Four designs for the Manchester Jubilee Exhibition 1887: Shearing the Sheep - Wool; The Weaver; The Merchant - Commerce; and The Farrier - Iron and Machinery

Ford Madox Brown was commissioned in November 1886 to paint figure groups for the eight spandrels of the great dome in the centre of the temporary building which housed the Manchester Royal Jubilee Exhibition. Each spandrel was 36 feet long, and eighteen feet high. As there was little time - the exhibition opened in May 1887 - Brown decided against figure groups, and instead came up with a scheme that each spandrel would contain a figure representing a Lancashire worker, each accompanied by a 'spirit of Lancashire energy', a winged figure with a trumpet. They were originally intended to be drawn in red chalk on a gold background, but it was decided that this would not be visible at a height of 40 feet, and so they were painted in these colours in oil.

Brown recorded that the designs were 'made from nature', and so it seems likely that there are several stages and versions of the drawings. Certainly a more fully worked up set of these drawings are now in the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.