The Wallace Collection

If you are familiar with the Wallace Collection you will know it is exceptional for being a family collection, a national museum, and an international treasure house all at once. Such a rare combination has enormous appeal as a centre for scholars, an invaluable community resource for school children from London’s most deprived boroughs as well as for the homeless and the disabled, and as an important cultural and historical landmark. But it is the great works of art that are our raison d’, and it is the duty of the Trustees and staff to preserve the Collection for the enjoyment of this and future generations. We believe that the creation of beautiful rooms and galleries, where the visitor can savour the wonderful combinations of the fine and decorative arts in an intimate environment, is one of our great strengths. While scholars can study the Collections close up and in depth in well lit and environmentally controlled conditions, others can find the domestic, friendly interiors and the human scale of the displays without plinths and barriers, a perfect enticement to the wonders on view.

Recapturing Domestic Intimacy: our track record

Since 1994 we have raised the funds to refurbish eight rooms reflecting such themes as the Opulent London House, Louis XIV and Versailles, the Fête Galante and Chinoiserie, High Rococo, Boucher and his Circle, and Queen Marie-Antoinette. Each has had ingenious lighting and environmental controls developed to suit the works of art on show, and special coloured silks have been woven in France to set them off to vivid advantage. Our curators and the architectural team of John O’Connell of Dublin and Mark Hammond of Purcell, Miller, Tritton, have worked their magic on the new rooms, and the results have inspired us to begin on the next phase of refurbishment. The recently restored Oval Drawing Room illustrates our aims perfectly. Here the gilded panels and ceiling mouldings, new chair rail, lighting track, blue silk walls and curtains with elaborate trimmings provide a fresh and perfect setting for the works of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, complemented by the great roll-top desk for the comte d’Orsay and chairs made for the Games Room at Fontainebleau. The works of art are finally at home, rather than in a museum, and they offer the visitor a glimpse into another world.

Visitor Reaction

‘The French fete galante paintings are precious jewels and now they have their jewel box in this wonderful new [Small Drawing] room with dusky mauve decor. After this the rich green of the Large Drawing Room is a stroke of audacity which raises the level of anticipation and trust preparing you for the sumptuousness to follow.’
Vivienne Westwood

‘Congratulations on the stunning new rooms’
Comment from Visitors Book

We know that the room refurbishments are making a difference, not least because our visitor numbers in 2007/8 have increased on the two previous years (over 320,000 predicted). This has been helped by Farrow & Ball, whose paint is used in the new rooms who, with the Evening Standard, held an evening event about interior decoration which attracted over 150 first-time visitors to Hertford House. Country Life and The Saturday Telegraph Magazine have also published articles on the refurbishments.

In a recent Visitor Survey, 87% of visitors would ‘recommend a friend’ to visit the Collection, 77% said they were ‘very likely to return’ and 29% of visitors now spend over two hours in the galleries. Not only are we confident that the new rooms play a big part in these results, but even more surprising perhaps is that the Visitor Survey revealed that the Collection has a huge emotional and spiritual impact on many of our visitors. The refurbished rooms appear to provide an opportunity to step back in time and offer an overwhelming sensory experience. The most moving of all visitor comments comes from a group of refugee teenagers who did a project with us and said that they loved the Wallace Collection because it was homely and here, at last, they could feel safe.