Conservation on View

Visitors to the Lady Lever Art Gallery can enjoy a rare opportunity to see conservation work in action on gallery. Thanks to funding from the Lord Leverhulme Charitable Trust, the gallery has been able to focus on the conservation of four Spanish altarpiece panels, dating from the early 1400s.

The panels tell part of the story of the martyrdom of Saint Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins. They were part of a large altarpiece from the Church of St Pablo in Palencia, Spain. In the 15th century the church served as a burial place for local nobility of royal descent.

William Hesketh Lever (1851-1925) purchased four panels in 1919, with the others from the altarpiece now dispersed across major galleries in the United States and Europe, including the Prado, Madrid. Valencian School panels of this kind are remarkably rare in the United Kingdom.

David Crombie, Lead Conservator of Paintings at National Museums Liverpool, will be cleaning the panels and conserving them for future generations in full view of visitors at the gallery. There will also be an opportunity to view the panels up close on a monitor, linked to a Hirox 3D digital microscope.

The conservation work takes place during the 100th anniversary year of William Hesketh Lever’s death.

When to see David at work

David will be conserving the panels in the gallery on varying days each week, across several months over summer and autumn 2025. He will not be working in the gallery at weekends.

The dates that he will be in the gallery will be listed on this page and at the information desk in the Lady Lever Art Gallery. Please check before you visit to avoid disappointment.

The next dates that you can see David in the gallery are:

• 2-4 September

• 9-11 September

• 1-2 October

• 7-9 October

• 14-16 October

• 21-23 October

• 28-30 October

On the dates that David is not working in the gallery visitors will be able to see the panel that he has been working on most recently and find out more about the project in the accompanying display.