Magpies, Squirrels And Thieves (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
He was with a group of his Liverpool friends. They had travelled together by train the few miles to Old Trafford, just outside Manchester, where, in the heart of the industrial grime and pragmatism of England’s north-west, they were about to join the snaking queue to see an unprecedented event. Larger and more impressive even than the famous Great Exhibition, this was Manchester’s Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857. Here, 16,000 works of art were collected under one roof: oils, watercolours, engravings and drawings; the controversial and avant-garde work of the Pre-Raphaelites; Michelangelo’s unfinished ‘Manchester Madonna’; photographs, textiles, sculpture, armour, furniture – and Joseph Mayer’s choicest and most precious pieces. Like Robinson’s South Kensington exhibition a few years later, the 1857 Manchester display drew on the generosity of, and was an inspiration to, private collectors. ‘Art in England may be said to have derived all its encouragement from private persons,’ explained the organizers.
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