Victorian Treasures

For my birthday, we spent the day in Liverpool and had a lovely time looking at the wonderful Sculptures and the Victorian Treasures Exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery. I was particularly interested in this exhibition as it showcases works by my favourite Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. We also visited Rococo for lunch which was featured in a post over at Lorraine’s Arts n Crafts, thanks so much for the recommendation, it was fab and we had a wonderful time! I created this page to remember this special day.

To represent the sculptures that we saw, on the left hand side of the page I created a white marble effect by applying white gesso and then Black Soot Distress Ink using a paint brush and baby wipe. I added some fine details to the marble veins using a black Uni Pin marker and then I covered it all with white gesso to push the design into the background and then added some white acrylic paint to increase the whiteness. I fussy cut the urn and bust from a booklet and used the flyer from the Victorian Treasures exhibition on the right hand side of the page also adding torn papers from a Design Pad. These represent the beautiful wallpapers we saw in the Gallery and at Rococo. I edged the torn papers with Cold Grey Faber-Castell marker and like all of the elements I stuck them to the page using a UHU Stic. Many of my favourite paintings had ornate gold frames so I added a beautiful gold foil doily that I bought in a local charity shop (thrift store). Being inspired by the wonderful décor and meal we had at Rococo, I added their logo from a loyalty card that we collected during our visit, along with a chandelier which I had stamped onto the same wallpaper style paper, a clock to show our lunch time visit and a teapot, teacup and saucer to depict the tea that we enjoyed with our meal. The clock and tea things are outline stickers which I coloured with a Sharpie marker and Faber-Castell Big Brush markers. To finish I coloured the original flowers printed on the urn image with green Derwent Inktense pencils so they looked like foliage and added the peachy pink resin blooms using Ranger Glossy Accents to stick them down.

As this page shows you our magical time at the Art Gallery and Rococo discovering Victorian treasures, I’m pleased to be able to join Hazel who is hosting the “Magical Mystery Tour” challenge over at Art Journal Journey.

The Walker Art Gallery dates back to 1877 and houses one of the largest art collections in England, outside of London. It is a majestic example of Victorian neo-classical architecture and is situated on William Brown Street which is the only street in the UK to consist of just museums, galleries and libraries. We were happily surprised to find that we were able to take photos in the gallery as long as no flash was used.

There is so much to see and we had a fantastic time exploring the different rooms and discovering the treasures within, this is a photo of one of the walls of beautiful paintings in Room One exhibiting “Medieval, Renaissance and Reformation” art.

Victorian Treasures brings together more than 60 outstanding Victorian paintings and watercolours from the art collections of National Museums Liverpool. The painting shown here is “Helen of Troy” by Fredrick Sandys, she made me smile as she looks so grumpy. Sandys was great friends with one of my favourite artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti so his female portraits were sometimes inspired by Rossetti’s work, hence the porcelain skin and red hair of this sullen beauty.

I adore Pre-Raphaelite artists and there were some stunning examples by John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt.  This is a beautiful painting is “Dante’s Dream” by Rossetti and is his largest ever painting.

Here’s another one of Rossetti’s beauties called “Sibylla Palmifera”.

On the ground floor there is a Sculpture Gallery, with the most amazing marble artworks about 120 in total. It was my hubby’s favourite exhibition and as you can see the lighting and ambiance of the room was stunning.  The statue in the glass case is, another Victorian treasure, the “Tinted Venus” by John Gibson dated circa 1851-1856.

This beautiful lady is by Liverpool born artist Benjamin Edward Spence called “Highland Mary” and the fairy is “Puck” from Midsummer’s Nights Dream by American artist Harriet Hosmer.

We really enjoyed this part of the Walker Art Gallery, so much so that we went back for a second look on our way out of the building.

After visiting the gallery, we headed to Rococo which is situated in this historic building on Lord Street and was designed by a well known Liverpool architect called Edmund Kirby in 1882. The facade has a brown sandstone Gothic pierced quatrefoil parapet and has over glazed brickwork in a lozenge pattern. During the war, 90% of the buildings between Lord Street and Albert dock were destroyed and this building was left standing all by itself. If you look at the photo again you’ll see the modern buildings that were built either side of this special Victorian treasure.

We sat at the table by an old parlor organ and helped ourselves to a very welcome drink of water infused with lemon and mint while we chose from the menu.

We decided to have a Club sandwich to share and a cake each; I had a Lemon and Poppy Seed Muffin whilst my hubby had a Malteser (malt ball) Slice. We had a very nice pot of green tea each too, so I’m pleased to be joining my friends over at T Stands for Tuesday – Happy T Day!

Here’s my birthday photo with my hubby, we had such a wonderful time in Liverpool!

Thanks for joining me today! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you.

Here is a list of all the materials used to create this art journal page:

• Pébéo White Gesso
• DecoArt Crafter’s Acrylic (White)
• Tim Holtz Distress Ink (Black Soot)
• Ranger Archival Ink (Jet Black)
• Faber-Castell Big Brush Pitt artist pen (Sanguine 188 B, Cold Grey IV 233, Black 199)
• Drewent Inktense Ink Pencils (Teal Green 1300, Field Green 1500, Leaf Green 1600, Charcoal Grey 2100)
• Uni Pin Fine Line marker (Black 0.1mm)
• Craft Sensations (Clear Stamps CR0274/16R2)
• Walker Art Gallery Victorian Treasures flyer
• Gallery booklet
• Rococo loyalty card
• Creative Expressions Design Pad (Vintage Romance CRO730/R)
• Woolworths (Foil Doyleys)
• Anita’s Outline Stickers (Alice in Wonderland ANT810116)
• Trimcraft A Beautiful Life (Resin Flowers LCFLW001)
• Ranger Glossy Accents
• UHU Stic