‘A Fancy Dress Ball’ depicts a soirée held at the Theatre Royal on Peter Street in Manchester at the close of the 1828 Manchester Music Festival to raise money for local charities.
It is packed with the portraits of around 300 people who attended the ball and paid for their image to be included.
Down in the cellars of Salford Museum and Art Gallery lie over 100,000 objects relating to the City of Salford.
Many are on rotation for public display.
These include everything from Bellarmine ‘witch bottles’ used to ward off evil spirits to the Pilkington’s Peace Vase.
Arthur Perigal the elder was an English historical, portrait and landscape painter, born in around 1784.
His son, Arthur Perigal the younger, was also a landscape painter but it is his father who still attracts the most attention today, having exhibited his classical scenes at the Royal Academy in London and the British Institution.
The large oil on canvas painting was raffled and won by a local man, Mr Peacock, who appears dressed as the Knave of Hearts.
In 1852 he presented it to Salford.
The painting was conserved in 1994 and can now be seen hanging in the Museum.
