This new study examines how nineteenth-century industrial Lancashire became a leading national and international art centre. By the end of the century almost every major town possessed an art gallery, while Lancashire art schools and artists were recognised at home and abroad. The book documents the remarkable rise of visual art across the county, along with the rise of the commercial and professional classes who supported it. It examines how Lancashire looked to great civilisations of the past for inspiration while also embracing new industrial technologies and distinctively modern art movements. This volume will be essential reading for all those with an interest in the new industrial society of the nineteenth century, from art lovers and collectors to urban and social historians.

There are over thirty public art galleries in north-west England with substantial permanent collections. The superb collections in Liverpool at the Walker Art Gallery and in Manchester at the City Art Gallery and at the Whitworth Art Gallery are well known, while Lord Leverhulme’s splendid British paintings and sculptures preserved at the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight have an international reputation. For Pre-Raphaelite, Classical, Aesthetic and Impressionist British art and much else, north-west England cumulatively has public collections unmatched even in London. This book is both a guide and a history to these collections as well as other less famous public collections containing little-known masterpieces.