The French artist Adolphe Valette is known today both as the teacher of L. S. Lowry and as the creator of a remarkable series of impressionistic paintings of Edwardian Manchester. These large, evocative canvases, depicting the streets and waterways of a city cloaked in an industrial haze, present a fascinating image of a major commercial centre in its heyday, clinging to its Victorian and industrial past while eagerly embracing the modern world. Most of these were acquired by Manchester Art Gallery which possesses the most important holding of his work.
