Guildhall Art Gallery —
Women in the Empire

It all begins with the Great Fire of 1666. In the still-warm ashes, the judges tasked with settling property disputes commission and hang their portraits. A collection is born. Four centuries later, it numbers nearly 4,500 works — including one of the world’s largest collections of Victorian paintings.

This tour is unlike any other. It is not a chronological walk through art history. It is a journey into the Victorian imagination, structured around the thread of femininity. How did artists of the Victorian era represent women? Not as they were, but as they were dreamed of, feared, admired and idealised. Through several themes — the imagination, beauty, faith, patriotism, love — you will discover what these canvases reveal as much about their subjects as about those who painted them.