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.
Hugh Millais Hugh Millais Hugh Geoffroy Millais (23 December 1929 – 4 July 2009) was a British author and actor known for his film collaborations with director Robert Altman. Hugh Millais was the son of Raoul Millais (1901–1999) a painter-illustrator of some considerable importance, and his first wife Elinor Clare (d. 1953), daughter of late Allan Ronald Macdonell, of Montreal. Raoul was the son of painter and gardener John Guille Millais and the grandson of the painter Sir John Everett Millais founder of the pre-Raphaelite movement by his wife Effie Gray who had been previously married to the author John Ruskin. He