Art lovers hungry for paintings by the Pre-Raphaelites, Turner, Constable, Palmer, Sickert and other 19th-century British artists, are in for a treat. The top floor galleries of the Ashmolean Museum are open again. Fully renovated with new roofing, lighting and décor as part of the redevelopment programme, they now contain 19th- century British art from the museum's renowned collections of Western Art. And they look splendid. Old favourites are back, plus a pleasing number of works new to visitors' eyes. Sculptures too, plus important cloisonné enamelled Falize jewellery in the Japanese taste, not displayed for years.

As soon as you enter, you see the Pre-Raphaelites beckoning in the shape of Convent Thoughts by Charles Alston Collins in the far gallery. But more of these much-loved artists anon. First there's Walter Sickert and the Camden Town Group. The Ashmolean has a large collection of paintings by Sickert, thanks to the most important collectors of his work during his lifetime, Morton and Ethel Sands, whose characterful portrait is now on show. Twenty-three paintings include the original Brighton Pierrots (the Tate's is a later version), a smaller, livelier Ennui, views of Dieppe, Paris and Venice, and Sickert's swirling theatre balcony scene, which looks particularly good under the new lighting. The selection gives a refreshing view of this controversial artist; a far cry from his back-street nudes and murder victims.

British Landscapes next, including four Turners set magnificently against the red wall, works by Samuel Palmer and his friends the Ancients, Edward Calvert among them (not displayed before), and four oil sketches of Capri and the Nile by Frederic Leighton.

Finally, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, with a section all to itself presided over by a bust of Thomas Combe, their patron, whose collection this was. Ruskin, a strong supporter of the group, will soon join him, says Colin Harrison, Curator of British Art. It looks like a shrine, he says, and I can see what he means. Almost embracing Burne-Jones' decorated wardrobe, a wedding present to William Morris, are Rossetti's chalk drawings of Reverie and Proserpine modelled on Jane Morris, the Brotherhood's ideal of beauty. Every corner filled with gorgeous paintings: the new Burne-Jones and Rossetti acquisitions, works by Millais, Sandys, Arthur Hughes' The Eve of St Agnes, and across the room, more: Edward Lear, William Holman Hunt . . .