Manchester Art Gallery

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Manchester Art Gallery is a free-to-view municipally-owned public art gallery in Manchester City Centre in the North West of England.

The Gallery now occupies three buildings, including what was originally the Royal Manchester Institution designed by Sir Charles Barry in 1824. It was extended in May 2002 Michael Hopkins to take in the old Atheneaum building next door.

The gallery houses the civic art collection of Manchester. As well as art of international significance, there are many works specifically related to Manchester (especially in the CIS-sponsored Manchester Room).

One very significant collection in the gallery is of works by Pierre Adolphe Valette. Valette was a French impressionist who painted and taught in Manchester in the early years of the C20th. Valette's reputation is growing, and in the Manchester Art Gallery it is not difficult to see the immediate appeal of the impressionist scenes of foggy Manchester streets and canals. A Cezanne hangs in the same room, and it is quite a shock to see the similarity in treatment and subject between Cezanne's misty French river bridge and a particular river bridge in the pre-Clean Air Act Mancunian fog. One very important fact about Valette is that Lowry was one of his pupils: the influence on Lowry of impressionism, via Valette, is immediately obvious here, where pictures by the two artists hang together.