Dame Rosalind Savill DBE FSA FBA, former Director of the Wallace Collection, passed away on 27th December 2024 after a short illness. Born in May 1951, Ros, as she liked to be known, joined the Collection staff as a museum assistant in 1974, rising through the curatorial ranks to become Director in 1992, and remaining in that post for nearly two decades. By that time she was already a world authority on French porcelain and 18th-century decorative arts, but above all became best known for her transformation of the somewhat dowdy 1970s institution that she had stepped into all those years before, replacing its rather drab galleries with a glorious riot of aristocratic opulence intended to showcase the Collection’s sumptuous art works in the kind of surroundings they had originally been intended for. She was determined to bring back an 18th/19th-century Grand State-Room 'look' to the principal rooms, best illustrated by her remodelling of the Front State Room into a close recreation of how Sir Richard Wallace himself had decorated it in the 1870s. Once she became Director, we in the Conservation Department played a significant hands-on role to enable that dream to be realised, working closely with Ros and the curators.
I myself joined the museum as Armourer and Metalwork Conservator just one year after Ros, and like her, having found my ‘dream job’ never felt the need to move on. During our formative years, the Collection’s Director was John Ingamels, so we were both closely involved in the major projects initiated by him. A particular project involved the installation of air-conditioning and re-modelling of the Reserve galleries on the second floor into plant-rooms and offices, the Reserve itself moving down into the basement. Like Ros when her turn came, Ingamels was an academic Director with an impressive publication record, but he was also instrumental in beginning a programme of updating and refreshing the decor of the public galleries, albeit in a style and to a degree later eclipsed by Ros Savill’s own achievements in that area. Both Ingamels, and later Ros came to regard the in-house conservation team as a necessary and integral part of the ‘working’ Wallace Collection. Both determinedly resisted any suggestion that conservation work should be outsourced to allow the third-floor workshops to be ‘better employed as offices’. Throughout her tenure, Ros was a keen supporter of the conservation profession, and in particular supported and encouraged her own in-house conservation team, specialists in the treatment of furniture and arms/armour (largely due to lack of space, paintings had always been treated by specialist experts off-site at the National Gallery, the Courtauld, and elsewhere).
The relationship between conservators and curators at the Wallace Collection was always a closely symbiotic one, and Ros certainly appreciated how useful an in-house conservation team could be when it came to the movement of works-of-art and their re-display. In the years of major Ros-inspired room refurbishments, largely funded by donors won over by her ebullient charm and vision, the skills and knowledge of her close-knit in-house team of curators and conservators, all of whom knew their own art-works inside and out, came to the fore. The Conservation Department became the repository for an exhaustive knowledge of the Collection’s art-works and how to safely move them, and our expertise was highly valued. Throughout the often quite invasive works, Ros still insisted that the museum should remain open regardless of disruption, and most of us (albeit with the occasional eye-roll!) went along with that. It was a part of her wider view that we as a national museum, following the wishes of our Founder(s), belonged to the people, and that 'their' galleries should not be closed without good reason. Ros believed that the Collection should be viewed as a living organism in which things happened and tasks had to be done. She felt that our visitors should see this and not be misled into thinking that nothing ever moved or that staff did not enter a gallery except when delivering a public talk. She positively relished the idea that our visitors should see things happening, and know that we were working to improve everyone’s long-term experience of the Collection.
Although her speciality was 18th-century porcelain, Ros viewed the Collection as a whole, frequently becoming incensed at media reviews such as ‘the Wallace Collection has great paintings but is cluttered with furniture’. There had been a tendency in the past for some to view the Wallace Collection as ‘just another’ London art gallery rather than what it actually was… a multi-facetted collection of historic art-works of enormous breadth and range, with ‘quality’ being their common denominator. In my own case, Ros had absolutely no interest in Arms and Armour, but she nevertheless appreciated that the Armoury was an integral part of the Wallace Collection. She was supportive of the research carried out by myself and our volunteer archaeometallurgist Alan Williams, which gave rise to a series of significant publications and the firm establishment of the Wallace Collection as a major player on the Arms and Armour world stage. Similarly, her support of research into the design and craftsmanship of aristocratic French furniture placed the Collection at the forefront of the Furniture History field, and again it was conservators and curators who played an important part in that.
Even more ambitious than her gallery refurbishment programme was Ros Savill’s idea to mark the turn of the Millennium with the Wallace Collection ‘Centenary Project’. With the assistance of a £10 million grant from the National Lottery, backed by the Trustees and supported by a coterie of loyal donors and supporters, she proceeded to extend and transform the old basement rooms of Hertford House into entirely new spaces. These included education workrooms, a lecture theatre, and additional space for the Collection’s significant Library and Archives. She introduced an ‘open’ Reserve Gallery displaying all the artworks previously hidden in store, and a Conservation Gallery designed to highlight the work of the in-house conservation team and aspects of the construction of furniture and armour. Additionally, a purpose-designed Special Exhibitions Gallery gave the Collection a new ability to stage regular special exhibitions on a range of subjects without the need to disrupt the galleries upstairs. Finally, an entirely new income-generating Restaurant was installed in the now glazed-over central courtyard, benefitting both the Collection’s income stream and its visitors. Throughout this work, Ros was closely supported by her conservation team, led at that time by its Head of Conservation Paul Tear, who was awarded an MBE for his services to the Collection during the Project.
The Centenary Project was a huge achievement for all involved, but from a conservation point of view, perhaps its most innovative and exciting offshoot was the new Conservation Gallery, in which Ros was keen for us to come up with our own design concepts and content. From a conservation perspective, this gallery was a major innovation at the time which inspired a number of emulators both here in the UK and abroad. Permanent displays reflected the work of the Conservation Department, focussing on our analyses and research into furniture and armour construction, materials and craftsmen’s techniques. Most popular with our visitors was the ‘armour handling’ collection of real and replica pieces of armour which children (and adults!) could handle and try on. Finally, the room featured a large central walk-in display area intended to host two or three conservation-related exhibitions per year. These displays, encouraged and supported by Ros but curated by the conservation staff themselves, featured specific projects showcasing both the research and the hands-on work of the conservation team, as well as occasionally featuring work carried out by external restorers, of paintings for example.
Throughout the three years of disruption caused by the complex building works necessary to bring the Centenary Project to a successful conclusion, all carried out under the constraints of working within a listed historic building and (crucially) closely on time, Ros was able to keep most of the museum galleries on the ground and first floors open to our visitors. Finally, on 22nd June 2000, the completely transformed lower-ground-floor was officially opened to the public by the Prince of Wales. This was a nice twist, ocurring precisely 100 years after the Wallace Collection itself was formally opened by another Prince of Wales, later to become King Edward VII.
In July 2004, I was appointed Head of Conservation. My first major task in that role was to hang Ros Savill’s most ambitious exhibition to date, ‘François Boucher: Seductive Visions’, featuring the Wallace Collection’s stunning array of Boucher’s works. Usually displayed throughout the museum, all the Boucher paintings were now to be brought together for the first time, not in the new (but small) lower ground floor Exhibition Gallery, but in the huge Great Gallery on the first floor. The latter had to be largely emptied of the paintings already there, all of which (except one end wall) had to be moved and redisplayed by the in-house team elsewhere around the museum. Guided by the vision of Ros and her paintings curator Jo Hedley, and aided by the jigsaw-puzzle skills of the Collection’s new (and first) Curator of Exhibitions Stephen Duffy, it was a truly huge undertaking, subsequently acclaimed as an artistic and academic triumph. It also showed, if any proof were needed, that her dedication, driving enthusiasm and genuine camaraderie allowed Ros to motivate her staff with a true sense of teamwork, and a shared goal… love of the Collection.
In the years that followed, Ros ensured the in-house conservation team continued to be an essential element of the Collection’s now even more dynamic Exhibitions Programme, much enhanced and extended during her tenure as Director. As with her room refurbishment programme, many of the Collection’s exhibitions involved a Rubik Cube-like process of moving art-works from room to room to keep everything on display, and then back again afterwards. Our involvement often also extended to the installation of important and prestigious external temporary exhibitions such as Lucian Freud’s ‘New Paintings’ in 2004, so popular that for the first time ever the queues for admittance stretched out into Manchester Square. At the exhibition’s launch, the opening speech of the evening referenced Lucian Freud’s amusement at having his latest show ‘hung by an Armourer’.
Ros Savill always liked the idea that for such a small institution, we were hitting well above our weight in terms of academic knowledge-gathering and curatorial prowess. She was passionate in her championing of the academic research undertaken by her staff, constantly supporting and encouraging both curatorial and conservation academic scholarship. Her world-class three-volume catalogue of the museum’s collection of Sèvres porcelain had been published in 1988, and she continued to pursue her personal research into French 18th-century ceramics throughout her museum career, serving as president of the French Porcelain Society from 1998 to 2023. Her passion for academic excellence extended to her determination that the Collection should pursue a more ‘educational’ role than ever before, and she was instrumental in setting up a professionally-staffed Education Department to run programmes for schools and develop close links with universities, for example creating a joint-MA course with Buckingham University. The creation of a staffed Library and Reading Room created access not only for students, but also (by appointment) the general public, and conceptually was the basis for later online public access to the contents of the Collection.
A renewed focus on research resulted in an ambitious programme of catalogue publication, including works on paintings, glass, enamels and gold boxes, and the European armoury collection. The results of research were disseminated at conferences both at home and abroad, and by lecturing, including Gallery Talks delivered by both curatorial and conservation staff. Actively encouraged by the Director, Conservation Department staff in particular were responsible for developing ‘hands-on-artifacts’ gallery talks, using the beginnings of what was to become an impressive teaching collection of wooden, ceramic and ‘Armoury’-related artifacts acquired specifically for that purpose, much of which is still in use today.
Ros was always appreciative of her Conservation team, and keenly supportive of new conservation initiatives and projects. Although funds were invariably extremely limited, she was always receptive to our needs, and especially supportive of our independent research and what is now called ‘Continual Progressive Development’ (CPD). In fact, one of her many initiatives was to allow her conservation team one half-day per week each for research, which was almost unheard of in those days. The Department’s staff was small, but we seemed to achieve a lot. Much of the research that Alan Williams and I carried out (especially in terms of our attending and speaking at conferences abroad) was at least partially self-funded, but Ros would always do what she could to facilitate such work, and would always ask about its progress. She was broadly supportive despite having no personal interest at all in the 'lunar landscapes' of armour metal photomicrographs. She was fully aware and appreciative of our publication record, and this was the same for others in the Conservation Department.
Above all, those of us who were there during the Ros years remember it as a time of such fun. Under her Directorship we not only got stuff done, but felt hugely privileged and empowered to be part of her Wallace Collection team, sharing her motivation and love of the place. Rosalind Savill’s academic, curatorial and Directorial achievements were recognised first by the award of a CBE and then in 2009 with a Damehood. However, I think she valued the regard of her staff, supporters and friends, and her knowledge that she had done the very best that she could for the Collection, more than the granting of those honours. It was the regard and admiration of those who knew and worked with her that really proves her worth. We all felt that, in many ways she was the glue that kept the Wallace Collection 'family' together... and despite the ups and downs of that era we did genuinely feel that we were all part of a ‘family’. Certainly no-one doubted that Ros herself was completely committed to the Collection, and that she was a thoroughly 'Wallace' curator, always and in every way.
When Ros finally retired in 2011 one couldn’t help feeling that it was somehow the end of an era. She continued to pursue her academic and scholarly interests in retirement, further extending her already vast knowledge of 18th-century French applied art, researching and publishing. Her two-volume masterpiece of popular scholarship, “Everyday Rococo: Madame de Pompadour and Sevres Porcelain”, was published in 2021, marking 300 years since the birth of Louis XIV’s famous mistress and patron of the Sevres factory. To the very end Ros maintained her involvement with art, museums, and education in all its various forms, including lecturing, and did sterling work serving on committees and in Trustee positions, but above all, she never lost her love of the Wallace Collection and all that it meant to her. She is sorely missed by all who knew her and worked with her during her ‘Wallace’ years.
David Edge, Armourer, metalwork Conservator, and former Head of Conservation at the Wallace Collection between 2004 and 2020.