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Victorian visions
19th-century art from the John Schaeffer Collection

Daniel Maclise Scene – lawn before the Duke’s palace; Orlando about to engage with Charles, the Duke’s wrestler 1854, background repainted c1855–56. JW Waterhouse Mariamne 1887. John Schaeffer Collection.

Victorian visions presents an impressive collection of some 45 paintings, watercolours, drawings and sculptures by some of the luminaries of Victorian art, including works by Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Burne-Jones, Leighton, Poynter, Watts and Waterhouse.

The collection has been assembled by John Schaeffer, Australia’s most passionate and highly respected collector of 19th-century European art.

Many of the works of art are superb examples from these significant artists. Among them are Mariamne by JW Waterhouse, which featured prominently in the recent Waterhouse exhibition at the Royal Academy, London; Holman Hunt’s Il dolce far niente, recently in the Holman Hunt exhibition in Manchester and Toronto; Richard Redgrave’s The sempstress, one of the most important and most discussed early Victorian social realist images; and Leighton’s Athlete struggling with a python, long recognised as the seminal work in British new sculpture