Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

attributed to Jean Clouet
Portrait of Marguerite de Navarre
ca. 1527
oil on panel
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Lucas Cranach the Elder
Nymph of the Fountain
1534
oil on panel
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool proudly refers to itself as "the National Gallery of the North" and boasts that the core of the collection has been on public display in the city for the past two centuries. The present temple-like building and the attached name "Walker" go back about 130 years to a defining series of high-Victorian backers (civic worthies, for the most part, rather than aristocrats). Their standards were evidently as high as anyone could wish, and the material at their disposal was often of staggering quality, as appears below.  

attributed to Nicholas Hilliard
Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I
1573
oil on panel
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Paulus Bor
Mary Magdalene
ca. 1635
oil on panel
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Godfrey Kneller
Portrait of King Charles II
ca. 1685
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men
With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen
Their baaing vanities, to browse away
The comfortable green and juicy hay
From human pastures; or, O torturing fact!
Who, through an idiot blink, will see unpack'd 
Fire-branded foxes to sear up and singe
Our gold and ripe-ear'd hopes. With not one tinge
Of sanctuary splendour, not a sight
Able to face an owl's, they still are dight
By the blear-eyed nations in empurpled vests,
And crowns, and turbans. With unladen breasts
Save of blown self-applause, they proudly mount
To their spirit's perch, their being's high account,
Their tiptop nothings, their dull skies, their thrones  
Amid the fierce intoxicating tones
Of trumpets, shoutings, and belabour'd drums,
And sudden cannon. 

 from Endymion (1818) by John Keats

Francesco Solimena
Diana and Endymion
ca. 1705-10
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

William Hogarth
Portrait of David Garrick as King Richard III
ca. 1745
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Johan Zoffany
Family of Sir William Young
ca. 1767-69
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Thomas Gainsborough
Portrait of Isabella, Viscountess Molyneux
later Countess of Sefton

1769
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Léonard Defrance
Interior of a Foundry
1789
oil on panel
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Giovanni Tognolli
Finding of Aesculapius
ca. 1822-39
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Edward Burne-Jones
Study for The Sleeping Knights
ca. 1870
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

John Everett Millais
The Martyr of the Solway
ca. 1871
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Sir William Blake Richmond
Venus and Anchises
1889
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Anchises of Troy stood in such high favor with the goddess Venus that she bore his child, according to Ovid and Virgil. This child became the hero Aeneas. When Troy fell to the Greeks, Aeneas saved his father Anchises (who had by then become a feeble old man) by carrying him on his shoulders out of the burning city. This scene (including also Ascanius, little son of Aeneas) was represented countless times by Baroque sculptors and painters. They may or may not have idealized the participants, but they definitely relished the oddness of the piled-up figure-group.