The story
Birmingham opened its museum and art gallery in 1885, a manufacturing city putting some of its industrial wealth into culture, under a clock tower locals nicknamed Big Brum. Its curators made one inspired bet early on, buying the Pre-Raphaelites while they were still unfashionable.
The result is one of the world's great collections of that movement, the jewel-bright, medievalising British painting of the mid-19th century. Edward Burne-Jones, who was born in Birmingham, is here in depth, alongside Rossetti, Millais and Ford Madox Brown's emigration scene The Last of England.
Downstairs the museum also displays the Staffordshire Hoard, the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found, dug out of a nearby field in 2009 and worked into thousands of fragments of war-gear.
Collection
14 works
The Blind GirlJohn Everett Millais, 1856
The Last of EnglandFord Madox Brown, 1853
The Finding of the Saviour in the TempleWilliam Holman Hunt, 1860
The Long EngagementArthur Hughes, 1859
MedeaFrederick Sandys, 1868
The Merciful KnightEdward Burne-Jones, 1863
Star of BethlehemEdward Burne-Jones, 1890
The Proscribed Royalist, 1651John Everett Millais, 1853
The Travelling CompanionsAugustus Egg, 1862
Morgan le FayFrederick Sandys, 1864
The Distrest PoetWilliam Hogarth, 1736
Valentine Rescuing Sylvia from ProteusWilliam Holman Hunt, 1851
Warwick Castle, East Front from the CourtyardCanaletto, 1752
The Church at Moret in the RainAlfred Sisley, 1894