What to see in the North of England if you want to learn more about the artistic history of our country
Charlotte Mullins journeys to the North of England for the fourth instalment of our series which highlights the 50 treasure's of the British Isle's which best encompass our artistic history.
Graveyard shift
The Regina Tombstone, Arbeia Roman Fort, South Shields, Tyne & Wear
The reconstructed Entrance gate to Arbeia Roman Fort in South Shields.
The Regina Tombstone reveals the extent of the Roman Empire in the 2nd century AD. Her husband, Barates, was a soldier stationed at the mouth of the Tyne in northern England. He had travelled 3,000 miles from his home in Palmyra, Syria, without the need to stray beyond the empire’s borders. As a loyal servant of Rome, he communicated in Latin, the language of the inscription on his wife’s tombstone, but a separate inscription in Palmyran reads: ‘Regina, freed-woman of Barates, alas!’ Regina appears as a wealthy woman, her hand resting proprietorially on an armoured box used for storing jewellery and coins. Although we can no longer see her face, she sits in a wicker chair holding equipment for spinning thread, indicating a stable domestic life. Her tombstone was found at the Arbeia Roman Fort in South Shields, where it remains on display.
Follow the North star
The Scapegoat, William Holman Hunt, Lady Lever Art Gallery, the Wirral
Holman Hunt’s 'The Scapegoat'.
In the late summer of 1848, seven young men formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Among them were William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais, all students at the Royal Academy of Arts. They began signing their works ‘PRB’, secretly signalling their unity and their love of paintings and stories that pre-dated the High Renaissance of Raphael. Although the group exhibited their early masterpieces in London, many works ended up in the collections of wealthy northern industrialists. Consequently, the best place to see Pre-Raphaelite works today is in the North of England. Millais’s Isabella (1849) lives at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, with Holman Hunt’s The Scapegoat (1854–56) across the Mersey at the Lady Lever Art Gallery. Hunt’s The Hireling Shepherd (1851) is in the Manchester Art Gallery, as is Ford Madox Brown’s Work (1852–65), with other key paintings in Sheffield, Carlisle, Newcastle and Leeds.
Art as a hobby
Lowry's style is instantly recognisable.
Paintings by L. S. Lowry, The Lowry, Salford, Manchester
L. S. Lowry was born in Greater Manchester and his ‘matchstick’ figures and industrial scenes are among the most recognisable pictures in Britain. He painted weddings, football matches and people on their way to work under heavy skies. Lowry’s mother didn’t believe art offered him good career prospects, so he enrolled as a clerk aged 15, only painting at weekends and evenings. He was taught by the French Impressionist Adolphe Valette, but his style was all his own, drawn from his experiences of going door to door as a rent collector in working-class areas of Manchester. His first exhibition was held in 1939, when he was in his fifties, and he only painted in his spare time until retirement. Nevertheless, his work now hangs in museums across the British Isles, with the largest public collection fittingly displayed at The Lowry in Manchester.
Becoming seen
Housewives with Steak-knives, Sutapa Biswas, Bradford Museums and Galleries, West Yorkshire
In 'Housewives with Steak-knives', artist Sutapa Biswas imagines herself as the Hindu goddess Kali.
As a student at the University of Leeds, Sutapa Biswas asked her tutor Griselda Pollock if two black female artists — Lubaina Himid and Sonia Boyce — could come and speak to her year group. Biswas was the only British Indian student on the course and felt marginalised by the lack of visibility of black and Asian artists in the feminist art history that Prof Pollock was championing. Feminism had been a pronounced movement in Britain for 15 years, but many ethnic-minority artists initially felt excluded. Biswas later took part in ‘The Thin Black Line’, an exhibition curated by Himid in 1985 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. She exhibited Housewives with Steak-knives (1985), imagining herself as the multi-armed Hindu Kali, goddess of destruction and rebirth.
Follow the links for our other instalments based in Ireland, the East of England and London.
This feature originally appeared in the December 31, 2025, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.
