The Wallace Collection

These four rooms will be refurbished to show more works of art in the domestic intimacy for which they were made. Improved lighting and environmental controls will give optimum conditions in terms of visitor enjoyment, conservation and security, and the result will offer a beautiful and considered sense of cohesion and completeness to the eight rooms on the first floor. In highlighting contrasting themes and ideas in each room, we celebrate 18th-century France, its artists and craftsmen, its patrons and collectors, and so welcome today’s visitors to the world of pre-Revolutionary France.

The Landing and Fernery: a Grand Arrival

We want the powerful sense of arrival in an opulent London mansion to be as welcoming and exciting for our daytime visitors and school groups as it is for the hosts of private evening events who greet their guests here. Famously hung since Sir Richard Wallace’s day with some of the grandest and largest paintings by François Boucher anywhere in the world, it will have new wall silk to enhance the sea and sky colours of his magnificent Rising and the Setting of the Sun (over the stairs) and Summer and Autumn Pastorals. Greenery in the small Fernery will create an indoor garden for quiet contemplation (possibly even with computer terminals for the visitor)

The Boudoir: Sense and Sensibility

Leading off the Landing, the Boudoir was the first of Lady Wallace’s private apartments. It will be hung with coral silk, and will retain an atmosphere of Sense and Sensibility, concentrating on paintings by Jean-Baptiste Greuze and Joshua Reynolds, often depicting classical and moral themes, or children and education. It will also feature some of the magnificent writing desks and secrétaires in the Collection as a reminder of the favoured pastime of ladies in their intimate rooms in the 18th and 19th-centuries.

The Gold and Miniature Room

A microcosm of 18th-century art will appear in this former corridor next to the Boudoir. It will become more of a room, with cases wrapped round the walls revealing an intimate treasure trove of extravagant and gorgeous goldsmiths’ work, ours being considered the finest collection of French snuff boxes in any museum, together with a stunning array of miniature portraits and gouache paintings. These miniature arts complement each other perfectly and the visitor will have a visual treat viewing such intimate pieces together for the first time. They will be displayed with the very best lighting, environmental controls and security that we can provide, so that the objects will be the dazzling focus of attention.

The West Room:
Travel, the Toilette and Transition

Once Lady Wallace’s bedroom, this is the last of the 18thcentury French rooms before the sequence of top-lit picture galleries and is currently the subject of a campaign by our loyal supporters, our Heroes and Heroines, to refurbish it in their names. It will address domestic daily activities and also encompass the wider world of enlightenment and travel, leading perfectly to the glories of the Grand Tour in Venice next door. The walls will be hung with a smokey-blue silk and pictures will include Van Loo’s Portrait of Louis XV and two paintings by one of the King’s favourite artists, Claude-Joseph Vernet, including his magnificent A Storm with a Shipwreck, which once belonged to Madame de Pompadour’s brother, the marquis de Marigny. The famous Augsburg silver-gilt travelling service (for the toilette, eating and writing) and hard-stone furniture will transport the visitor to Italy…

If you would like to become a Hero or Heroine and make a contribution to this part of the campaign, please contact Emma Festing, on 020 7563 9558 (emma.festing@wallacecollection.org ).