Walker Art Gallery – Liverpool
Founded in 1873 at the behest of Liverpool Mayor Andrew Barclay Walker, from whom it takes its name, the Walker Art Gallery opened its doors to the public in 1877 and now houses one of United Kingdom’s largest collections outside London.
The gallery is still in the original neoclassical building, designed by architects Cornelius Sherlock and H. H. Vale, and owes its original core of works to the collection of the Liverpool Royal Institution, a society founded in 1814 to promote literature, science and art. Over the years, the collection was increased thanks to donations and acquisitions, and today includes, in addition to sculptures and decorative art artifacts, European paintings from the fourteenth to the twentieth century, with a special focus on British art of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (including an important collection of Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite painting), and also preserves a remarkable cabinet of prints, drawings and watercolors.
