A Tour of Manchester Art Gallery’s Remarkable Collection

Overview

A Tour of Manchester Art Gallery’s Remarkable Collection of Pre-Raphaelite Paintings

Pre-Raphaelite paintings have a way of striking you, even from a distance. They are often bejewelled with luminous colour, redolent of some beautiful dream world and indeed, many evoke the same sense of a lost past that can be found in poetry. The human figures seem almost too real, whilst the trees, grasses, leaves and flowers appear possessed of a vibrant living force.

Manchester Art Gallery has some of the very finest examples but of course, like much else in the art world, they tend to divide opinion. Gallery visitors come from far and wide to see them but there are also detractors who find the works overly sentimental.

Join volunteer guide John Ward in a quest to determine whether or not these world famous masterpieces speak as powerfully to us as they once did to our forebears.