Chinese art

Chinese porcelain was one of Lord Leverhulme’s greatest enthusiasms as a collector. He particularly admired the ‘blue and white’ and enamelled wares of the Kangxi period (1662 – 1722). It is these that dominate the gallery’s Chinese holdings. However, after establishing the Lady Lever Art Gallery in 1913, Lever broadened the scope of his collection to include items of more general interest such as carved hardstones and cloisonné enamels.

As with the other areas of his collection, Leverhulme often bought large numbers of items from other well-known collections of Chinese art. He no doubt judged it safer to draw on the expertise of others. In 1913, for example, he acquired fifty-one pieces from the collection of Bolton industrialist Richard Bennett for the sum of £55,000.

The Chinese pieces are the major exception to the mainly British collections in the rest of the gallery. It would seem that Leverhulme, along with James Orrock, who so influenced his collecting, considered such ‘china’ to be an essential component of British taste in the 17th and 18th centuries, and therefore suitable for a collection of British art and decoration of that period.

The collection was never intended to be comprehensive, but primarily to bring him private pleasure and to complement his holdings of 18th century British art. It is nevertheless distinguished by a number of particularly interesting individual pieces and by the standards of connoisseurship of his day it is outstanding.

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