Lady Lever Art Gallery facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Lady Lever Art Gallery

Lady Lever Art Gallery Building
Established	1922 (1922)
Location	Port Sunlight, Merseyside, England, United Kingdom
Visitors	210,790 (2019)

Room 19, Classical and 18th century sculpture, Greek pottery

Room 21, Adam room

The Beguiling of Merlin (1874) by Edward Burne-Jones

The Lady Lever Art Gallery is a special museum located in Port Sunlight, a beautiful village on the Wirral in England. It was created by a rich businessman and kind person named William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme. The gallery first opened its doors in 1922. It is now part of the National Museums Liverpool.

This museum is a great example of art and style from the late Victorian and Edwardian times. It holds many important collections of fine art and decorative items. These collections show what Lord Leverhulme liked to collect. The gallery is especially strong in British paintings and sculptures from the 1800s. It also has some art from the late 1700s and early 1900s.

You can find amazing collections of English furniture, Wedgwood pottery (especially a type called jasperware), and Chinese ceramics. There are also smaller groups of other items, like ancient Greek vases and Roman sculptures. Most of the art was given to the museum when it first opened. However, the collection has grown a little over time. The museum often shows paintings, sculptures, and furniture together. There are also five "Period Rooms" that look like typical rooms from big houses of the past.

History of the Gallery

Lord Leverhulme started collecting art in the late 1800s. He first used some of his art to advertise his very popular Sunlight Soap. This soap helped him become very wealthy. As he got richer, his art collection grew. He also became more confident in his taste for collecting.

He mostly collected British art. But he was also very interested in Chinese art, Roman sculpture, and Greek vases. He chose these items to show how they influenced British artists in the 1700s and 1800s. He built the gallery to display his large collection for everyone to see. The museum is named after his wife, Elizabeth Hulme, who passed away in 1913. She was known as Lady Lever.

The Gallery Building

The building for the Lady Lever Art Gallery was designed in 1913. The architects were William and Segar Owen. They built it in a style called Beaux-Arts. This style is known for being grand and classical. Princess Beatrice, the youngest daughter of Queen Victoria, officially opened the building in 1922.

In 2015, some of the gallery's art traveled for exhibitions in Japan and other places. In 2016, the South End galleries were restored. This was a big project that cost £2.8 million. The restoration brought back the original look of the architecture. They also opened up old doorways to make it easier for visitors to move around. The lighting was improved, and some of the beautiful vaulted ceilings were repaired.

What You Can See in the Collection

The gallery has many different types of Victorian painting. This includes works by the Pre-Raphaelites. You can see their art from when the group first started and from their later careers. The collection also shows art about social issues, classical styles, and historical events.

There are important paintings by famous artists like Millais, Ford Madox Brown, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, and Lord Leighton. The museum also has a very large collection of paintings by William Etty. Older works include those by Turner, Constable, Gainsborough, and Reynolds.

Much of the Wedgwood collection came from Dudley Marjoribanks, 1st Baron Tweedmouth. Lord Leverhulme bought it in 1905. Part of this collection used to belong to Charles Darwin, who was Josiah Wedgwood's grandson. It is probably the best collection of jasperware pottery in the world.

Some of the famous artworks you can find here include:

• A Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford
• Bubbles
• Cromwell on his Farm
• The Black Brunswicker
• The Blessed Damozel
• The Scapegoat
• The Beguiling of Merlin

The gallery also has several examples of New Sculpture. These include works by:

• Edward Onslow Ford
• John Gibson
• William Goscombe John
• F. W. Pomeroy

Gallery of Works of Art

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  Emperor Hadrian, anonymous (18th century)

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  Robert Baddeley as Moses in Sheridan's The School for Scandal, Johan Zoffany (1781)

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  Mrs. Peter Beckford (Hon. Louisa Pitt (1754–1791), Joshua Reynolds (1782)

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  Selfportrait on horseback, George Stubbs (1783)

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  Cottage at East Bergholt, John Constable (1833)

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  Prince Albert, Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1846)

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  The Scapegoat, William Holman Hunt (1854)

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  A Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford, John Everett Millais (1857)

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  Spring (Apple Blossoms), John Everett Millais (1858–1859)

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  A Music Party Arthur Hughes (1864)

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  The Blessed Damozel, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1875)

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  The last Muster, Hubert von Herkomer (1875)

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  May Morning on Magdalen Tower, William Holman Hunt (1890)

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  The Garden of Hesperides, Frederic Leighton (c. 1891)

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  The wedding morning, John Henry Frederick Bacon (1892)

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  On his Holidays, Norway, John Singer Sargent (1901)

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  The Decameron, John William Waterhouse (1916)

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  Enchanted garden, John William Waterhouse (1916–1917)

Images for kids

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  Main Hall

See also

In Spanish: Lady Lever Art Gallery para niños