Art of the State: Liverpool: Liverpool Central Library.

Art William Brown Street is actually graced by a series of adjoining buildings, originally conceived as a single library and museum building designed by John Weightman, Surveyor to Liverpool Corporation, and completed in 1860. Since then various extensions have been added, like the Picton Library and the Hornby Library. For a brief period in the noughties, a door was opened up that allowed visitors to the library to visit the museum via the old entrance hall and vice-versa. The World Museum has since been through extensive refurbishment work and so has this library, reopening in 2013, making a virtue of the older architecture and transforming what was quite a dated, dingy entrance space into an extraordinary open atrium which has become a minor tourist attraction and is always in heavy usage.

Accessibility of Collection.

The library is open 9am-8pm Monday to Friday, 9-5 on a Saturday and 10-4 on a Sunday. None of the paintings listed on the Art UK website are on public display, although some of the sculpture is, notably the busts which are dotted about the historic areas of the library.

Collection Spotlight.



As the name suggests Salthouse Dock was a key part of Liverpool's salt export industry, the city being a hub for the refining of rock salt and its transfer into Cheshire and abroad. John Atkinson Grimshaw traveled the country painting these dockside scenes, the evocative lighting influenced by the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood.  Few in painting have captured the feeling of gaslit streets and this is subject he returned to again and again.  His Salhouse Dock, Liverpool (1884) could almost be a preparatory sketch for Glasgow, Saturday Night, although that has much warmer colours.  I wonder where it is currently - it deserves to be on public display.