Walker Art Gallery

Stand at the foot of the steps for a moment. Under your feet is pale, worn stone, and behind you the traffic of Liverpool hums along William Brown Street. Ahead rise tall columns, smooth and grey, and between them, doors that seem slightly too small for such a grand front. The air here often carries a breath of the river, a few streets away. Before we go inside, let us look up.

The Walker Art Gallery opened in 1877. It was paid for by Andrew Barclay Walker, a brewer who also served as the city's mayor. That detail surprises many visitors. In Victorian Liverpool, beer money helped to build a temple to painting. Walker wanted the city to have a public gallery to match its wealth, and its pride. Liverpool was then one of the busiest ports in the world, and its leaders wanted culture to stand beside commerce.

Look at the front of the building. It follows the neoclassical style, which means it borrows the columns, steps and calm symmetry of ancient Greek and Roman temples. On either side of the entrance sit two carved figures. They are Raphael and Michelangelo, two giants of the Italian Renaissance, the great flowering of art in Italy around five hundred years ago. They sit like guardians, telling you what kind of art the founders admired.

Now turn around and take in the whole street. This short stretch is one of the finest groups of nineteenth century public buildings in Britain. Next door stand the World Museum and the Central Library, with its round Picton Reading Room. Across the road is Saint George's Hall, with its long row of columns. Together they formed a Victorian idea of a civic forum, a place where citizens could gather, read, learn and look.

Step inside, and the sound changes. The street noise falls away. Footsteps soften on the floors, and voices drop without anyone asking them to. The Walker is part of National Museums Liverpool, and it holds one of the largest art collections in England outside London. The galleries move roughly through time, from medieval panels to modern canvases, so you can follow the story of European painting room by room.

Among the oldest treasures is a small panel by Simone Martini, an Italian painter from Siena, working in the fourteenth century. It shows the young Christ returning to his parents after they found him in the temple. Look closely at the faces. Mary seems hurt, Joseph seems firm, and the boy looks back with folded arms, almost sulking. It is a family argument, painted nearly seven hundred years ago, and it still feels familiar.

Nearby you can find a youthful self-portrait by Rembrandt, the great Dutch painter. He painted himself many times across his life, and this is an early one. He looks out with a kind of quiet confidence, still at the start of his career. The gallery also holds a well-known portrait of King Henry the Eighth from the workshop of Hans Holbein. The king stands with his legs planted wide, a pose designed to show power.

The Walker has a strong collection of Pre-Raphaelite art. The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of Victorian painters who wanted bright colour, sharp detail and serious, often poetic subjects. Look for Millais's painting of Isabella, a scene from an old Italian tale, full of rich fabrics and tense glances around a dinner table. Then find Rossetti's Dante's Dream. It is enormous. Many visitors gasp simply at its size.

One painting here has a place in British memory far beyond the gallery walls. It is called And When Did You Last See Your Father, by William Frederick Yeames. It shows a scene imagined during the English Civil War, the seventeenth century conflict between king and parliament. A small boy in blue stands on a footstool. Stern men question him about his royalist father. His sister weeps behind him. The question in the title hangs in the air.

Liverpool has a local hero on these walls too. George Stubbs, born in the city in the eighteenth century, became one of the great painters of animals, especially horses. He studied their anatomy with unusual care, and you can see it in the muscle and weight of every animal he painted. Here is a second surprise: for many people, Stubbs is the reason they first notice how difficult a horse really is to draw.

The modern rooms bring a change of mood. Since 1957 the Walker has hosted the John Moores Painting Prize, a contest for contemporary painters, named after a Liverpool businessman. The prize helped launch many careers. David Hockney won it in 1967, and his picture of a young man climbing out of a swimming pool belongs to the gallery. Its flat blues and bright California light feel a world away from Victorian Liverpool.

As you walk, notice how the light enters. Many of the older rooms are lit from above, through glass in the ceiling. This was a common choice in nineteenth century galleries. It lets daylight fall evenly onto the walls, without glare from side windows. On a grey Liverpool afternoon the rooms feel soft and still. On a bright day the colours of the Pre-Raphaelites seem almost to glow.

Families will find space to slow down here. The gallery has long welcomed children, and young visitors often enjoy hunting for animals, faces and small details hidden in the larger paintings. A good game is to choose one picture each and tell the others its story. Benches in many rooms make it easy to sit, rest and simply look for longer than usual.

When you step back out between the columns, pause on the top step. Raphael and Michelangelo still sit beside you, facing the street. Saint George's Hall stands across the road, and the city moves on below. A brewer's gift from long ago is still open to anyone who climbs these steps. Take a last look at the stone, then let the river air carry you onward.