Grayson Perry’s Delusions of Grandeur

Grayson Perry’s latest show reinterprets the Wallace Collection. The Arb’s art writer, Rosalind Ormiston, went along to the show’s opening to investigate…

For Londoners, the Wallace Collection, in Hartford House, is one of the nicest galleries to visit, and visit regularly. It has a charm and sense of place unlike any other, not to mention a  phenomenal collection of fine art and decorative art. Where else can you walk through a room and find a masterpiece by Rembrandt, a painting of his son, directly opposite his father’s self-portrait? They gaze across the room at each other.

It’s just a small insight into the subtle curation of a diverse, historic collection of art, furniture, clothing, and an armoury, created by the Marquesses of Hartford and Sir Richard Wallace during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. All the better for us that the house and its contents were bequeathed to the nation in 1897. What’s more, the permanent collection is always free to visit.

What happens, then, when one of the UK’s leading, and most flamboyant, artists takes on this collection, and gives it a new spin? Grayson Perry – indeed, Sir Grayson Perry (he was knighted in 2023) – has studied the collection in the Wallace galleries, to inspire more than forty new works of art. A spoiler here; he wasn’t madly keen on some of the Wallace’s pieces, but what he did like he utilised to create a dramatic, fabulous show of work for a major exhibition that celebrates his 65^th birthday, presented in Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur.

It’s a theatrical show, as one might expect; a fictitious narrative focused on a woman called Shirley Smith (1930-2013) who believes she is the Honourable Millicent Wallace, the true inheritor of the Wallace Collection. Perry takes us into her fantasy world. We step into her home, the rooms decorated with artworks, family portraits and furnishings inspired by her vision of original works in the collection, some of which are shown side by side.

When you enter the gallery, you enter Grayson Perry’s imagination. It begins with Shirley’s letter to the Wallace to explain how as an orphan she has tracked down her real heritage. Added to this surreal invention, there is a reality. Perry has included two real female artists, Madge Gill (1882-1961), a self-taught English artist, and the Swiss amateur artist Aloïse Corbaz (1886-1964), both creators of Outsider art.

Madge Gill did have her work shown at the Wallace in 1942, in a fund-raising exhibition for the Red Cross Aid to Russia Fund. She exhibited a pen-and-ink coloured drawing over 10 metres long and1.5 metres high, with a price tag of £1000. The newspapers called her an ‘elderly East London housewife’ whose inspiration for artworks come to her in a vision named ‘Myrninerest’. Corbaz, by contrast, was infatuated with Kaiser Willhelm II after working as a governess in the Potsdam court. Placed in a mental institution, she created art from sewn-together scraps of paper, toothpaste and flower petals, moving on to coloured pencils. She received encouragement from her doctors who saw art as a restorative practice.

Perry, inspired by Gill and Corbaz’s life stories, has created new works that mirror the life of the fictional Shirley, a self-taught artist living in a world of mental delusion. The artworks are exquisite, superbly crafted and informed by originals in the Collection. In Saint Millicent on her Beast, Shirley carries her sword raised like Joan of Arc, in a beautifully crafted brass equestrian sculpture. Fascist Swing, is informed by The Swing, painted in 1768 by the French painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard, without the sexual inuendo of the male gaze, now replaced by slogans. The catalogue describes the ‘Rocoo froth’ now interpreted as a mass of ‘psychedelic curlicues’. It has to be seen.

Within this exhibition of colour and craftsmanship in sculpture, ceramic, textiles and works on paper – including AI-generated art – is a deeper reflection on mental illness. Grayson Perry questions where it comes from. Is it inherited, in our genes, or the result of a chemical imbalance? A spectacular work looks at family trees, in a large, coloured etching, A Tree in A Landscape. He has taken the miniature portraits from the Wallace collection – some superlative examples are on display – to devise a mental health family tree, in which the artist’s face is imprinted at its base, on the bark.

There is so much more within this exhibition, embracing everything from tapestries to guns. Grayson Perry makes the point that the Wallace Collection has a gender divide, from the feminine silks and frills of Madame de Pompadour’s boudoir to an armoury filled with weapons, a male configured environment. The guns on show, once killing machines, are exquisitely made with expensive materials including mother of pearl and ivory.  Perry’s signature glazed ceramic pots are here, too, illustrated with relevant stories.

One, mixing fantasy with reality outside Hartford House is Alan Measles and Claire meet Shirley Smith and the Honourable Millicent Wallace. Perry’s alter-ego is Claire, and Alan Measles, his childhood teddy bear. The reverse of the glazed ceramic has a chilling tale from Shirley Smith’s childhood. Another is called What a Wonderful World, which relates to entitlement. In the catalogue, Perry explains that when he first worked in London he was poor. Now, as a successful artist, he feels he can smell ‘a sense of entitlement’ in areas of west London, emanating from ‘beige international wealth’ but recognises that these are also his clientele.

The origins of this show were born out of a lunch that Sir Grayson Perry had with the Wallace Collection director Dr Xavier Bray. Initiated in 2022, they have created the largest-ever contemporary exhibition ever held at the Wallace. It is an expansive, hugely pleasurable show with depth beneath its surface. Looking at the works on display creates the urge to visit the collection afterwards to see the originals, the tapestries, paintings, ceramics and miniatures, and the armoury in Hartford House. And there one may pass by the Rembrandts, father and son, quietly gazing at each other across the room.

‘Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur’ runs at the Wallace Collection until 26th October 2025. Wallace Collection, Hartford House, Manchester Square, London W1U 3BN. For more information, please visit www.wallacecollection.org.