Please note: This exhibition has now finished, but a smaller, accessible version will be on display in the Billiard Room until late February 2020, showing 20 of the drawings which were on display.
Rossetti, pre the Pre-Raphaelites
4 March – 24 December 2019
Wightwick Manor was home to the Mander family (1887 – 1988) who filled it with their love for Victorian art and design, in particular Pre Raphaelite art collected in the mid-20th century at a time when it was deeply unfashionable. The house is filled with furniture and textiles from the Arts and Crafts movement along with some fine examples of paintings by leading Pre Raphaelite artists including Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Thanks to a gift accepted in lieu of inheritance tax, 52 drawings by Rossetti from his early career have been acquired by the National Trust.
More than 20 of these pictures were on display to the public for the first time, in a an exhibition in the Daisy Room, which explored the young Rossetti before he helped to establish the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, his interest in literature and his developing style. The exhibition was funded from a legacy left to the National Trust from a friend of Lady Mander.