October 2008

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Before meeting Sir Peter Moores, I decided to pay a return visit to Compton Verney, the Warwickshire country house that forms the setting for the art collections of the museum he founded there. I couldn’t have chosen a more challenging day: a Bank Holiday Monday with its traditional accompaniment of a never-ending downpour. Nonetheless, the sight of the house, remodelled by Robert Adam in the 1760s for Lord Willoughby de Broke, lifted my spirits. Poised serenely by a lake in an arcadian landscape by Capability Brown, it perfectly embodies English aristocratic douceur-de-vivre (Fig. 2). Inside, however, it feels very different. Visitors enter through the north wing straight into the discreet, contemporary extension designed by Stanton Williams that contains all the facilities of a modern museum – which is what Compton Verney has been since it opened to the public in 2004.

When I talk to Sir Peter on the following day in his office close to Buckingham Palace, he is eager for every detail of my visit. Was the house busy? (Yes) Was there a queue for the – excellent – restaurant? (No) Did I agree with his policy of no labels – visitors instead pick up room guides with captions for the numbered exhibits? (Yes) ‘Good’, he exclaims, ‘There’s nothing I hate more than the sight of a row of bottoms in front of wall labels – I want people to look first, and read second.’

This sense of Sir Peter’s personal involvement with Compton Verney helps to explain the highly individual nature of its collection – or rather, five distinct collections. On the ground floor are paintings and decorative arts relating to Naples in the 17th and 18th centuries, German paintings and sculpture of the late middle ages and early renaissance, and British portraits and furniture from 1550 to 1750. Upstairs is Chinese art – largely bronzes – together with galleries for temporary exhibitions, and in the attics is the country’s largest public collection of British folk art. Relaxing back into his chair after discovering that one way and another I had had rather a good time at Compton Verney, Sir Peter – avuncular in his white beard and generous smile, if far more stylishly turned out in a sharply cut grey check suit than ‘avuncular’ implies – explains to me that the collection has a strong autobiographical subtext.

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