Quotes of Armour
Despite being a Sèvres urn’s throw from London’s Oxford Street, The Wallace Collection at Hertford House always radiates an air of calm and civility. Perhaps it’s the sylvan setting of Manchester Square. Maybe it’s the muted acoustics of the Courtyard Restaurant. But most likely it is the dignity – even with some daring moments – of the interiors that secures this aura of being far from the madding crowd. The latest room in the former home of the Victorian collector Sir Richard Wallace to shine once more is the Great Gallery. It’s December 2014 and John O’Connell, Founder and Director of John J O’Connell Architects, is about to give a private tour of The Wallace Collection. The municipal museum is once more a sumptuous townhouse. Over to John:
“Sir Richard Wallace planned the internal spaces around the main staircase which has a balustrade from the Hôtel de Nevers in Paris. In principle, each room is enhanced to stress the domestic or private mansion aspect of the main house. For example interconnecting doors between rooms have been reinstated and indeed in the Study we have introduced an entirely new false door to visually balance the existing doorway on the other side of the fireplace. Our main purpose is to provide an augmented setting for the Collection. It is not about re-creating rooms as they were, no, but rather re-presenting them for today’s visitors and scholars. The colour of the Dining Garden Hall is a quieter silver grey. You can’t have hectic colours all the time! Curtains should cascade and be three dimensional: they should come forwards and backwards.”
“This is the size of a city block, the Great Gallery, so it’s an extraordinary beautiful room and what we’ve done is gone and looked at the archived photograph of the room as it was with this lovely laylight which had to be abolished at a certain moment and now with modern technology we can again have this great laylight. This is where you have studio glazing at the top of the roof and it in turn lets light down onto this magnificent daylight so in other words it has a huge amount of natural light falling into the room.”
“It’s not wallpaper on the walls. It’s the most wonderful possible fabric, silk, and it’s not just damask, it’s a brocatelle, so it’s got even more silk in it! I think that to, as it were, bring the gallery forward into the modern age, you need to get the best possible conditions: lighting, climate control, security, fire safety compliance, decorative effects, so you can bring all of that into this great space. You could only do that if you go right back and lift the roof off because that’s what happened here. You see, the entire roof of the Great Gallery was taken off and what we have here is a whole new room within the gallery space because this has the technology almost of a railway terminal, when you see the supporting structure, and yet inside it is so beautiful.”
“Architectural features must do at least three jobs. The oculi in the latticed cast plasterwork punch through the cove: vertical stop, start, stop, start, all the way round the room. They also let more light into the room and act as the return path for the air conditioning. Reinstating wainscoting has curatorial importance. The paintings come to life against coloured fabric above the dado rail and the light coloured wainscot is appropriate as a backdrop to furniture. The gilt fillet of the wainscot is more pronounced than in the preceding galleries. If it was too small it would look titchy; if it was too over the top it would look bonkers. The wainscot must flow along. The Great Gallery enshrines everything we have learned during our 19 years working at the Collection. Everything bar the floor is new.”
“I think first of all The Wallace Collection is so multifaceted, the armour, then of course furniture, particularly Boulle, as an architect we love Boulle furniture, this is what we really want! The great thing is here the parameters are set. You can move everything but you cannot acquire and you cannot dispose which is marvellous, so it’s like a game of chess all the time. Everything is of equal importance. The placement of objects is just so important.”
Earlier that year Country Life had featured the Great Gallery in its 10 September edition hailing the “triumphant revitalisation”. The hang has long been recognised as one of the world’s best displays of Old Masters. Only two of the principal galleries attached to aristocratic London townhouses survive: Apsley House in Piccadilly and Hertford House. But it was John’s work which really enthralled the magazine. Michael Hall writes in Gallery Tour: The Great Gallery at The Wallace Collection:
“The present restoration – which forms a climax, but not the conclusion, of a comprehensive programme of refurbishment of the galleries begun under The Wallace’s former Director Dame Rosalind Savill in 2000 – has been paid for by a single donation of £5 million by the Monument Trust, in memory of the Honourable Simon Sainsbury, a major donor to The Wallace and a former Trustee. As with the other galleries, the design work has been carried out by John O’Connell Architects.”
“At first glance, it may seem that nothing has changed, but, in fact, almost everything has. Even the gallery’s two doors, at the far ends of the south wall, are not in their original places. They were formerly close to the corners of the room, creating a dead space in the angle; now that they have been moved closer together, there is room to hang large pictures on either side of them. In the 1978 to 1982 restoration, the walls were hung with a coral coloured fabric, which, by 2012, had faded. It has been replaced by a small patterned crimson damask woven by Prelle in Lyon.”
“Inspired by the great Victorian private picture galleries of London – continuing a tradition that goes back to the 17th century – it provides a satisfyingly rich and deep toned backdrop to the paintings. The main seat furniture in the room, an early Louis XVI set of chairs and settees, has been reupholstered to match. One subtle but striking improvement is the addition of a chair rail and dado, which the room had never possessed before. This anchors the furniture to the setting, but, more significantly, provides a strong architectural base for the hang of the paintings, preventing any feeling that they are floating on these huge walls.”
“Most impressive of all is the coved ceiling. An entirely new design by John O’Connell, it reintroduces indirect sunlight by means of oval laylights in the cove and a large laylight in the centre of the room. This has been made possible by advances in air conditioning technology: the new system installed as part of the refurbishment is very much smaller than its 1978 to 1982 predecessor. Daylight brings the room alive, and lends sparkle to the paintings, enhanced by an entirely new lighting scheme – predominantly LEDs – by the engineers, Sutton Vane Associates.” Michael Hall describes the Great Gallery as “one of London’s greatest rooms”.
Ros was Director from 1992 to 2011. Her appointment was approved by Prime Minister John Major because The Wallace is a national museum. She had the dual task of creating the optimal 21st century museum visitor experience and meeting the expanded expectation of the Government. Ros breathed light and life into the museum, excavating the basement and glazing over the courtyard. Two temporary exhibition galleries, a theatre, a learning studio, a library, a meeting room and rows of individual bathrooms were inserted into the basement. The new spaces combine the practical with the scholarly. Most of all, Ros wanted the objects to sparkle and to bring a new domestic intimacy to the staterooms. And so she called upon John and together they embarked upon the golden age of transformation – at pace. Visitor numbers more than doubled.
At her Memorial Service in St Marylebone Anglican Church in May 2025, the Reverend Canon Dr Stephen Evans said, “Rosalind is not only renowned for her services to the study of ceramics, but also someone once described as ‘the most distinguished woman museum director of the western world’. Not only the keeper who transformed The Wallace Collection. A trusted advisor. A wise, exciting and imaginative teacher. An engaging meticulous writer whose public service was enlivened by ebullience, verve and passion.”
It’s August 2025: asparagus and feta mousse followed by orange and poppyseed cake are being served in the Courtyard Restaurant. A time for reflection in and on and about a monumental cultural legacy. The late great Dame Rosalind Savill was an inspirational scholar of European decorative arts, a visionary museum director, and a human being of such intelligence, empathy and grace. She called John “my genius architect”. His practice would later be responsible for redesigning major country house estates such as Montalto in County Down. What Ros and John achieved together at The Wallace Collection remains a touchstone of excellence for museums everywhere. Dancing to the music of time.
