The Wallace Collection

I realise this may be coals to Newcastle for many cherished colleagues, but for me my first visit to the Wallace Collection yesterday was a real eye-opener.  The venue was suggested by the friend I was meeting who recalled having been taken to see the collection at the age of nine.  Despite having taken her degree in art history, she had never visited it again.  Admission is free, though donations are gratefully received, and this makes it an ideal art gallery to visit if one is in central London with just an hour to spare.  The collection is in Hertford House on Manchester Square, just behind Selfridge’s.

http://www.wallacecollection.org/

This link gives an idea of some of the exhibits; not just paintings, but china, glassware, weaponry, and other objets d’art. 

The Wiki entry gives a detailed list of paintings on view.  We were absolutely amazed at the pictures and it’s very helpful to have an art historian at one’s elbow.  In a room full of Canaletto there were also some Guadi, of whom I’d never heard, but my friend was able to inform me.  On the first floor each room is decorated with matching wallpaper and curtains, obviously made to order.  So visitors move from an eau-de-nil room to an emerald green room to a crimson room, then a royal blue room, an old gold one and so on.  So between the wonderful décor and the amazing range of pictures – “There’s a Titian”, I squeaked, “and a Fragonard over there!  How many Rembrandts do they have?” – as well as all the other glorious exhibits, the visit was a delight to the eyes.  (I’m afraid there was also a very tasteless picture, OZ, called The Dead Wolf, by one Jean-Baptiste Oudry.)

The collection was originally the property of the 4th Marquess of Hertford, a real connoisseur with a very healthy bank balance, and he left it and the house to his illegitimate son, Sir Richard Wallace.  One condition is that no item should leave the museum, even on loan, though a couple of Murillo paintings had been borrowed for the small Murillo exhibition, thus reuniting four pieces originally belonging to the Capuchins of Genoa.

There is a café and restaurant in the interior courtyard, now covered with a glass roof, where one of the most reasonably priced cups of coffee in central London can be enjoyed.  It was a joy to see so much of the beauty in the world before coming home to learn of the ugliness of the Boston bombing.