William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme who came to resent 'manufacturing pictures for the market'). The painting was previously owned by his competitor, A & F Pears, who used paintings such as "Bubbles" by John Everett Millais to promote its products. Much of Leverhulme's art collection is displayed in the gallery which houses one of the finest formed by an industrialist in England. A.N. Wilson from the Mail Online, January 2010, remarked, "The altruism of Leverhulme or the Cadbury family are in sad contrast to the antisocial attitude of modern business magnates, who think only of profit and the shareholder." William Lever made the celebrated observation
Lever Brothers Lever Brothers Lever Brothers was a British manufacturing company founded in 1885 by brothers William Hesketh Lever (1851–1925) and James Darcy Lever (1854–1916). They invested in and successfully promoted a new soap-making process invented by chemist William Hough Watson. In 1930, Lever Brothers merged with Margarine Unie to form Unilever. Starting with a small grocery business begun by his father, William Lever and his brother James entered the soap business in 1885 by buying a small soap works in Warrington. The brothers teamed up with a Bolton chemist, William Hough Watson, who became an early business partner. Watson invented the