is quoted to have “intended the picture to awaken by its solemnity the deepest religious reflection.” The elegiac mood was equally influenced by Lord Tennyson, whose work he was illustrating at the time, and by his own melancholy fondness for the season of fall. “Is there any sensation more delicious,” he once remarked, “than that awakened by the odor of burning leaves? To me, nothing brings back sweeter memories of the days that are gone; it is the incense offered by departing summer to the sky….” (Iain Zaczek)