Victorian Radicals

From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts and Crafts Movement 

at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery until 31 October 

The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool may have completed its three-year refurbishment last year, but the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is still in the throes of doing the same. However, they will have a partially re-opening this year, exhibiting their phenomenal collection of Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces in the Gas Hall, which could itself be one of the exhibits - a superb building which reveals the brilliance of Victoria engineering and design. 

As well as charting the progress of the Pre-Raphaelite movement through three generations of artists, it will also show how the original, highly idealistic brotherhood gradually morphed into the more practically minded - although still entirely idealistic - Arts and Crafts Movement, while others were satisfied with beauty as a means and an end in itself: the exponents of the Aesthetic Style. 

The exhibition was an enormous success when it toured America during the early stages of  the museum's refurbishment, and promises to be just as popular when it returns home this month. This talk will also effectively from the first part of a second 'occasional' series, which will overlap with the first when I get to talk about the Pre-Raphaelites during my stroll around the Walker. These two will eventually be followed by a visit to the Lady Lever Art Gallery on the Wirral, whose collection includes Millais' masterpiece Bubbles, better known as an advert for soap, perhaps, but a great painting nevertheless!