A Tale to Tell: Narrative Paintings from the Collection

Following the popular Love and Death: Art in the age of Queen Victoria exhibition in 2003, the Gallery is highlighting its own Victorian collection in A Tale to Tell.

Long after Victorian art went out of fashion in England it remained popular in the colonies. As social commentary it may well have reflected idealised memories of a society that had been left behind by immigrants to new lands.

While 19th century painters loved to depict a moment in a narrative drawn from history, literature or the society of their own time, equally the overriding themes of yearning and desire underlying so many of these images speak of a social need for an aesthetic experience that exists beyond the familiar world of everyday life.