The Dulwich Picture Gallery doesn’t get the visitors it deserves because it’s not on the tube. It is a ten minute hop on the overground from Victoria to Dulwich West and then a ten minute walk through the leafy purlieus of Dulwich.
Shall we digress? You will associate Dulwich with its eponymous college and then, like a contestant on University Challenge, you will be thinking PG Wodehouse and Nigel Farage. Can you think of any other alumni? Nor me, but Wiki throws up some familiar names. PG W is joined by Dennis Wheatley, Raymond Chandler and CS Forester. Other Old Alleynians (I’ll explain this later) include Peter Bazalgette, Lionel Barber ( FT editor), Nigel Stamp, CFA Voysey, Michael Powell, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Bob Monkhouse (expelled).
So why are they called Old Alleynians? Simply because Edward Alleyn, an actor and philanthropist, got permission from James I in 1619 to found a school – the College of God’s Gift – to educate twelve indigent scholars. Now there are about 1,500 pupils and the Old Boys (no girls, transgender, etc) are called after their founder. The school quickly shrugged off its official name to become known as Dulwich College.
Now we can get back on track. Alleyn bequeathed a large and dull assortment of pictures to his college which were dutifully displayed. Wiki comments:
In the 18th century, the collection was displayed on the first floor of the wing of the Old College. It attracted few additions during this period, and recorded descriptions of the gallery suggest disappointment and apathy from its visitors. The art historian and Whig politician Horace Walpole wrote that he saw “a hundred mouldy portraits among apostles, sibyls and kings of England”.
In 1790, two London art dealers (one Swiss, one French) were commissioned by Stanislaw II August, King of Poland, to acquire an art collection for his country. They spent five years buying up some good stuff but by 1795 Poland had been partitioned and their patron was a puff of smoke, or at any rate a throne less and penniless King. What to do? Great Britain had no national collection so they tried to foist their pictures on the nation but no dice. Then they tried selling it – no dice. In 1807 one of the dealers, the Frenchman, died leaving the collection to his Swiss business partner, Sir Francis Bourgeois. He left instructions in his Will for Sir John Soane to design a gallery at Dulwich to accommodate the collection to augment Alleyn’s original “mouldy portraits”. It opened in 1815 and is the first purpose-built public art gallery in England.
So what took me there yesterday morning? I went to see a small exhibition of work by Gerrit Dou. (Dou, who? – he was taught by Rembrandt.) It is a very small exhibition – just two pictures. They were last seen together in 1665; one is in the Dulwich permanent collection, the other borrowed from a private collection in America. Rather lucky to be able to see them together again as, in 1966, A Lady Playing on the Clavicord and (seven other pictures) were stolen from Dulwich but subsequently recovered. In case you don’t make it to the show – it closes 6th November – here they both are.
I was glad to learn how DPG came by its collection. I have always thought it rather fusty and higgledy-piggledly, though I also used to think that of the Wallace and have learned better. Also, the building’s proto-Brutalism strikes me as less fun than Soanes’ wonderful house and Museum in London.
And yet we go on pilgrimages to Dulwich (always “leafy” in the media) most years and marvel at the unerring taste of the curators of the DPG’s temporary exhibitions. The recent Ravilious was a revelation, even to those of us who are devotees of the Towner. And this year’s Winifred Knights show was astounding. Not only did WK have an ignoral and sudden rediscovery to match those of Evelyn Dunbar (recently starring at the Pallant), but she surely was some sort of genius. Her paintings seem modest and cool and to invite almost casual inspection. But then they draw the viewer in, and deliver a sucker-punch. She channels her adored Italian classics, and makes a homage to their mood and skills, so that centuries fall away.