Ruskin and Rossetti. © GF Watts Gallery
Exhibition preview: Victorian Artists in Photographs – The World of GF Watts, at the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, until July 13 2008.
The Mercer Art Gallery is hosting an exhibition of photographs whose roll call of sitters reads like a who's who of the Victorian world.
GF Watts in his studio. © GF Watts Gallery
Artists, literary figures, politicians and the venerable Queen Victoria herself all feature in the collection, which has come from the GF Watts Gallery in Surrey.
Among the 150 images are the Pre-Raphaelites Rossetti, Holman Hunt and Burne Jones, Frederick Lord Leighton and Harrogate's own William Powell Frith.
Ellen Terry. © GF Watts Gallery
Other familiar figures include politicians William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli, and influential thinkers Ruskin, Carlyle and Darwin. Literary greats Tennyson, Dickens and George Eliot are also captured, as is actress Ellen Terry.
The artist GF Watts is also shown, and a section is devoted to artists' models.
The remarkable selection is drawn from an enormous collection amassed by late expert on Victorian painting, Jeremy Mass. It was recently acquired by Rob Dickins CBE, Chairman of Warner Music UK from 1983-1998. Dickins presented the collection to the Watts Gallery.
Burne Jones and his grandchildren. © GF Watts Gallery
A complementary selection of Victorian paintings from the Harrogate Fine Art Collection is also on show, including WP Frith's 'Many Happy Returns fo the Day' and the newly restored Lilith by GF Watts.
This is an exhibition preview. If you've been to see the show, why not let us know what you think?
