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.
Esther (Millais painting) Esther (Millais painting) Esther (1865) is a painting by John Everett Millais depicting the central character from the Biblical Book of Esther. It is from Millais's Aesthetic phase, when he was influenced by the work of Frederic Leighton and James McNeill Whistler. The painting depicts Esther, the Jewish wife of the Persian king Ahasuerus, as she prepares to enter the presence of her husband. As she is uninvited, she risks death, but does so to inform him of a plot against the Jews. Millais borrowed the Yellow Jacket, a gown given to General Gordon by the Chinese emperor after his