Laing Art Gallery

In front of the gallery is the Blue Carpet. The building, which was financed by a gift from a local wine merchant, Alexander Laing, is Grade II listed. The gallery collection contains paintings, watercolours and decorative historical objects, including Newcastle silver. In the early 1880s, Newcastle was a major glass producer in the world and enamelled glasses by William Beilby are on view along with ceramics (including Maling pottery), and diverse contemporary works by emerging UK artists. It has a programme of regularly rotating exhibitions. The gallery's collection of paintings includes John Martin's dramatic The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, as well as works by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edward Burne-Jones (Laus Veneris), Isabella and the Pot of Basil from 1868 by William Holman Hunt, and Ben Nicholson. Local paintings include pictures by Ralph Hedley. There is also a collection of 18th- and 19th-century watercolours and drawings, including work by J. Turner and John Sell Cotman.

• Name — Laing Art Gallery OS grid reference • Location — Newcastle upon Tyne, England • Website — https: www.northeastmuseums.org.uk/laing

• Illustration — Reading the News by David Wilkie, 1820 • Illustration — The Discovery of the Gunpowder Plot by Henry Perronet Briggs, 1823 • Illustration — Wild Cattle of Chillingham by Edwin Landseer, 1867 • Illustration — The Catapult by Edward Poynter, 1867 • Illustration — Isabella and the Pot of Basil by William Holman Hunt, 1868 • Illustration — Laus Veneris by Edward Burne-Jones, 1873 • Illustration — Hypatia by Charles William Mitchell, 1885 • Illustration — The Quayside, Newcastle upon Tyne by Arthur Edmund Grimshaw, 1895