Displays
Paintings and ceramics from our collections are displayed around the gallery in different themed areas listed below.
Our displays also include the Main Gallery, on the ground floor, and the Little Gallery, on the first floor, which are used to house our changing Special Exhibitions programme.
Ground Floor
The South Gallery
Our South Gallery houses the Sacrifice and Courage displays, which concentrate on our strong collections of early religious paintings and 17th Century Dutch works.
Pictured right is a detail from The Flagellation of St Barbara by the Master of Vienna Schottestift.
First Floor
New Gallery of Pots
This is our newest gallery and opened in September, 2009. It displays more of our studio pottery collection than ever before and has a changing programme of exhibitions. Favourite pots from the Milner-White collection are joined by some of the 3,670 pots from the WA Ismay collection, most of which have never been displayed before. We have also created a study area that allows visitors to learn more about our pots, the potters who made them and the people who collected them.
The Burton Gallery
Places
For centuries artists have both recorded the landscape and explored their own responses to it. The pictures here show how places and the way painters represent them have changed. Romantic artists of the 19th century created a pastoral vision of man in harmony with nature. Twentieth century artists are also represented in this gallery – two highlights are LS Lowry's Clifford's Tower, 1953, and Paul Nash's Winter Sea 1925 – 37.
Pictured right is The Harvest Cradle - Noontide, 1859 by John Linnell, a British artist working in the Romantic tradition.
People
We are surrounded by people in our everyday lives at home, at work and at play. For artists, people and the way they look is one of the most important means of communication. Artists use portraits to reveal character, suggest social standing and provide clues to the sitters' working lives. The men, women and children on display in this display tell us about the likeness, identity and "employment" of people over 400 years.
Pictured right is a detail from Captain John Foote by Joshua Reynolds.
Stories
The pictures in this display all have a story to tell. Many of them were painted in the 19th century when artists used images to promote respectability, hard work and family life. Whether telling of misfortune or celebrating good times, every picture here tells a story...