London's Leighton House Museum and Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery have just opened two major Pre-Raphaelite exhibitions

Pre-Raphaelites on Paper: Victorian Drawings from the Lanigan Collection at Leighton House Museum© Kevin Moran Photography
A Canadian, Dr Dennis T Lanigan, spent 30 years compiling the works in the London show, set in Lord Leighton’s opulent home and studio and ranging from preparatory sketches to highly finished drawings.

Dr Dennis T Lanigan has spent decades assembling a collection by more than 60 artists© Kevin Moran Photography
“John Miller has always been central to the Pre-Raphaelite story,” says Ann Bukantas, the Head of Fine Art at National Museums Liverpool.

Arthur Hughes, In the Grass (circa 1864-5)© Museums Sheffield
"We have new information about Miller’s background, and the business dealings that enabled him to collect paintings – and sometimes forced him to sell them.”

Ford Madox Brown, Walton-on-the-Naze (1860) (at the Walker Art Gallery)© Birmingham Museums Trust
“For many years, we’ve planned to tell the story of the Pre-Raphaelites through a Liverpool lens,” says Sandra Penketh, the Director of Art Galleries. “The Pre-Raphaelite movement is an incredibly appealing one.”

William Lindsay Windus, Burd Helen (1856)© Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool
“The support of the city of Liverpool was invaluable in establishing and positioning Pre-Raphaelitism within the Victorian art world.”

Ford Madox Brown, The Coat of Many Colours (1866)© Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool
“In 1982 I acquired my first work by the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Movement artists I really wanted to collect – an oil sketch by Frederic Leighton for Greek Girl Dancing,” says Lanigan.

Frederick Sandys, King Pelles Daughter Bearing the Vessel of the Sangreal (1861)© NGC, Promised Gift from the Lanigan Collection
"I never would have imagined that 40 years later pieces from my collection would be exhibited there.”

Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Study for The Vintage Festival (circa 1869)© NGC, Promised Gift from the Lanigan Collection
Studies for Edward Burne-Jones’ The Wheel of Fortune (1883), Holman Hunt’s Eve of St Agnes (1848) and Leighton’s Cymon and Iphigenia (1884) are among them.

Frederic Leighton, Study of a Male Head for Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna is Carried in Processsion through the Streets of Florence (1853)© NGC
Rossetti’s wife, Lizzie Siddal, also has her works shown, and there is a study by William Morris for his only known easel painting, La Belle Iseult, made in around 1857.

Frederic Leighton, Study of Iphigenia for Cymon and Iphigenia (1883)© NGC, Promised Gift from the Lanigan Collection
“The Lanigan Collection is as thoughtful and detailed as it is important.”

Edward Clifford, Mens Conscia Recti (A Mind Concious of Rectitude) (1868)© NGC
“Frederic Leighton was the first artist outside Canada whose work was collected by our institution,” he says.

The collection is being displayed in public in the UK for the first time© Kevin Moran Photography
"To say that we are thrilled about this collaboration is an understatement.”
- Pre-Raphaelites on Paper: Victorian Drawings from the Lanigan Collection is at Leighton House Museum, London until May 29 2016. Follow the museum on Twitter @RBKCLeightonH and Facebook. Pre-Raphaelites: Beauty and Rebellion is at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool until June 5. Follow the gallery on Twitter @walkergallery and Facebook.
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