A wannabe Soane could only undermine the emotional purity of this special, curious and engagingly intense place. Dulwich is of international importance, as well as being deeply ingrained in local affection: Mather’s modesty of ambition is a good match for Soane’s modesty of means.. Come the new year, Olivier Cadic is moving himself, his hi-tech software and printing company and 15 of his 25 staff across the sea to a country where small companies can grow and enterprise is rewarded. Soane created a masterpiece that has matured over the years and won admirers around the globe. At a rough estimate, his budget of just under pounds 10,000 works out at about pounds 6m today.Assuming Mather’s designs can be funded, the next important thing is to ensure that the picture gallery is supported by a comfortable financial cushion.
The trustees cannot allow themselves to agree to designs and a budget that will result in an extension that may fail to stand the test of time. No, Mather’s plan – assuming that Dulwich Picture Gallery must be extended – is a good one. It will frame the gallery without drawing attention to itself The important thing is that it is immaculately detailed. The real treasure was, of course, the building and its collection. We all have to learn.A free-standing building elsewhere in the grounds would be a mistake, as it would gobble up a lot of land. When I first came here on top of an RT bus (a number 12 from Aldwych), clutching a 2s 6d Red Rover ticket, what I remembered most on the slow diesel ride home were Rembrandt’s haunting portrait of a young man (brown on brown on haunting brown) and the deliciously spooky mausoleum, the stuff – for a child – of Hammer films and dreams of Eygptian tombs, King Solomon’s Mines and lost treasure.
Dulwich Picture Gallery, designed by Sir John Soane (1757-1837), has grown from these dramatic Jacobean beginnings, and certainly since 1814 when Soane finished work here, into a gallery with an international renown that has, in recent years, weighed heavily on its slender architectural shoulders.
Soane, one of the most imaginative architects of the Napoleonic era, had dreamed of an ambitious pantheon to the arts, but a budget of a little less than pounds 10,000 encouraged, or forced, him to squeeze his ideas into a ball. In any case, who wants to visit this delightful garden (with rather a nice gallery attached) only to be forced into the bowels of suburban soil? Soane, of course, might have been taken by the idea; a gloomy man, much given to thinking about death and sketching tombs, he designed a remarkably poignant (and even sinister) last resting place for Dulwich’s benefactors, Sir Louis Bourgeois and Mr and Mrs Desenfans Where is it? In the very heart of the picture gallery. As the gallery refuses, point-blank, to provide ladders and glasses for those short of sight (and height), the selfish pleasure of enjoying masterpieces packed together will have to be denied to those who would prefer to see the gallery pickled in Regency aspic.Mather’s proposal promises to provide Dulwich with the extra space and facilities it wants without in any way threatening or squaring up to the existing architecture. However, there will, undoubtedly, be those who will argue that if there has to be an extension, then surely it would have been better to consider burying it underground, or else placing it further away from Soane’s free-standing gem; certainly, there is room in the garden. Building underground, however, can be costly, and, in this restricted space subterranean galleries and lecture theatres might be rather claustrophobic. Of course, there is a case for a Regency-style clutter of paintings, but for those with less than 20:20 vision, high- rise stacks of Gainsboroughs are as unkind as they are far out of reach.
On the right, a glass door will take visitors directly to the cafe, lavatories, lecture theatre and classroom and so, along a cloistered walk, to a side entrance into the gallery.Extra storage space, and a new gallery in the annexed college wing, will allow curators to hang paintings a little more generously than at present: the overall effect inside Soane’s original building will be one of uncluttered and subtly lit harmony. Here, Mather will have them walk straight on to Soane’s building, or turn left or right. To the left, the architect plans a formal garden in which visitors can take chairs from the cafe in summer and sit in the shade of the generous old trees that characterise the much loved garden. Nothing much at first, that is, but that is Mather’s intention.
A sensitive and sensible architect with a proven record of designing a form of modern architecture that is almost filigree in its lightness of touch, Mather has arranged his new glass buildings along the old brick wall that fronts College Road and hides the gallery from visitors until they turn through the main gate. The gallery is a local institution as well as an international phenomenon; big financial guns must report here quietly.Assuming the planned refurbishment and extension of the gallery get the go-ahead, what will visitors coming to Dulwich see when work is complete at the turn of the century? Nothing much. The day of the Edwin J Cheeseburger III-style museum extension may not have died (sadly), but a modest gallery such as Dulwich deserves a modest strategy to ensure widespread goodwill as well as a long-term future. If not, it could well be in danger of appearing to be bullied by those with time and far too much money on their hands.
