Lady Lever Art Gallery

Lady Lever Art Gallery, art museum in Port Sunlight, Merseyside, England, part of the National Museums Liverpool. It is known for its unrivaled collection of Wedgwood ware and paintings by members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their followers. The museum was a gift to the public from Lever Brothers cofounder William Hesketh Lever, the 1st Viscount Leverhulme, as a memorial to his wife, who died in 1913. The building was begun in 1914 and opened in December 1922.

(Read Sister Wendy’s Britannica essay on art appreciation.)

The museum is located in a model village founded for Lever Brothers workers in Bebington, Cheshire (now in Merseyside). The collection was formed by Lord Leverhulme and reflects his personal taste, which was strongly biased in favour of British works, especially of the Victorian period. In addition to Wedgwood ware, the gallery has a superb collection of English furniture; many of the pieces are decorated with classical scenes using inlaid woods of different colours. The museum’s Pre-Raphaelite collection comprises works by such artists as John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Frederic Leighton, and Ford Madox Brown. There is an important series of 18th-century portraits, including examples by Joshua Reynolds, George Romney, and John Hoppner. The gallery also has a very fine collection of Chinese ceramics and a collection of Napoleonic relics, namely a bronze death mask of Napoleon.

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