About the museum
The story of the Lady Lever Art Gallery
The Lady Lever Art Gallery opened in 1922 in Port Sunlight, the model village that the soap maker William Hesketh Lever built for his factory workers on the Wirral, near Liverpool. He dedicated it to his late wife.
It holds Lever's collection of Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian paintings, along with fine furniture and Wedgwood.
The collection
William Hesketh Lever, founder of Lever Brothers, bought paintings for use in soap advertising and then for their own sake. He created the gallery to share his collection with the people of Port Sunlight.
It holds Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian paintings by Millais, Holman Hunt, Burne-Jones and Leighton, as well as eighteenth-century portraits, English furniture, Chinese porcelain and one of the finest collections of Wedgwood jasperware.
At ArtLogia you can order 18 of its paintings as hand-painted reproductions, by 10 artists led by John Everett Millais, Frederic Leighton and William Etty.
- paintings to order
- 18
- artists
- 10
- art movements
- 4
- years covered
- 1790–1916
The building
The Beaux-Arts gallery, designed by William and Segar Owen, opened in 1922 at the centre of Port Sunlight village. It is now part of National Museums Liverpool.
Masterpieces to see
Planning a visit
Walk around Port Sunlight village before or after: its cottages and gardens are a heritage site in themselves.
