Lady Lever Art Gallery

The Lady Lever Art Gallery houses significant collections in British 19th-century painting and sculpture, extending to include the late 18th-century and early 20th works.

The collections include 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 museum displays paintings, sculptures, and furniture together, and there are five “Period Rooms” recreating typical period interiors from large houses.

Virtual Tour of the Lady Lever Art Gallery

• The Black Brunswicker by John Everett Millais
• A Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford by John Everett Millais
• “The Triumph of Cleopatra” by William Etty
• “A Tale from the Decameron” by John William Waterhouse
• “The Daphnephoria” by Frederic Leighton
• “The Scapegoat” by William Holman Hunt

Highlights Tour of the Lady Lever Art Gallery

The Black Brunswicker by John Everett Millais

The Black Brunswicker by John Everett Millais was inspired by the exploits of the Black Brunswickers, a German volunteer corps of the Napoleonic Wars, during the Waterloo campaign.

Millais depicts a Brunswicker about to depart for battle. His sweetheart, wearing a ballgown, restrains him, trying to push the door closed, while he pulls it open.

This scene was imagined to have occurred during a ball, that took place on 15 June 1815, from which the officers departed to join troops at the Battle of Quatre Bras.

The artist has expertly contrasted the officer’s black broadcloth and the lady’s pearl-white satin in a moment of tender conflict.

A Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford” by John Everett Millais

A Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford by John Everett Millais depicts an aged medieval knight helping two young peasant children over a river. The peasant children are carrying wood for winter fuel.

The title of the painting refers to the medieval poem Sir Isumbras and his good deeds. When first exhibited, the painting was extremely controversial and was attacked by many critics.

The theme of the Christian Chivalry was a topical one at the time, and Millais was also influenced by Albrecht Dürer’s print, The Knight, Death, and the Devil.

Despite its first negative reception, the painting inspired several other images of chivalric knights.

“The Triumph of Cleopatra” by William Etty

“The Triumph of Cleopatra” by William Etty depicts a scene in which the Queen of Egypt, travels to Tarsus in Cilicia aboard a magnificently decorated ship to cement an alliance with the Roman general Mark Antony.

Etty created a cramped and crowded composition with people in various states of undress, gathering on the bank to greet the ship’s arrival.

The Triumph of Cleopatra is based loosely on Plutarch’s Life of Antony as repeated in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.

The painting was an immediate success, making Etty famous almost overnight. Buoyed by its reception, Etty devoted much of the next decade to create further history paintings containing nude figures.

“A Tale from the Decameron” by John William Waterhouse

“A Tale from the Decameron” by John William Waterhouse depicts a scene from Boccaccio’s Decameron.

The Decameron contains a collection of 100 tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men who are sheltering in a secluded villa just outside Florence to escape the Black Death of 1348.

In Italy, during the time of the Black Death, ten young people flee from plague-ridden Florence to a deserted villa in the countryside for two weeks.

To pass the days, each member of the party tells a story, except for one day per week for chores, and the Sunday during which they do no work at all.

“The Daphnephoria” by Frederic Leighton

“The Daphnephoria” by Frederic Leighton depicts an ancient Greek religious festival held every ninth year at Thebes in Boeotia, Greece in honor of Apollo.

During the festival procession, the people held laurel branches and sung to Apollo. At the head of the procession walked a youth who acted as the chosen priest of Apollo. He was given the special title of the “Daphnephoros.”

Leighton’s depiction features a procession of young people with a richly dressed “Daphnephoros,” wearing a golden crown.

The Daphnephoros leads the procession to the temple of Apollo, where he will dedicate to Apollo two bronze tripods. The tripods are carried on the shoulders of the youth at the far left of the painting.

The youth who was selected as the “Daphnephoros,” which in Greek meant the “laurel bearer,” had to come from a prominent family, had to be of noble appearance, and his parents had to be healthy. 

“The Scapegoat” by William Holman Hunt

“The Scapegoat” by William Holman Hunt shows a white goat with a red cloth between its horns. The goat stands on the salted shore of the Dead Sea. The background is an evening landscape with the setting sun reflected on a mountain range and a full moon low in the sky.

The desolate scene includes a skull to the left and a dead animal’s skeletal remains to the right. The painting symbolizes the “scapegoat” described in the Book of Leviticus.

In the Bible, a scapegoat is one of two kid goats. One goat was sacrificed from the pair, and the living “scapegoat” was released into the wilderness, taking with it all sins and impurities.

The concept first appears in Leviticus, in which a goat is designated to be cast into the desert to carry away the sins of the community.