Turning Japanese in Port Sunlight
I can’t remember how I heard about the Edo-Pop exhibition at the Lady Lever gallery in Port Sunlight back in the summer of 2017. The exhibition was a private collection of Japanese woodblock prints from the late 18th and early 19th century. ‘Pop’ because they were originally cheap prints of popular traditional Japanese threatre actors in character, sports (sumo) stars, and scenes of modern Japanese life. ‘Edo’ because that is the old name for Tokyo.
It is worth making the trip for the museum alone; it has many fabulous paintings including Holman-Hunt’s ‘The Scapegoat’ and ‘Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante’ by Vigée Le Brun. The building itself is a work of art and the village of Port Sunlight is a sort of real-life toy-town.