Colour in Birmingham

 Yesterday I was in Birmingham, to see the (partly) reopened city art gallery and, en route, drop in on the cathedral church of St Philip. This is a baroque God-box designed by Thomas Archer very early in the 18th century and extended eastwards in the following century – essentially a grand town church rather than a slow-growing, centuries-old cathedral. I knew Burne-Jones had designed some windows for it, but my expectations weren't especially high. And then I saw them – four large windows, one (a Last Judgment) at the West end, three (Nativity, Resurrection, Crucifixion) at the East – and I was simply stunned. The colours are extraordinarily intense – I believe they were restored recently – and the designs and drawing strong and impactful. Nothing wishy-washy about these windows: indeed I've seldom felt such power in any Victorian glass. Seeing them was an astonishing, and unexpectedly powerful, experience.
   And then came the art gallery, a grand Victorian building of which enough has reopened to house an exhibition titled Victorian Radicals, showcasing the gallery's extensive holdings of Pre-Raphaelite and related art (and craft) works. Some of what is on show is of peripheral interest, but the exhibition is worth seeing for the sake of the big, in-your-face masterpieces, which have to be seen to be believed – Ford Madox Brown's massive Work and An English Autumn Afternoon, The Last of England and The Pretty Baa-Lambs, Millais's The Blind Girl, Henry Wallis's The Death of Chatterton, Arthur Hughes's The Long Engagement. As with Burne-Jones's windows, the colours are startlingly intense and the impact stunning. No reproduction can do these works justice; they have to be seen in their physical reality, and examined closely: there is always more to see in paintings as packed with significant detail as these. They are pictures that I felt I had known all my life, but seeing them in situ in this exhibition somehow felt like seeing them for the first time. Now I feel I really know them – and I'll be back to see more of Birmingham's art gallery when the rest of it has reopened.