The Lady Lever Art Gallery was founded by William Hesketh Lever (1851-1925) and is dedicated to the memory of his wife Elizabeth. The gallery contains the best of his personal art collection.
William Hesketh Lever was a multimillionaire businessman, entrepreneur and philanthropist.
He was born in Bolton, the son of a wholesale grocer. He left school at 16 to join the family firm which he expanded and transformed. In 1884 he decided to focus on just one product - household soap - primarily because of its potential for marketing in pre-wrapped bars under a brand name. Previously soap had to be cut to order from a single large block.
Two years later he began to manufacture soap himself and set up the firm of Lever Brothers with his invalid brother. He initially produced his soap in an existing factory but by 1888 had outgrown the site and moved to a purpose built and much larger building on the Wirral shore of the Mersey. He also built a village to house his employees and named it Port Sunlight after his most successful brand of soap.
Within a few years the interests of his company Lever Brothers stretched from the United Kingdom to West Africa, the Pacific and the United States. The company grew until Lever was employing 85,000 workers around the world in 1925.
The success of his company made Lever very rich. By 1912 in addition to his income, he had personal assets valued at nearly three million pounds.
Lever made a large contribution to the lives of ordinary people. He built Port Sunlight to provide his workforce with good housing. He campaigned for better welfare and a shorter working day, and supported building, education and medical projects.
Art was another of Lever's passions. He used his enormous wealth to put together an outstanding collection. He built this gallery to give everyone the chance to see and be inspired by it.
Lever started collecting art to promote Sunlight Soap.
He was one of the pioneers of modern advertising. Lever went to art exhibitions in London and bought pictures which were beautiful and would appeal to the housewives who were his customers.
Lever then had the pictures copied, adding the Sunlight brand name and slogan. Most artists didn't mind Lever using their art in this way. One exception was William Powell Frith who complained that Lever had changed the meaning of his painting by using it for advertising.
Between 1886 and 1906 Lever spent over £2 million on advertising. He encouraged his customers to collect prints reproduced from his collection. Soap wrappers contained vouchers that could be collected and exchanged for prints. A very modern idea that is still popular today!
At first Lever collected art for business reasons. But as he grew richer and more confident he quickly got a taste for collecting and started to buy things for his own pleasure.
In his lifetime Lever collected over 20,000 works of art. Many of these are on display in the gallery today. This massive and diverse collection includes paintings, sculpture, furniture, ceramics, textiles and ethnographic objects.
Lever mostly collected British art. But he was also fascinated by Chinese porcelain, Roman sculpture and Greek vases. He collected them to show the styles that had most influenced British artists and designers in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Lever employed many art dealers to find suitable works for his collection. He had enough money to buy some collections outright, including Lord Tweedmouth's distinguished collection of Wedgwood. He bought the dealer James Orrock's collections of English and Chinese art, in their entirety, on three occasions.
