The Establishment of the Flemish Weavers in Manchester, 1363

Summary

Reduced version of a mural painting depicting an imaginary incident, standing for the introduction of the textile industry. Queen Phillipa of Hainault, wife of Edward III is shown visiting Manchester, arriving on horseback surrounded by ladies in waiting, to the left. The queen and her assistants hold branches of flowering blossom. Weavers show the queen samples of their cloth while a page holds the reins of her horse and children watch from their seat on steps of a memorial in the foreground. To the right, two weavers sit at their loom under wooden canopy. The older of the two looks across to the queen while the younger looks across towards a young woman playing with a kitten in her hands. Two dogs tied together stand at the feet of the page, one confronting a cat on the right. In the background several archers and foot soldiers stand guard.

Display Label

Gallery text panel The Pre-Raphaelites in their Time Britain's first and best-known radical art movement emerged from within the Royal Academy in 1848. Its original members were rebellious art students who were disillusioned with contemporary practice. They looked back to Italian art before Raphael, seeing the pre-1500 period as one of great sincerity. They called themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In an age of rapid industrial and urban expansion, Pre-Raphaelite artists like Rossetti, Hunt and Millais, and pioneering design reformers such as William Morris, sought a return to pre-industrial values of art and design in truth to nature and materials, and good workmanship. In addition, the arts of the Middle Ages and Middle East were important sources of stylistic inspiration. The Bible, literature and contemporary life were preferred over subjects derived from classical mythology. The Brotherhood also rejected contrived studio lighting and took canvases outside to paint directly from nature. Although attempting to convey exactly what they saw, they created a heightened reality of dream-like intensity with minute details and bright, dazzling colours. Their art was a new kind of history painting for a new age.