Art Treasures Exhibition, Manchester 1857
Encyclopedia
The Art Treasures of Great Britain was an exhibition of fine art
held in Manchester
, England, from 5 May to 17 October 1857. It remains the largest art exhibition to be held in the UK, possibly in the world, with over 16,000 works on display. It attracted over 1.3 million visitors in the 142 days it was open, about four times the population of Manchester at that time, many of whom visited on organised railway excursions. Its selection and display of artworks had a formative influence on the public art collections that were being established in the UK at the time, such as the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum
.
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Manchester was a small provincial town in the medieval period, but by 1855 it was a city dominated by industrial activity, particularly its 95 cotton mill
s and 1,724 warehouses. It was visited by French historian Alexis de Tocqueville
in 1835, who scathingly wrote that:
Manchester became a city
in 1853, and the exhibition was financed by the city's increasingly affluent business grandees, who were motivated by a desire to demonstrate their cultural attainment, and inspired by the Paris International Exhibition
in 1855, the Dublin Exhibition
in 1853, and the Great Exhibition in 1851; there had been an "Exposition of British Industrial Art in Manchester" in 1845. Unlike these earlier exhibitions, the Manchester exhibition was restricted to works of art: there would be no industrial or trade items on display.
The idea for an exhibition in Manchester was first expressed in a letter sent on 10 February 1856 by John Connellan Deane, son of Irish architect Sir Thomas Deane
and a commissioner for the 1853 Dublin Exhibition, to Thomas Fairbairn
son of Manchester iron founder Sir William Fairbairn
and a commissioner for the 1851 Great Exhibition. The concept quickly gained momentum: after an initial meeting on 26 March 1856, a guarantee fund of £74,000 was soon underwritten by around 100 contributors, and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
granted their patronage.
A General Committee established in May 1856, chaired by the Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire
Lord Ellesmere
(and, after his death in February 1857, by the Lord Overstone
), assisted by an Executive Committee chaired by Fairbairn. Deane was appointed as General Commissioner, on an annual salary of £1,000. The committee took artistic advice from German art historian Gustav Waagen, who had published the first 3 volumes of his Treasures of Art in Great Britain in 1854. George Scharf
was appointed as the exhibition's Art Secretary; he became secretary and director to the newly founded National Portrait Gallery in 1857.
owned by Sir Humphrey de Trafford, Bt., which he had previously let as a cricket ground
. Manchester Cricket Club surrendered its lease and moved a short distance to Old Trafford Cricket Ground. The site was conveniently adjacent to Manchester Botanical Garden and to the west of an existing railway line of the Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway
. The railway company built a new station (now Old Trafford Metrolink station
) which was used by thousands of visitors from the city and from further afield on organised excursions.
C.D. Young & Co, of London and Edinburgh – already engaged as builders of the new art museum in South Kensington
(which later became the V&A) – were appointed as contractors to build a temporary iron-and-glass structure similar to the Crystal Palace
in London, 656 feet (199.9 m) long and 200 feet (61 m) wide, with one central barrel vault
56 feet (17.1 m) wide with a 24 feet (7.3 m) wide hip vault on either side roofing a 104 feet (31.7 m) wide central gallery running the length of the building, and narrower barrel vaults 45 feet (13.7 m) wide to either side, all crossed by a 104 feet (31.7 m) transept
towards the western end. The design of the main structure has been attributed to Francis Fowke
, who later designed the Natural History Museum
in London, and an ornamental brick entrance at the eastern end was designed by local architect Edward Salomons
. The materials used included 650 LT of cast iron
, 600 LT of wrought iron
, 65000 square feet (6,038.7 m²) of glass and 1.5 million bricks.
Internally, the building included a large hall, with corrugated iron sides and vaults supported by iron columns, with space for an orchestra at one end and a large pipe organ
by Kirtland and Jardine. Each column bore the exhibition's monogram: "ATE". The hall was subdivided internally by partitions, creating separate galleries. The interior was lined with wood panels covered with calico. Most internal decoration was done by John Gregory Crace
of London. A 24 feet (7.3 m) wide gallery ran around the transept at an upper level. The central third of each vault was glazed, providing ample diffuse light. In the summer, the glazing in the picture galleries was shaded with calico to prevent damage to the artworks, and firemen played water on the roof as a form of rudimentary air conditioning when the interior temperature exceeded 70 °F (21.1 °C). Young & Co's original quote of £24,500 proved over-optimistic, and cost overruns pushed the final bill up to £37,461.
Over the entrance was inscribed the first line of John Keats
's Endymion
: "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever". By the exit was a line from Alexander Pope
's Prologue to Joseph Addison
's Cato
: "To wake the soul by tender strokes of art".
The hall also included two public refreshment rooms, First Class and Second Class, later supplemented by a tent outside, and a separate royal reception room. Following his visit, American author Nathaniel Hawthorne
wrote that, in the Second Class refreshment room:
The exhibition comprised over 16,000 works split into 10 categories – Pictures by Ancient Masters, Pictures by Modern Masters, British Portraits and Miniatures, Water Colour Drawings, Sketches and Original Drawings (Ancient), Engravings, Illustrations of Photography, Works of Oriental Art, Varied Objects of Oriental Art, and Sculpture. The collection included 5,000 paintings and drawings by "Modern Masters" such as Hogarth
, Gainsborough
, Turner
, Constable
, and the Pre-Raphaelites, and 1,000 works by European Old Master
s, including Rubens
, Raphael
, Titian
and Rembrandt; several hundred sculptures; photographs, including Crimean War
images by James Robertson
and the photographic tableau Two Ways of Life by Oscar Gustave Rejlander
; and other works of decorative arts, such as Wedgwood
china, Sèvres
and Meissen porcelain
, Venetian glass, Limoges enamel
s, ivories, tapestries, furniture, tableware and armour. The Committee bought the collection of Jules Soulages of Toulouse, founder of the Société Archéologique du Midi de la France for £13,500 to form the core of the collection of medieval and Renaissance decorative arts. The collection had previously been exhibited at Marlborough House
in London with a view to being acquired for the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A), but HM Treasury
refused to fund the purchase. They were later acquired by the V&A.
The works were organised chronologically, to demonstrate the development of art, with works from northern Europe on one wall contrasted with contemporaneous works from southern Europe on the facing wall. Although the collection included works from Europe and the Orient, it had a clear emphasis on British works.
Most public British collections were in a nascent state, so most of the works were borrowed from 700 private collections. Many had never been exhibited in public before. The exhibition included the Madonna and Child with Saint John and the Angels
, which had only recently been attributed to Michelangelo
. The showing of this unfinished work caused much excitement, and it is still known as the Manchester Madonna. French art critic Théophile Thoré commented that:
Not all private owners responded positively to the committee's entreaties to lend their works of art. William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire
reportedly declined, replying contemptuously: What in the world do you want with art in Manchester? Why can't you stick to your cotton spinning?
only a few days before, on 30 April. The exhibition was visited ceremonially by Queen Victoria on 29 June, during her second visit to Manchester
, and then by the Queen and her entourage privately on 30 June. The exhibition ran until 17 October 1857, but was closed on Wednesday 7 October 1857 to mark a "day of humiliation" on account if the on-going Indian Mutiny.
Season tickets were sold in advance for 2 guineas
(including admission on the two state ceremonial occasions) or 1 guinea (without). During the first 10 days, and on Thursdays, daily admission was half a crown; on other days, admission was reduced to 1 shilling
. An experiment in reducing admission to sixpence after 2 pm on Saturdays – to encourage working class visitors – did not noticeably increase revenue and was abandoned.
The exhibition attracted more than 1.3 million visitors – about four times the population of Manchester in 1857. Prominent visitors included the King of Belgium
, the Queen of the Netherlands
, Louis Napoleon, Benjamin Disraeli, William Ewart Gladstone
, Lord Palmerston, the 2nd Duke of Wellington
, Charles Dickens
, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Florence Nightingale
, Elizabeth Gaskell
, John Ruskin
, Nathaniel Hawthorne
, and Maria Mitchell
. Titus Salt
commissioned three trains to transport 2,600 of his factory workers from Saltaire
to visit on Saturday 19 September. Many other railway excursions were organised, mostly from the towns and cities around Manchester, but also Shrewsbury, Preston, Leeds, Grimsby, Nottingham, and Lincoln. Thomas Cook
had arranged excursions to the Great Exhibition in 1851 and the Paris Exhibition in 1855, and this time he organised "moonlight" excursions from Newcastle
, leaving at midnight and returning late that evening.
Friedrich Engels
wrote to Karl Marx
about the exhibition: "Everyone up here is an art lover just now and the talk is all of the pictures at the exhibition".
To entertain the visitors, Charles Hallé
was asked to organise an orchestra to perform a daily concert, in addition to a daily organ recital. After the exhibition closed, he continued running the orchestra, which became the Hallé Orchestra. A temporary "Art Treasure Hotel" housed some visitors overnight, and others were directed to local boarding houses.
The exhibition gave rise to several different publications. The committee published a 234-page catalogue, a series of "Handbooks" by type of object, and an illustrated weekly periodical "The Art Treasures Examiner". An apparently satirical book by "Tennyson Longfellow Smith" of "Poems inspired by Certain Pictures at the Art Treasures Exhibition" was illustrated with caricatures. A 16 page booklet was titled the "What to see, and Where to see it: The Operative's Guide to the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition" (an "operative" was the operator of a machine, as in a mill).
Sales of season tickets raised more than £20,000, added to daily admission fees amounting to nearly £61,000. Another £8,111 was raised by selling over 160,000 catalogues, plus £239 from selling concert programmes. Almost £1,500 came from the charges for safe-keeping of personal effects at the cloakroom, and £3,346 from the refreshments contract.
. The railway that transported visitors to the site did even better, making a profit of about £50,000. After the exhibition ended, the exhibited works were returned to their owners, and the temporary building and its contents were auctioned. Glass display cases were bought by the new museums under construction in South Kensington. The building was entirely demolished by November 1858. Having cost over £37,000 in all, the materials comprising the building sold for little more than £7,000; internal fittings and decorations that cost £18,581 sold for £2,836.
The site became part of Manchester Botanical Gardens, and was used to hold a Royal Jubilee Exhibition in 1887, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne. The gardens closed in 1907, becoming White City Pleasure Gardens in 1907 and near the present-day White City Retail Park.
The exhibition was a model for the display of art in public galleries in the second half of the 19th century. Although the works returned to private collections, many found their way into public collections over the following decades, having usefully boosted their reputation by their appearance in Manchester. The National Portrait Gallery in London had been founded in 1856 and opened its doors to the public in 1858. Scharf was its first director, and arranged the displays in chronological order, as the Manchester exhibition had done.
A second but smaller National Art Treasures Exhibition was held in Folkestone
in May to October 1886. A large exhibition of paintings was held in Bethnal Green
, a industrial part of the East End of London
, from 1872, designed specifically to attract working class visitors. This was in what is now the V&A Museum of Childhood
, using prefabricated buildings moved from South Kensington.
An exhibition was held at Manchester Art Gallery
in 2007/8 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Art Treasures Exhibition, and a conference was held at the University of Manchester in November 2007.
Fine art
Fine art or the fine arts encompass art forms developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application. Art is often a synonym for fine art, as employed in the term "art gallery"....
held in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, England, from 5 May to 17 October 1857. It remains the largest art exhibition to be held in the UK, possibly in the world, with over 16,000 works on display. It attracted over 1.3 million visitors in the 142 days it was open, about four times the population of Manchester at that time, many of whom visited on organised railway excursions. Its selection and display of artworks had a formative influence on the public art collections that were being established in the UK at the time, such as the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
.
Background
Cotton mill
A cotton mill is a factory that houses spinning and weaving machinery. Typically built between 1775 and 1930, mills spun cotton which was an important product during the Industrial Revolution....
s and 1,724 warehouses. It was visited by French historian Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution . In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in...
in 1835, who scathingly wrote that:
A sort of black smoke covers the city ... From this foul drain, the greatest stream of human industry flows out to fertilise the world.
Manchester became a city
City status in the United Kingdom
City status in the United Kingdom is granted by the British monarch to a select group of communities. The holding of city status gives a settlement no special rights other than that of calling itself a "city". Nonetheless, this appellation carries its own prestige and, consequently, competitions...
in 1853, and the exhibition was financed by the city's increasingly affluent business grandees, who were motivated by a desire to demonstrate their cultural attainment, and inspired by the Paris International Exhibition
Exposition Universelle (1855)
The Exposition Universelle of 1855 was an International Exhibition held on the Champs-Elysées in Paris from May 15 to November 15, 1855. Its full official title was the Exposition Universelle des produits de l'Agriculture, de l'Industrie et des Beaux-Arts de Paris 1855.The exposition was a major...
in 1855, the Dublin Exhibition
Great Industrial Exhibition (1853)
The Great Industrial Exhibition in 1853 was held in Dublin, Ireland. In its day, it was the largest international event to be held in Ireland. The Irish Industrial Exhibition Building housed the entire fair...
in 1853, and the Great Exhibition in 1851; there had been an "Exposition of British Industrial Art in Manchester" in 1845. Unlike these earlier exhibitions, the Manchester exhibition was restricted to works of art: there would be no industrial or trade items on display.
The idea for an exhibition in Manchester was first expressed in a letter sent on 10 February 1856 by John Connellan Deane, son of Irish architect Sir Thomas Deane
Thomas Deane
Sir Thomas Deane was an Irish architect. He was the father of Sir Thomas Newenham Deane, and grandfather of Sir Thomas Manly Deane, who were also architects.-Life:...
and a commissioner for the 1853 Dublin Exhibition, to Thomas Fairbairn
Thomas Fairbairn
Sir Thomas Fairbairn, 2nd Baronet was an English industrialist and art collector.Fairbairn was born in the Polygon in Ardwick, near the centre of Manchester. He was the third of eight surviving children of Sir William Fairbairn...
son of Manchester iron founder Sir William Fairbairn
William Fairbairn
Sir William Fairbairn, 1st Baronet was a Scottish civil engineer, structural engineer and shipbuilder.-Early career:...
and a commissioner for the 1851 Great Exhibition. The concept quickly gained momentum: after an initial meeting on 26 March 1856, a guarantee fund of £74,000 was soon underwritten by around 100 contributors, and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
Prince Albert
Prince Albert was the husband and consort of Queen Victoria.Prince Albert may also refer to:-Royalty:*Prince Albert Edward or Edward VII of the United Kingdom , son of Albert and Victoria...
granted their patronage.
A General Committee established in May 1856, chaired by the Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire
Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire
This is a list of people who have served as Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire.-References:* The Lord-Lieutenant of Lancashire, Lancashire County Council...
Lord Ellesmere
Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere
Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere KG, PC , known as Lord Francis Leveson-Gower until 1833, was a British politician, writer, traveller and patron of the arts...
(and, after his death in February 1857, by the Lord Overstone
Samuel Jones-Loyd, 1st Baron Overstone
Samuel Jones-Loyd, 1st Baron Overstone was a British banker and politician.-Background and education:Loyd was the only son of Reverend Lewis Loyd and Sarah, daughter of John Jones, a Manchester banker...
), assisted by an Executive Committee chaired by Fairbairn. Deane was appointed as General Commissioner, on an annual salary of £1,000. The committee took artistic advice from German art historian Gustav Waagen, who had published the first 3 volumes of his Treasures of Art in Great Britain in 1854. George Scharf
George Scharf
Sir George Scharf KCB was an English art critic, illustrator, and director of the National Portrait Gallery.-Early years:...
was appointed as the exhibition's Art Secretary; he became secretary and director to the newly founded National Portrait Gallery in 1857.
Exhibition hall
The exhibition was held outside the city centre, on a three-acre site in Old TraffordOld Trafford
Old Trafford commonly refers to two sporting arenas:* Old Trafford, home of Manchester United F.C.* Old Trafford Cricket Ground, home of Lancashire County Cricket ClubOld Trafford can also refer to:...
owned by Sir Humphrey de Trafford, Bt., which he had previously let as a cricket ground
Botanical Gardens Cricket Ground
Botanical Gardens Cricket Ground was a cricket ground in Manchester. The ground was loacted adjacent to Manchester Botanical Garden. The ground was on land owned by Sir Humphrey de Trafford, who allowed Manchester Cricket Club to lease the ground....
. Manchester Cricket Club surrendered its lease and moved a short distance to Old Trafford Cricket Ground. The site was conveniently adjacent to Manchester Botanical Garden and to the west of an existing railway line of the Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway
Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway
The Manchester South Junction and Altrincham Railway was a suburban railway which operated a 13.7 km route between Altrincham in Cheshire and London Road Station in Manchester....
. The railway company built a new station (now Old Trafford Metrolink station
Old Trafford Metrolink station
Old Trafford Metrolink station is a station on the Metrolink light rail network in Greater Manchester, England. It is located on Warwick Road and Elsinore Road and serves Firswood, Old Trafford and Stretford....
) which was used by thousands of visitors from the city and from further afield on organised excursions.
C.D. Young & Co, of London and Edinburgh – already engaged as builders of the new art museum in South Kensington
South Kensington
South Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. It is a built-up area located 2.4 miles west south-west of Charing Cross....
(which later became the V&A) – were appointed as contractors to build a temporary iron-and-glass structure similar to the Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in...
in London, 656 feet (199.9 m) long and 200 feet (61 m) wide, with one central barrel vault
Barrel vault
A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault or a wagon vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve along a given distance. The curves are typically circular in shape, lending a semi-cylindrical appearance to the total design...
56 feet (17.1 m) wide with a 24 feet (7.3 m) wide hip vault on either side roofing a 104 feet (31.7 m) wide central gallery running the length of the building, and narrower barrel vaults 45 feet (13.7 m) wide to either side, all crossed by a 104 feet (31.7 m) transept
Transept
For the periodical go to The Transept.A transept is a transverse section, of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In Christian churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform building in Romanesque and Gothic Christian church architecture...
towards the western end. The design of the main structure has been attributed to Francis Fowke
Francis Fowke
Francis Fowke RE was a British engineer and architect, and a Captain in the Corps of Royal Engineers. Most of his architectural work was executed in the Renaissance style, although he made use of relatively new technologies to create iron framed buildings, with large open galleries and...
, who later designed the Natural History Museum
Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum is one of three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, England . Its main frontage is on Cromwell Road...
in London, and an ornamental brick entrance at the eastern end was designed by local architect Edward Salomons
Edward Salomons
Edward Salomons was an Anglo-Jewish architect based in Manchester, working in the late 19th century. He is noted for his architecture in various Gothic Revival and Italianate styles....
. The materials used included 650 LT of cast iron
Cast iron
Cast iron is derived from pig iron, and while it usually refers to gray iron, it also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys which solidify with a eutectic. The color of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due...
, 600 LT of wrought iron
Wrought iron
thumb|The [[Eiffel tower]] is constructed from [[puddle iron]], a form of wrought ironWrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon...
, 65000 square feet (6,038.7 m²) of glass and 1.5 million bricks.
Internally, the building included a large hall, with corrugated iron sides and vaults supported by iron columns, with space for an orchestra at one end and a large pipe organ
Pipe organ
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass...
by Kirtland and Jardine. Each column bore the exhibition's monogram: "ATE". The hall was subdivided internally by partitions, creating separate galleries. The interior was lined with wood panels covered with calico. Most internal decoration was done by John Gregory Crace
John Gregory Crace (designer)
John Gregory Crace was an English interior decorator and author.-Early life and education:The Crace family had been prominent London interior decorators since Edward Crace , later keeper of the royal pictures to George III, established a business in 1768...
of London. A 24 feet (7.3 m) wide gallery ran around the transept at an upper level. The central third of each vault was glazed, providing ample diffuse light. In the summer, the glazing in the picture galleries was shaded with calico to prevent damage to the artworks, and firemen played water on the roof as a form of rudimentary air conditioning when the interior temperature exceeded 70 °F (21.1 °C). Young & Co's original quote of £24,500 proved over-optimistic, and cost overruns pushed the final bill up to £37,461.
Over the entrance was inscribed the first line of John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
's Endymion
Endymion (poem)
Endymion is a poem by John Keats first published in 1818. Beginning famously with the line "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever", Endymion, like many epic poems in English , is written in rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter...
: "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever". By the exit was a line from Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
's Prologue to Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...
's Cato
Cato, a Tragedy
Cato, a Tragedy is a play written by Joseph Addison in 1712, and first performed on 14 April 1713. Based on the events of the last days of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis , a Stoic whose deeds, rhetoric and resistance to the tyranny of Julius Caesar made him an icon of republicanism, virtue,and...
: "To wake the soul by tender strokes of art".
The hall also included two public refreshment rooms, First Class and Second Class, later supplemented by a tent outside, and a separate royal reception room. Following his visit, American author Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
wrote that, in the Second Class refreshment room:
John BullJohn BullJohn Bull is a national personification of Britain in general and England in particular, especially in political cartoons and similar graphic works. He is usually depicted as a stout, middle-aged man, often wearing a Union Flag waistcoat.-Origin:...
and his female may be seen in full gulp and guzzle, swallowing vast quantities of cold boiled beef, thoroughly moistened with porter or bitter
Works exhibited
William Hogarth
William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...
, Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter.-Suffolk:Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woolen goods. At the age of thirteen he impressed his father with his penciling skills so that he let...
, Turner
J. M. W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting...
, Constable
Constable
A constable is a person holding a particular office, most commonly in law enforcement. The office of constable can vary significantly in different jurisdictions.-Etymology:...
, and the Pre-Raphaelites, and 1,000 works by European Old Master
Old Master
"Old Master" is a term for a European painter of skill who worked before about 1800, or a painting by such an artist. An "old master print" is an original print made by an artist in the same period...
s, including Rubens
Rubens
Rubens is often used to refer to Peter Paul Rubens , the Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:- People :Family name* Paul Rubens Rubens is often used to refer to Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), the Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:- People :Family name* Paul Rubens (composer) Rubens is...
, Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
, Titian
Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576 better known as Titian was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near...
and Rembrandt; several hundred sculptures; photographs, including Crimean War
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
images by James Robertson
James Robertson (photographer)
James Robertson was an English photographer and gem and coin engraver who worked in the Mediterranean region, the Crimea and possibly India. He was one of the first war photographers....
and the photographic tableau Two Ways of Life by Oscar Gustave Rejlander
Oscar Gustave Rejlander
Oscar Gustave Rejlander was a pioneering Victorian art photographer and an expert in photomontage...
; and other works of decorative arts, such as Wedgwood
Wedgwood
Wedgwood, strictly speaking Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, is a pottery firm owned by KPS Capital Partners, a private equity company based in New York City, USA. Wedgwood was founded on May 1, 1759 by Josiah Wedgwood and in 1987 merged with Waterford Crystal to create Waterford Wedgwood, an...
china, Sèvres
Sèvres
Sèvres is a commune in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris.The town is known for its porcelain manufacture, the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres, making the famous Sèvres porcelain, as well as being the location of the International Bureau of Weights...
and Meissen porcelain
Meissen porcelain
Meissen porcelain or Meissen china is the first European hard-paste porcelain that was developed from 1708 by Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus. After his death that October, Johann Friedrich Böttger, continued his work and brought porcelain to the market...
, Venetian glass, Limoges enamel
Limoges enamel
Limoges enamel was produced at Limoges, France, already the most famous, but not the most high quality, European center of vitreous enamel production by the 12th century; its works were known as Opus de Limogia or Labor Limogiae...
s, ivories, tapestries, furniture, tableware and armour. The Committee bought the collection of Jules Soulages of Toulouse, founder of the Société Archéologique du Midi de la France for £13,500 to form the core of the collection of medieval and Renaissance decorative arts. The collection had previously been exhibited at Marlborough House
Marlborough House
Marlborough House is a mansion in Westminster, London, in Pall Mall just east of St James's Palace. It was built for Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, the favourite and confidante of Queen Anne. The Duchess wanted her new house to be "strong, plain and convenient and good"...
in London with a view to being acquired for the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A), but HM Treasury
HM Treasury
HM Treasury, in full Her Majesty's Treasury, informally The Treasury, is the United Kingdom government department responsible for developing and executing the British government's public finance policy and economic policy...
refused to fund the purchase. They were later acquired by the V&A.
The works were organised chronologically, to demonstrate the development of art, with works from northern Europe on one wall contrasted with contemporaneous works from southern Europe on the facing wall. Although the collection included works from Europe and the Orient, it had a clear emphasis on British works.
Most public British collections were in a nascent state, so most of the works were borrowed from 700 private collections. Many had never been exhibited in public before. The exhibition included the Madonna and Child with Saint John and the Angels
Manchester Madonna
The Madonna and Child with St John and Angels , also known as The Manchester Madonna, is an unfinished painting by Michelangelo in the National Gallery, London. It is one of the four panel paintings by the artist, dating to Michelangelo's first period in Rome...
, which had only recently been attributed to Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
. The showing of this unfinished work caused much excitement, and it is still known as the Manchester Madonna. French art critic Théophile Thoré commented that:
La collection de Manchester vaut à peu près le LouvreLouvreThe Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
("Manchester's collection is worth almost as much as the Louvre's").
Not all private owners responded positively to the committee's entreaties to lend their works of art. William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire
William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire
William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire KG, PC , styled as Lord Cavendish of Keighley between 1831 and 1834 and known as The Earl of Burlington between 1834 and 1858, was a British landowner, benefactor and politician.-Background and education:Cavendish was the son of William Cavendish, eldest...
reportedly declined, replying contemptuously: What in the world do you want with art in Manchester? Why can't you stick to your cotton spinning?
Visitors
The exhibition was opened by Prince Albert on 5 May 1857, in mourning following the death of Princess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester and EdinburghPrincess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester and Edinburgh
The Princess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester and Edinburgh was a member of the British Royal Family, the eleventh child and fourth daughter of George III....
only a few days before, on 30 April. The exhibition was visited ceremonially by Queen Victoria on 29 June, during her second visit to Manchester
Royal Visits to Manchester and Salford During the Reign of Queen Victoria
Royal visits to Manchester and the surrounding areas in the nineteenth century signify important achievements in the city’s history and offer an insight into the development of the area during this period...
, and then by the Queen and her entourage privately on 30 June. The exhibition ran until 17 October 1857, but was closed on Wednesday 7 October 1857 to mark a "day of humiliation" on account if the on-going Indian Mutiny.
Season tickets were sold in advance for 2 guineas
Guinea (British coin)
The guinea is a coin that was minted in the Kingdom of England and later in the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Kingdom between 1663 and 1813...
(including admission on the two state ceremonial occasions) or 1 guinea (without). During the first 10 days, and on Thursdays, daily admission was half a crown; on other days, admission was reduced to 1 shilling
Shilling
The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...
. An experiment in reducing admission to sixpence after 2 pm on Saturdays – to encourage working class visitors – did not noticeably increase revenue and was abandoned.
The exhibition attracted more than 1.3 million visitors – about four times the population of Manchester in 1857. Prominent visitors included the King of Belgium
Leopold I of Belgium
Leopold I was from 21 July 1831 the first King of the Belgians, following Belgium's independence from the Netherlands. He was the founder of the Belgian line of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha...
, the Queen of the Netherlands
Sophie of Württemberg
Princess Sophia Frederika Mathilde of Württemberg was Queen of the Netherlands as the first wife of King William III of the Netherlands.-Biography:...
, Louis Napoleon, Benjamin Disraeli, William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...
, Lord Palmerston, the 2nd Duke of Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 2nd Duke of Wellington
Lieutenant-General Arthur Richard Wellesley, 2nd Duke of Wellington KG, PC , styled Lord Douro between 1812 and 1814 and Marquess of Douro between 1814 and 1852, was a British soldier and politician...
, Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale OM, RRC was a celebrated English nurse, writer and statistician. She came to prominence for her pioneering work in nursing during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night...
, Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson , often referred to simply as Mrs Gaskell, was a British novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era...
, John Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
, and Maria Mitchell
Maria Mitchell
Maria Mitchell was an American astronomer, who in 1847, by using a telescope, discovered a comet which as a result became known as the "Miss Mitchell's Comet". She won a gold medal prize for her discovery which was presented to her by King Frederick VII of Denmark. The medal said “Not in vain do...
. Titus Salt
Titus Salt
Sir Titus Salt, 1st Baronet , born in Morley, near Leeds, was a manufacturer, politician and philanthropist in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. His father Daniel Salt was a businessman and was sent Titus to Batley Grammar School...
commissioned three trains to transport 2,600 of his factory workers from Saltaire
Saltaire
Saltaire is a Victorian model village within the City of Bradford Metropolitan District, West Yorkshire, England, by the River Aire and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal...
to visit on Saturday 19 September. Many other railway excursions were organised, mostly from the towns and cities around Manchester, but also Shrewsbury, Preston, Leeds, Grimsby, Nottingham, and Lincoln. Thomas Cook
Thomas Cook
Thomas Cook of Melbourne, Derbyshire, England founded the travel agency that is now Thomas Cook Group.- Early days :...
had arranged excursions to the Great Exhibition in 1851 and the Paris Exhibition in 1855, and this time he organised "moonlight" excursions from Newcastle
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...
, leaving at midnight and returning late that evening.
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
wrote to Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
about the exhibition: "Everyone up here is an art lover just now and the talk is all of the pictures at the exhibition".
To entertain the visitors, Charles Hallé
Charles Hallé
Sir Charles Hallé was an Anglo-German pianist and conductor, and founder of The Hallé orchestra in 1858.-Life:Hallé was born in Hagen, Westphalia, Germany who after settling in England changed his name from Karl Halle...
was asked to organise an orchestra to perform a daily concert, in addition to a daily organ recital. After the exhibition closed, he continued running the orchestra, which became the Hallé Orchestra. A temporary "Art Treasure Hotel" housed some visitors overnight, and others were directed to local boarding houses.
The exhibition gave rise to several different publications. The committee published a 234-page catalogue, a series of "Handbooks" by type of object, and an illustrated weekly periodical "The Art Treasures Examiner". An apparently satirical book by "Tennyson Longfellow Smith" of "Poems inspired by Certain Pictures at the Art Treasures Exhibition" was illustrated with caricatures. A 16 page booklet was titled the "What to see, and Where to see it: The Operative's Guide to the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition" (an "operative" was the operator of a machine, as in a mill).
Sales of season tickets raised more than £20,000, added to daily admission fees amounting to nearly £61,000. Another £8,111 was raised by selling over 160,000 catalogues, plus £239 from selling concert programmes. Almost £1,500 came from the charges for safe-keeping of personal effects at the cloakroom, and £3,346 from the refreshments contract.
Aftermath
From gross receipts of £110,588 9s. 8d., the exhibition made a small profit of £304 14s. 4d, a good result compared to the crippling £20,000 loss made by the Dublin Exhibition, which ruined its organiser William DarganWilliam Dargan
William Dargan , an engineer, often seen as the father of Irish railways, came from Killeshin, County Laois, Ireland. Born in 1799, he constructed Ireland's first railway from Dublin to Dún Laoghaire in 1833. He constructed over of railway to important urban centres of Ireland...
. The railway that transported visitors to the site did even better, making a profit of about £50,000. After the exhibition ended, the exhibited works were returned to their owners, and the temporary building and its contents were auctioned. Glass display cases were bought by the new museums under construction in South Kensington. The building was entirely demolished by November 1858. Having cost over £37,000 in all, the materials comprising the building sold for little more than £7,000; internal fittings and decorations that cost £18,581 sold for £2,836.
The site became part of Manchester Botanical Gardens, and was used to hold a Royal Jubilee Exhibition in 1887, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne. The gardens closed in 1907, becoming White City Pleasure Gardens in 1907 and near the present-day White City Retail Park.
The exhibition was a model for the display of art in public galleries in the second half of the 19th century. Although the works returned to private collections, many found their way into public collections over the following decades, having usefully boosted their reputation by their appearance in Manchester. The National Portrait Gallery in London had been founded in 1856 and opened its doors to the public in 1858. Scharf was its first director, and arranged the displays in chronological order, as the Manchester exhibition had done.
A second but smaller National Art Treasures Exhibition was held in Folkestone
Folkestone
Folkestone is the principal town in the Shepway District of Kent, England. Its original site was in a valley in the sea cliffs and it developed through fishing and its closeness to the Continent as a landing place and trading port. The coming of the railways, the building of a ferry port, and its...
in May to October 1886. A large exhibition of paintings was held in Bethnal Green
Bethnal Green
Bethnal Green is a district of the East End of London, England and part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, with the far northern parts falling within the London Borough of Hackney. Located northeast of Charing Cross, it was historically an agrarian hamlet in the ancient parish of Stepney,...
, a industrial part of the East End of London
East End of London
The East End of London, also known simply as the East End, is the area of London, England, United Kingdom, east of the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames. Although not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries, the River Lea can be considered another boundary...
, from 1872, designed specifically to attract working class visitors. This was in what is now the V&A Museum of Childhood
V&A Museum of Childhood
The V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green in the East End of London is a branch of the Victoria and Albert Museum , which is the United Kingdom's national museum of applied arts.-History:...
, using prefabricated buildings moved from South Kensington.
An exhibition was held at Manchester Art Gallery
Manchester Art Gallery
Manchester Art Gallery is a publicly-owned art gallery in Manchester, England. It was formerly known as Manchester City Art Gallery.The gallery was opened in 1824 and today occupies three buildings, the oldest of which - designed by Sir Charles Barry - is Grade I listed and was originally home to...
in 2007/8 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Art Treasures Exhibition, and a conference was held at the University of Manchester in November 2007.