The William Hesketh Lever display

The principal components of this display are ethnographic and Masonic items. It also contains several miscellaneous items such as watches, sundials, weapons and other objects that do not easily fit into any of the other categories of Leverhulme’s art collection.

The ethnographic core of this collection has a longer history of public display than the gallery’s art collection. It was shown in the Lever Free Library and Museum in Port Sunlight from 1903.

Much of the collection was assembled during Leverhulme’s business trips and world tours. Besides being shown in Port Sunlight many items were exhibited at the Lever Brothers’ London headquarters in Blackfriars. After Leverhulme’s death the gallery’s trustees presented some of the most important pieces, including two canoes from the Solomon Islands, to the British Museum.

Highlights

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‘Sunlight Soap’ paintings

Also held within this collection are the ‘Sunlight Soap’ paintings, bought specifically to advertise Lever Brothers’ products and with which Leverhulme began his art collection. In these works he was looking for cheerful figures of ordinary people set in authentically humble interiors. It was in this area that the expanding soap market lay.

Some artists, such as William Frith, objected to the use of their paintings as soap adverts. Leverhulme gradually ceased simply reproducing their paintings with his company name printed over them. Instead he issued high quality colour reproductions of paintings as prizes for collecting quantities of soap wrappers. These images often emphasized the importance of good clothes, personal appearance and cleanliness in general.

The paintings

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