Portrait of John Naylor

John Naylor, a landowner and the son of a Liverpool banker, built up an important collection of 19th-century paintings at Leighton Hall near Welshpool, a house redesigned for him in the Gothic style by the Liverpool architect, W H Gee. Naylor typifies the many Victorians who acquired their fortunes on Merseyside and used their wealth to form great art collections. Pictures from such collections were often given or bequeathed to the Walker Art Gallery, and this in part accounts for the outstanding holdings of Victorian art that the Gallery contains today.