Lancashire’s Pioneering Impressionists: The Manchester School of Painters and its Critics, 1868-1914

Abstract

The significance of the Manchester School of Painters has been neglected by both art historians and scholars of this region. This article explores the contribution of these artists to the history of Impressionism in Britain and demonstrates how a young group of Mancunians brought French modernism to Lancashire art exhibitions and galleries some time before it was common in London. They struggled with the local artistic establishment, local critics gave them a mixed reception, and yet they ultimately achieved recognition in the capital, with their paintings hanging in the same galleries as the work of their more celebrated French counterparts Corot, Degas and Boudin. While the Manchester School was short-lived, some of its painters continued to experiment with Impressionist techniques and influenced regional art well into the twentieth century. Their techniques were taken up by Adolphe Valette and the style of their urban subject matter was later replicated in the work of both Valette and L.S. Lowry.