Places to Visit to see Victorian Art
See the foot of this page for Exhibitions in the UK, and other places to visit. Victorian churches and other buildings can be found all over Britain and also in the USA and what was the British Empire. Most are in the Gothic Revival style. Many have interesting patterned floor tiles and stone or wood carvings, while the stained glass often shows a very high standard of craftsmanship.
The Victoria and Albert Museum, or V&A, is a fine Victorian building next to the Victorian Natural History Museum in South Kensington. The V&A has William Morris’s Green Dining Room and a fine collection of Victorian furnishings, including works by Pugin and Morris, on the top floor of its British Galleries. www.vam.ac.uk For Art Galleries with Victorian paintings click on Places to see Pre-Raphaelite Art at the end of this entry.
London has public buildings as well as churches by most of the major Victorian architects. The most famous is probably The Palace of Westminster or Houses of Parliament, where the elaborate decorations by A. W. N. Pugin include richly tiled floors and brightly coloured hand printed wallpapers, some of these items and designs by Pugin can be seen at the V&A.
George Gilbert Scott was a leader of the Gothic Revival, though Lord Palmerston forced him to build the Foreign Office in Whitehall in the classical style. The writings of Pugin influenced Scott's St. Giles, Camberwell, 1844, and John Ruskin designed the windows at St Giles. Scott also won the competition to design the Albert Memorial,1862-1872. It has a gilded statue of Prince Albert below a Gothic canopy. It is near the V&A. In 1866-77 Scott designed the red brick Gothic facade of the Midland Grand Hotel at London's St. Pancras Station, Tel 020 7304 3900 for tours of the Hotel restoration.
In Oxford Scott designed a new Gothic chapel for Exeter College, 1856-59. He modelled the tall windows on St. Louis' Sainte Chapelle in Paris. He filled them with stained glass by Clayton and Bell.
William Butterfield changed his plans for All Saints Margaret Street,
tel. 020 7636 1788, www.allsaintsmargaretstreet.org.uk
after the May 1849 publication of John Ruskin's The Seven Lamps of
Architecture. The High Church journal, The Ecclesiologist approved
of Butterfield's use of 'constructional polychrome' of 'red and black
brick arranged in patterns'. The interior is richly decorated with
coloured marbles, gilding etc. The painted tile pictures date from 1873
and 1889, the Chancel was redecorated by Comper in 1909.and 1919. The church is
in London, near Oxford Circus. It is open daily from 7am-7pm.
Saint Augustine, Rudolf Road, Kilburn, was completed by Pearson in 1878
in the Early English Style.
Keble College, Oxford has a Chapel by William Butterfield, built in 1873-6 with polychrome brickwork and Holman Hunt's painting I Stand at the Door and Knock.
The Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand are of course open to the public as 'Justice has to be seen to be done.' They are a fine Gothic Revival building by G. E. Street completed in 1882, with a huge vaulted entrance hall like a cathedral. The monument to GE Street is just inside the main entrance on the right of the hall. Below his figure are carvings showing craftsmen for all the crafts for which Street made designs, including church embroidery.
The Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, has paintings and etchings by Whistler. It has over 80 oils, plus watercolours, pastels and 1,500 lithographs and etchings, his Butterfly Cabinet and furnished replicas of his own house, 1906-14, and of his 1916 guest bedroom for 78 Derngate, Northampton. The Hunterian website has a new catalogue with around 1500 images of the Hunterian's collection of Whistler's works www.hunterian.gla.ac.uk More works by Whistler can be seen at the Freer Gallery in Washington DC, including his famous Peacock Room. Several works of Charles Rennie Mackintosh can be seen in Glasgow, like the School of Art and the Willow Tea Rooms, and his Hill House NT is nearby.
Guildhall Art Gallery off Gresham Street, City of London tel 020 7332 3700, has a fine collection of Victorian paintings.
Leighton House Museum, tel 0207 6023316 ext. 300, www.rbkc.gov.uk/leightonhousemuseum/drawings, 12 Holland Park Road, take
Melbury Road, near the Odeon Cinema, from Kensington High Street. (Melbury Road
contains Burges’s Tower House, 1878-81, which is not open to the public.)
Leighton House was the home of Frederic Leighton, the President of the Royal
Academy from 1878 to 1896. It contains his studio and many of his drawings, and a fine Arab Hall with
Arab tiles and mosaics by Walter Crane. It is open daily, except on Tuesday, from
11am-5.30pm.
Exhibition at Leighton House, Hidden Burne-Jones some of the many Burne-Jones drawings from Birmingham, 12 October 2007 - 27 January 2008.These drawings include his cartoons for stained glass made for William Morris's firm and drawings for William Morris's poem The Earthly Paradise which Morris never published and others for Morris's Kelmscott Press. Some are exhibited for the first time.
Exhibition Millais at Tate Britain 26 September 2007-13 January 2008, then in Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum 15 February 18 May 2008, and then in Japan. Many well known paintings by this leading Pre-Raphaelite, combined with little known but exciting landscapes. An internet teacher's pack has fine A4 reproductions of some of the paintings combined with notes and the Tate website www.tate.org.uk also has extracts from Millais' Diary describing how he and Hunt had to make straw huts to paint in as it was so cold.
Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, County Durham, phone 01833 690606www.bowesmuseum.org.uk, Emile Galle and the Origins of Art Nouveau until February 2008.
Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk phone 0161 275
7450Sleeping Beauties: Walter Crane and the lllustrated Book. until February 2008. Morris asked Crane to illustrate one of his own works for his Kelmscott Press but he is chiefly known for his achievements in coloured wood block illustrations for children's Toy Books.
Watts Gallery, Compton, near Guildford, phone 01483 810 235, Victorian Artists in Photographs, G.F. Watts and his World, until Dec 31 2007, closed Thursdays. The Gallery also has anumber of paintings by Watts. Nearby is the Mausoleum erected by his widow covered with sculpture in terracotta.
Arts and Crafts Tours, sponsored by the US Roycroft Foundation, www.ashton-drye.com
Morris Places to Visit Burne-Jones Places to Visit
William Morris in the Cotswolds Morris windows in Brighton
Places to see Pre-Raphaelite art Kempe windows in Brighton
Pugin and the Gothic Revival Places to Visit Burges Places to Visit