William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme a painting by Edmund Leighton. Lever's rival in the soap industry, A & F Pears, had taken the lead in using art for marketing by buying paintings such as "Bubbles" by John Everett Millais to promote its products. Lever's response was to acquire similarly illustrative works, and he later bought 'The New Frock' by William Powell Frith to promote the Sunlight soap brand. In 1922 he founded the Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight in Cheshire which he dedicated to his late wife Elizabeth. William Lever was born on 19 September 1851 at 16 Wood Street, Bolton, Lancashire, England.
It Pays to Advertise with his father, using Peale's skill as a publicist to market "the most expensive soap in the world". Sir Henry has never gone in for advertising to any extent, and is inclined to pooh-pooh it. The problem is that Rodney has no capital to fund the necessary factory. The Comtesse returns. She addresses Rodney as if he were Sir Henry. Rodney's French is adequate for him to understand that she wishes to acquire the rights to sell his father's soap in France ("mon père's soap – not Pears', "father's""). Instead he sells her the French rights to his new soap.