Sudley House Art Gallery
Creative Tourist
The history of Sudley House begins in the first decade of the 19th century. Today Sudley House is one of the few period homes decorated in a Victorian style that still has many of its original features. It is also the only surviving Victorian merchant art collection in Britain still hanging in its original location.
Further evidence of Liverpool’s standing as a city rich with Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite collections, Sudley House in Mossley Hill is filled with the only surviving intact collection of artworks once owned by a mercantile family – amassed by ship builder George Holt from both inherited and earned wealth, and a shining example of 18th and 19th century British painting. Featuring works by Millais, Holman Hunt and Rossetti, the Sudley House collection is hung throughout the historic house, with several works still occupying their original positions. Encounter paintings by Burne-Jones and Millais in the Entrance Hall, Frederic Lord Leighton in the Garden hall and Thomas Gainsborough in the Dining Room, as well as many more. Slowly being restored after the Liverpool Corporation, which later became National Museums Liverpool, reconfigured the rooms both upstairs and down in the 1940s, Sudley House still remains replete with original features, including stunning floors, embossed wallpaper and ornate cornices.
