Jenny Swann makes a personal selection of some of the Gallery's much-missed favourites.

If you're woken up on the morning of Saturday May 25 by the sound of running feet, they will be mine, pounding down Mosley Street towards the Manchester Art Gallery, to be the first person in the queue when the doors open after The Dark Years of the Gallery's closure.

Ford Madox Brown

Anyone who knows me will already be aware that, once through the doors, I'll head straight for that masterpiece of Pre-Raphaelite realism, Ford Madox Brown's Work. A panoramic record of mid-nineteenth century social issues, it's so inexhaustibly interesting that a visitor to the Gallery could be forgiven if they never got any further. Brown, a touchy, grumpy, hugely kind and very important figure for the younger generation of Pre-Raphaelite painters, produced Work over many years. Such was the size of the canvas that he had to borrow a greengrocer's barrow to move it around as he painted out of doors, becoming friendly with the workmen digging up the road, whom he was to turn into an unrivalled visual statement about Victorian society.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Next, I'll pay my dues to the unadulterated sensuality of Brown's close friend, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. All those dreamy, gorgeous femmes fatales with their heavy-lidded eyes, their exotic, swirling robes, their suggestive romanticism. Whether it's the 'come hither' invitation of the red-haired beauty in 'Joli Coeur' (a painting that caused uproar in its day, being deemed unsuitable for exhibition in a public place) or the somewhat scary gaze of the queen-goddess in Astarte Syriaca, it's impossible not to be drawn into the heady eroticism of Rossetti.

William Holman Hunt

By contrast, at the other end of the scale of moral rectitude, is William Holman Hunt. The Manchester Art Gallery owns many of his all-time greats - The Hireling Shepherd, The Shadow of Death, The Scapegoat and The Light of the World to name but the obvious ones. It's exciting to learn that during the Gallery's closure, it acquired the original lantern, seven-sided and made of brass, that Hunt commissioned from a metal-worker for the figure of Christ to carry in 'The Light of the World'. Hunt's images, perhaps more than any other painter's, are visually and spiritually haunting. As Ford Madox Brown wrote, summing up Hunt's ability to transform the mundane into the sublime, Hunt's Scapegoat requires to be seen to be believed in. Only then can it be understood how, by the might of genius, out of an old goat, and some saline incrustations, can be made one of the most tragic and impressive works in the annals of art.'

John Everett Millais

I can't move on before renewing my acquaintance with the mysterious, ruddy-cheeked girls harmoniously grouped round their bonfire in Autumn Leaves by John Everett Millais. It's impossible to look at this painting without finding your nostrils filling up with the scent of smouldering leaves. There's a floating, dance-like quality to the girls, and the painting marks an important turning point in British art, away from the supremacy of 'subject' and closer to what would soon become the aesthetic movement.

Decorative arts

The Manchester Art Gallery also owns an internationally-renowned collection of decorative arts, including some very fine pieces of Arts and Crafts furniture and ceramics. My favourites are the elaborate desk, or Escritoire, by William Burges and Gaulbert Saunders (just as well it isn't mine, because I would never get any work done - I'd sit staring at its ornate panels all day) and the dragonfly-wing lustrewares and tiles of William de Morgan.

The modern collection

After drinking in all those luxurious, jewel-like Pre-Raphaelite works of art, something to sober me up a bit. It's the moment for a calm peer at John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough, J.M.W. Turner and then a stroll round the modern galleries, with Lucien Freud's cool, crystalline portrait of a young woman in a beret and, striking a softer note, the Gwen Johns.

Although the modern collection is not what the Gallery is most famous for, it is well able to hold its own, with paintings and sculptures by Francis Bacon, Bridget Riley, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, David Hockney, Alberto Giacometti, and many other important artists. There is also a body of work by Manchester artists, past and present, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the new permanent displays of art and artifacts giving a visual history of the city, not least Martin Vincent's clever brass plaque, Life Is Good In Manchester.

Like I said, apologies if my enthusiastic footfall wakes you up on the May 25. Perhaps I ought to mention that the noise will be even worse the next day, when I'll be coming back for more, this time with my kids (and anyone else's I can borrow) to show them the new Clore Interactive Gallery. And they thought art galleries were boring?! Purleese. Art is good in Manchester.

Jenny Swann is a freelance writer and art historian, and a former lecturer at Tate Britain and the V&A in 19th century British art and orientalism.

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