Edwin Long’s large painting depicts women in Babylon being sold as wives. Despite its ancient setting, it was inspired by debates surrounding Victorian women. In 1870 the Married Women’s Property Act was passed giving married women a legal status for the first time. Before this, on entering wedlock, a woman’s legal status ceased to exist. The new law, however, restricted how much of their earnings and inheritance married women could keep. Some campaigners felt that contemporary women, like those in the painting, were still no more than the possessions of their husbands. Throughout the 1870s, when this picture was painted, public debate about married women’s rights continued. These discussions led to the act being amended in 1882.

This bustling railway scene with its myriad of characters captures a snapshot of modern Victorian life. Amongst the crowd at Paddington Station there are a wealth of personalities and encounters to be discovered.

Frith weaves a tapestry of stories. Centre-left, a family kisses their sons goodbye as they leave for boarding school. This is in fact Frith and his own family, the painter’s self-portrait tucked in amongst the crowds. Moving to the right, a cab driver argues over his fare, whilst further along a bride bids farewell to her bridesmaids. On the far right-hand side of the painting, an arrest is made as two police detectives surprise their target, his foot on the carriage step alluding to his near escape.

This painting of polar bears savagely attacking human remains, depicts an imagined episode in the tale of Sir John Franklin’s failed 1845 expedition to find the Northwest passage. Franklin was an experienced explorer and set off with two Royal Navy ships, 129 men and supplies for three years in 1845.

By 1848, when nothing had been heard of them, numerous search and rescue missions were sent out. Few found anything concrete until John Rae headed a mission in 1854. He spoke to the local Inuit community who had met some of the remaining crew after they had abandoned their ships, and who found the bodies of these men the following year. Most gruesome, however, was their discovery of crew members' bones which showed the marks of cannibalism.

An active Suffragist, traveller and artist, Christiana Herringham was an influential figure in the Edwardian art world. Independently wealthy, she was one of the founders of the National Art Collection Fund, now known as Art Fund, a co-founder of the Society of Painters in Tempera (1901) and an original member of the Women’s Guild of Arts (1907).

Drawing from Catholic iconography, this arresting head study in tempera of St Catherine is copied from Sandro Botticelli’s Sant’Ambrogio altarpiece (c.1470). By isolating her from the wider, multi-figure, composition, Herringham creates an intimate portrait that emphasises the female saint’s gravitas and stature. It forms a pair with a Head of St Magdalene taken from the same source.

Swynnerton met fellow artist and suffrage campaigner Christiana Herringham through their friendship with Millicent Fawcett, the President of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Herringham and several of the women in Fawcett’s circle supported Swynnerton by buying her work and commissioning portraits from her, such as this portrait of Herringham’s sons. Swynnerton and Herringham were founding members of the Women’s Guild of Arts in 1907.

Herringham’s two sons are shown taking a rest from gardening as the sun sets in the background. Their clothes and outdoor activities suggest that Herringham followed the progressive approach to parenting favoured by many involved in the Arts and Crafts Movement.