The twelve murals that Ford Madox Brown painted in Manchester Town Hall are the most important public art project in late nineteenth-century Britain. This ground-breaking book examines them in detail, revealing how they responded to contemporary political disputes about the nature of history, culture and social life.

The book challenges existing readings of Brown by illustrating how his ideas about art relate to Thomas Carlyle's unusual modelling of history. Brown sought to create a new type of painting that combined Hogarthian populism with socially engaged romanticism. Rather than simply reproducing liberalism in artistic form, he designed the murals to address contemporary questions: what is the nature of historical life? How do we distinguish between cultural and economic value? How do we share human experience?

For readers interested in Victorian culture and intellectual history, Ford Madox Brown: The Manchester murals and the matter of history is packed with rewarding observations and analyses.