IN PROFILE: XAVIER BRAY

The director of The Wallace Collection on loaning artworks, battling bugs and broadening the gallery’s appeal

Words: Emily Jupp / Images: Julian Calder, Thierry Bal

“The Wallace Collection was the greatest gift ever made to the nation, and I guess my mission is to make people realise that.”

Xavier Bray’s ambitions for the institution he leads are clear. Within the cultural landscape of the UK, The Wallace Collection is currently something of a hidden gem, but he wants it hidden no longer. Based in Hertford House, a large townhouse in Manchester Square, the collection comprises over 5,000 objects and artworks amassed in the 18th and 19th centuries by the first four marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the illegitimate son of the 4th marquess, and bequeathed to the British people by Sir Richard’s widow in 1897. “And the thing about it is that it’s all top quality,” enthuses Xavier, who became the Wallace’s director in 2016.

One reason for the gallery’s ‘hidden gem’ status (it pulls in a respectable but by no means enormous stream of about 400,000 visitors a year) is that the board of directors at the Wallace have always refused to lend its objects out. Until now. Xavier explains: “In Lady Wallace’s will, she said that the collection should remain together and unmixed with other objects, and the trustees had always chosen to interpret that as meaning nothing could enter or leave the museum, which basically prohibited loans in and loans out. But in their own lifetime, Lady Wallace and Richard Wallace were extremely generous. They loved to be part of the London cultural life. They lent to the Royal Academy, the V&A and lots of other places.”

Like many cultural institutions, the Wallace has to raise 60 per cent of its running costs itself, with the rest coming from government funds. For most galleries and museums, loaning can be a highly effective form of networking – forging relationships with other institutions across the world and exploiting the benefits of the subsequent publicity, which in turn helps generate an income. This Wallace was consistently hamstrung by its own interpretation of Lady Wallace’s words.

Then, in 2019, for the first time in the collection’s long history, the board made the landmark decision to lend a painting on a temporary basis. That first loan, of Titian’s Perseus and Andromeda, was bestowed upon the National Gallery for a major exhibition, Titian: Love, Desire and Death. The six key works that made up the show, reunited from galleries in Boston, Madrid and London, all depict stories from Classical mythology about love and desire; sometimes euphoric, often fatal, with figures expressing the full gamut of human emotion. Forget once in a lifetime, this was a once in 400-years chance to see them all together in one place. A very big deal indeed.

“For the Wallace, it was amazing to be part of that, making history – or at least making art history,” Xavier jokes, “and really being talked about.” Starting off by loaning to the National made sense, not only because of its status as the nation’s art gallery but also because of Xavier’s knowledge of the institution – he was the gallery’s assistant curator in the late 1990s and early 2000s. When the loan was announced, Gabriele Finaldi, the National Gallery’s director, spoke on the momentous news: “Unthinkable until today, for the first time in over four centuries, thanks to The Wallace Collection’s loan of the Titian Perseus and Andromeda, all of the artist’s late poesie mythologies for the King of Spain will be seen together, as he intended.”

While the loan marked a significant departure from the Wallace’s previous insularity, Xavier believes the move to be entirely consistent with the spirit and intentions of the institution’s founders. “Richard Wallace lent his whole collection to the Bethnal Green Museum in 1872, and crowds of people came,” he says. “It was the first blockbuster exhibition, about 3.5 million people went to visit. He was actually going out to people and sharing, and that’s why I think Richard would have been so proud and pleased. You know, collectors are proud. They love showing off what they’ve bought and seeing it being appreciated by others, and that’s exactly what happened at the National.”

Appreciated the painting certainly was – but not by nearly as many people as had been presumed. When Covid-19 forced the doors of the National Gallery to shut on 18th March 2020, it meant that this eagerly anticipated exhibition, years in the making, had to close after just three days. “It has to be said, the trumpets were certainly muted in terms of this great moment,” says Xavier, wryly. The Wallace, too, suffered an unprecedented hit. Before the first lockdown, the gallery was on the verge of attracting 500,000 annual visitors – an all-time high. Needless to say, this record was never achieved. “People did come back, but before lockdown we were at over 5,000 people a week, then after lockdown it went down to 800. It was pretty awful.”

“The French prescribe going to a museum once a week for their wellbeing. It’s true – there are moments you look at something and it just fills you with aesthetic satisfaction and pushes away depression.”

While Hertford House was closed, Xavier still came in every day to check on the collection, his steps echoing through the empty rooms, occasionally exchanging words with the security teams who remained on site 24 hours a day to protect the gallery’s priceless treasures. “In the deepest moment of lockdown, it was only me, the security, and the senior management team really,” says Xavier, “I did feel a bit like Richard Wallace wandering around my house, so although it was a sad and gloomy time, there was one part of it that was actually, in a very selfish way, highly enjoyable!”

Xavier, it’s safe to say, is inclined towards positivity, and that can clearly be seen in the Wallace’s response to the pandemic, which offered some unexpected opportunities. Rather importantly, a lot of the collection got cleaned for the first time in a century. Ninety-six per cent of The Wallace Collection is on display, which means routine cleaning is often a difficult task to undertake. The first lockdown offered a perfect opportunity to spruce things up, with a lot of brushing, waxing and polishing. According to Xavier, he’s never worked so hard in his life. He wasn’t alone. “The Wallace team is small and dedicated and everyone was keen to undertake all kinds of work that would have been really difficult and expensive to do while we were open. We did a deep clean, we repainted the entrance hall, we did a lot of relighting of the gallery. Now, when you go up the stairsand drop into the 18th-century gallery, it just looks... something,” hesays.

“We did a deep clean, we repainted the entrance hall, we did a lot of relighting of the gallery. Now, when you go up the stairs and drop into the 18th-century gallery, it just looks... something.”

The iconic Rococo painting The Swing, by JeanHonoré Fragonard, which until recently had a thick, tarnished yellow varnish, has been restored to its former glory in “one of the greatest restorations I’ve seen in my career”. The girl at the centre of the work now leaps out from the painting, her facial expression one of pure delight. “It’s as if she was painted yesterday; it is astonishing,” Xavier marvels.

Less obvious projects included the introduction of a pest management system, which was set up to combat the annual nuisance of bugs – the cloth webbing moth, carpet beetle and woolly bear beetle were identified as particular enemies of the art. Xavier and his team also developed and launched a free digital guide on the Bloomberg Connects app, which provides virtual cultural experiences. The guide features video shorts and support for deaf and visually impaired visitors.

The loans programme got back on its feet too. The Titian has travelled on – to the Prado in Madrid and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston – and another of the Wallace’s most famous paintings, A Dance to the Music of Time, appeared last year in the National Gallery’s Nicolas Poussin exhibition. There are plans in place for further significant loans, including the collection’s Louis XV commode – among the most famous pieces of furniture in the world, acquired in 1865. It’s a fine example of Rococo furniture, but the story that goes with it is what makes it so interesting. Xavier tells it with relish: in Louis XV’s bedroom, the commode was facing the fireplace and the flickering firelight reflected on its gilding, playing tricks with the king’s mind as he lay on his deathbed, leading the monarch to declare that he was already dead and among the flames of hell.

The period of reflection enabled by the pandemic resulted in some ambitious plans for exhibitions at Hertford House. The recent Frans Hals show, The Male Portrait, which brought together the 17th century Dutch painter’s portraits of men who look like people – not mannered or grave, their features not moulded to fit the fashion of the day – was a major critical success. It was accompanied by an audio guide, for which Xavier worked with the contemporary artist Grayson Perry, who talked compellingly about masculinity and what it means to be male. In testament to its broad appeal, Xavier confides that he persuaded his 14-year-old son to come to the exhibition with the enticement of listening to Grayson Perry – plus a burger afterwards.

Vivid proof of Xavier’s desire to make the collection as broadly accessible as possible is apparent in the theme of the exhibition that will follow in Hals’ wake, entitled Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts, which opens on 6 April. “Walt Disney loved The Wallace and loved the 18th-century French decorative arts and paintings,” says Xavier. In fact, the fascination endures, with The Swing featuring in Disney’s Frozen and in concept art by Disney artist Lisa Keene for the film Tangled, with Rapunzel kicking off her shoe. A large section of the exhibition is devoted to that most Rococo of films, Beauty and the Beast. When the liveaction remake was filmed in 2017, “the studio was set up near Warren Street and the creative team would come to the Wallace to seek inspiration,” says Xavier.

The Wallace Collection’s wide hallways and welcoming cafe – and the fact that it’s permanent galleries are free to visit – have long been attracting parents with small children to the Wallace, and this is something Xavier keenly wants to encourage. The Disney exhibition should help with that plan. “Children love going to the Wallace because it’s like a dollhouse,” he says.

Xavier’s dream is to see banners everywhere proclaiming what’s on next at the Wallace, and a constant stream of engaged visitors making their way to the gallery. “That I would be proud of.” He feels that museums and galleries, in general, are sadly underused and their benefits undervalued. “The Wallace is a place where people should come at least three times a year for their medicine,” he says. “The French prescribe going to a museum once a week for their wellbeing. It’s true – there are moments you look at something and it just fills you with aesthetic satisfaction and pushes away depression.”

THE WALLACE COLLECTION Manchester Square, W1U 3BN wallacecollection.org

“In the deepest moment of lockdown, it was only me, the security, and the senior management team really. I felt a bit like Richard Wallace wandering around his house. That was actually, in a very selfish way, highly enjoyable!”