Lady Lever Art Gallery Artwork of the Month

August 2009: Cromwell on his Farm by Ford Madox Brown

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The central figure in this painting is Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658). After his death Cromwell gained a highly negative reputation as a ruthless tyrant. It was not until the publication of Thomas Carlyle’s 'The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell' in 1845 that this image of him began to change. Carlyle (1795-1881) was one of the most influential essayists and historians of the nineteenth century. He focused on Cromwell’s positive achievements and portrayed him as a self-made man and a reformer of passionate moral conviction. Cromwell became the hero of the reformers, liberals and new men of nineteenth-century England.

June 2009: Castles in the Air by William Reynolds-Stephens

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In 1925, the artist William Reynolds Stephens described his sculpture 'Castles in the Air' as an "attempt to record the actuality to an imaginative child of fairy tales, the characters associated with which are so readily visualised by many a child mind".

To convey this idea, the artist takes as his subject a slender, little girl. She is sat on her throne-like chair with her storybook left open in her lap. She looks out into the distance, lost in her own imagined world, surrounded by what the artist termed "flowers of fancy". Actual "castles in the air" are placed above her head to indicate how real fairy stories are to this little girl. The sculpture is made of a number of different materials, including bronze, mother of pearl, silver and semi-precious red stones. The artist described his use of mother of pearl and silver to create the "castles in the air" in order "to give as light an effect as possible".

William Reynolds-Stephens (1862 - 1943) was born in Detroit in the United States to British parents. He spent his childhood in England and Germany and originally trained to be an engineer. He attended the Royal Academy School schools in 1884 and won prizes for both paintings and sculpture in 1887.

During his career he was commended for his versatility as an artist and was described in the Magazine of Art in 1897 as being representative of artists who were prepared "to seize the most appropriate means afforded by art for the realistation of the particular intention of the moment". His varied work included painting pictures, designing furniture, textiles, and whole rooms in addition to sculpture. From 1886 he exhibited regularly in the Royal Academy exhibitions and from 1894 he showed exclusively there as a sculptor. Works by Reynolds-Stephens, in other public collections, include The Royal Game, in the Tate's collection and a number of portrait busts in the collection of The National Portrait Gallery.

Reynolds-Stephens was part of the art movement, the New Sculpture, a term coined by the literary critic Edmund Gosse to describe the work of a number of artists working between 1879 and 1894. The New Sculpture was seen as a reaction to the neo-classical work of sculptors such as John Gibson. Reynolds-Stephens' work reflects the poetic symbolism that prevailed in the work of some artists of the New Sculpture movement.

'Castles in the Air' was purchased by Lever on 3rd February 1916 following a visit to the artist's studio. Writing to Arthur Tooth, an art dealer, Lever commented that “the expression of the child's face greatly fascinated me". He commissioned Tooth to help him obtain the sculpture for a fair price. Lever's purchase of this sculpture highlights his role as an important patron of sculpture during this period. It is likely that Lever was introduced to the work of Reynolds-Stephens through his friendship with two of the leading artists of the New Sculpture, Edward Onslow Ford and William Goscombe John. Work by both of these artists is also on display at the Lady Lever Art Gallery.

May 2009: Mrs Peter Beckford by Sir Joshua Reynolds

Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The lady is Louisa, second daughter of George Pitt, 1st Baron Rivers and married to a Dorset landowner whose principal enthusiasms in life are hunting and dog-breeding. Louisa took little interest in her husband’s pursuits, nor in the literary works for which he would be remembered: Thoughts upon Hare and Fox Hunting and Essays on Hunting, Containing a Philosophical Enquiry into the nature of Scent. ‘She was a creature of a fiercely passionate nature, a spirit all compact of fire’, wrote one commentator, while Peter Beckford ‘was a cynical man of the world with the looseness of principle and the hardness of temper of the typical eighteenth-century “fine gentleman.”’ Their marriage, predictably, was a wreck. But at the time this portrait was painted Louisa was infatuated with her husband’s cousin. William Beckford was the complete antithesis of Peter. Poet, musician, novelist, architect, connoisseur, Gothic and Oriental fantasist, he possessed the fabulous wealth, from his father’s vast Jamaican sugar plantations, to put his ostentatious fantasies into practice. When he travelled in Europe the size of his retinue resulted in his being mistaken for the Austrian Emperor. He celebrated his coming of age in September 1781, with a party costing an unprecedented £40,000.

April 2009: Grande Arabesque © Nationalmuseum, Stockholm by Edgar Degas

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The sculptures 'Grande Arabesque' and 'Dancer looking at her sole' were not intended to be viewed by anyone but the artist himself. If Degas had meant them to be seen by the public he would have exhibited them but only one of his sculptures was ever shown during his lifetime: the 'Little Ballet Dancer Aged Fourteen Years'. It caused outrage and disgust. ‘Formidable because mindless,’ wrote the critic Paul Mantz in Le Temps, ‘she pushes forward, with animal effrontery, a face which is more like a little muzzle – a quite appropriate word in the circumstances, for the poor child has begun her training as a petit rat.’ The term, ‘little rat’, is still used for a member of the corps de ballet. ‘Why is she so ugly?’ Mantz asked. ‘Why does her forehead, half –covered by her hair, already – like her mouth – bear the stamp of such deep-rooted vice?'

March 2009: Clytie by Frederic Lord Leighton

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The sun was a potent symbol for Frederic Leighton, President of the Royal Academy. ‘Sunlight’, he wrote in one of his notebooks, ‘can never be accessory – its glory is paramount where it appears everything except water is tributary to its song of splendour.’

February 2009: Natural History on a Plate - exploring the link between Wedgwood and Darwin by Josiah Wedgwood

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Josiah Wedgwood had been a great friend of Dr Erasmus Darwin. Both were members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, the gathering of scientifically-minded men who met once a month at the time of the full moon, so that there would be enough light to ride home in the dark. Erasmus Darwin was a radical thinker and was already working towards a theory of evolution, although it was his grandson Charles who worked this out and published it as 'The Origin of Species'. Erasmus Darwin was a keen botanist, which even inspired poetry.

January 2009: Antinous by the Thomas Hope collection

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The Hope Collection – the legacy of a great collector

December 2008: 15th century Spanish altarpiece paintings: 'The Life of St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins' by Valencian School

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Spanish 15th century paintings at the Lady Lever Art Gallery

November 2008: Mrs James Paine and the Misses Paine by Joshua Reynolds

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Imagine that the older lady on the left of the picture was not there and that the white cloud extended unbroken across the corner space. It was that picture - of two young girls sitting at a harpsichord, a lapdog slumped on a stool, some easily legible sheet music and an awkward sense of something missing – which William Hesketh Lever paid £4520. 5s for in 1918. It was not for another 17 years that an area of over-painting was removed and the head of the older lady revealed.

September 2008: Women artists in Masterpiece Watercolours and Drawings by Kate Greenaway and Helen Allingham

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

This painting is called 'Old Cottage, Pinner' by Helen Allingham.

August 2008: Jasperware for the Dessert Table by Wedgwood

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Josiah Wedgwood invented his most famous type of pottery, jasper ware, in 1774-75. The first large products for which he intended it were tablets for interior decoration, for example to be inlaid into chimneypieces. In the 1780s he began using it for decorative vases and flower containers, but he did not make it into dinner ware. He wanted to keep it as an exclusive kind of pottery by restricting its use to objects that had high status.

July 2008: Thrush’s Nest with eggs and a basket of primroses against a mossy bank (LL 3859) by William Henry Hunt

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Hunt often composed ‘still lives’ in his studio, using materials he gathered in the wild. This perhaps explains why the primrose is placed in a basket and is not growing in the ground. The very realistic background of moss shows a great command of technique; however there is insufficient detail to be able to identify the moss accurately.