Ford Maddox Brown
Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer
This artist is renowned in Manchester for the
murials he painted in Manchester Town Hall and only just managed to complete this particular work before he died. There is also a huge
murial painted by him which was exhibited extensively but which is now owned by New South Wales and is one of their permanent exhibitions.
Although he and his parents were English, he did grow up in France and started his career as a painter in Paris and other European cities before returning to England and coming to Manchester because he had found it difficult to exhibit and sell work on the
Continent.
The curator of this particular collection of paintings, ............... , took over 2 years to gather together many wonderful paintings, obtaining them from private collections and also many art galleries throughout the world.
Meg Parnell gave her usual unstinting support to Mary Gifford and
Henshaws to enable our group to enjoy a smooth and very
pleasant visit to the gallery.
We looked at 6 different paintings, all of which showed the greatest detail that an artist can portray on a canvas. One of the paintings was of his wife and baby standing outside in a landscape with sheep and lambs. He was one of the very first painters to depict people in natural
environments and landscapes.
Ann
Hornsby enhanced our visit with her vivid and detailed audio descriptions of all of the paintings we looked at and enabled us to visualise what the artist had portrayed. The curator also had some postcard replicas of some of the paintings we looked at which was a great assistance to those of us with some vision to see in greater detail the painting itself.
At the end of the tour we adjourned to the
gallery cafe and enjoyed being waited upon by the gallery staff,
giving us a choice of tea or coffee, and Mary had provided mince pies all round as a parting gift from her group
budget to celebrate our
Christmas break.
Many thanks to Mary and her volunteer drivers for once again ensuring that we were
safely taken to and from the venue which we might not otherwise have been able to visit.
