COMPTON VERNEY AND THE COLLECTOR WHO ISN'T | August 2nd 2008

Compton Verney

Sir Peter Moores had a museum to fill, and he was determined to display the sort of art that could not be found on Christmas cards; he sought to delight "grannies and kiddies". Paula Weideger explains ...

From ECONOMIST.COM

"What a funny place it is," says Sir Peter Moores, referring to Compton Verney, the museum near Stratford-upon-Avon that he created. It quickly becomes clear that Sir Peter is pretty funny himself, and in much the same engagingly unique way as his creation.

In the early 1990s, when he first thought of opening a museum, he had neither an art collection nor a suitable building. What he did have, however, was money. So in 2004, he opened Compton Verney, a Robert Adam house set in a romantic park designed by Capability Brown, to the public. Its three large floors house British folk art, Neapolitan pictures and related objects (1600-1800), northern European (especially German) paintings and sculpture (1450-1650), British portraits and early Chinese art.

Sir Peter wanted to showcase "stuff that would be easily accessible to people who are were not art educated, without dumbing down." But he adds, "There is no point in doing Florentine gold ground. People get that on Christmas cards. I wanted things that aren't stale."

Instead of wall labels, each room features printed guides with photographs and descriptions of each object. The museum also has helpful, knowledgeable staff stationed throughout.

Since putting his museum together, Sir Peter has continued buying. Glossy and inviting, Compton Verney purrs away. But nagging questions remain: Why did a man who insists that he is not a collector (and gets miffed when called one) want a museum? And how did he decide to fill it?

In 1964, Peter Moores (he wasn't knighted until 2003)--an heir to the great Littlewoods betting, mail-order and retail fortune--created the Peter Moores Foundation (PMF). Music was among the beneficiaries of its then-modest income (after Eton and Oxford, Sir Peter studied opera production in Vienna). The foundation supported talented young singers (including a young unknown named Joan Sutherland) and helped stage and record opera in English.

In the early 1990s, Littlewoods increased its dividend substantially, and Sir Peter had to decide what to do with his extra money. He was asked to help turn derelict Compton Verney into an opera house. He declined, but realised that the beautiful site right in the middle of the English countryside--an easy drive for "half the people in England"--was just the spot for his museum.

The foundation bought it in 1993. The entire back of the building had to be replaced, and a separate education centre built. Now, in addition to large exhibition spaces, Compton Verney houses an imaginatively stocked shop, a restaurant with a floor-to-ceiling glass wall that opens on to the trees beyond, and two small areas for temporary exhibitions.

That same year, the Kalman collection of British folk art came on the market. The PMF bought its 170 naive paintings and shop signs, weather vanes and whirlygigs. Sir Peter thought this would delight "grannies and kiddies." And in one swoop the entire top floor of Compton Verney was filled.

As for the other two floors, sentiment nudged him towards Neapolitan art (he went to Naples to improve his Italian in the 1940s and married a Neapolitan). Similarly, the Cranach paintings and large Riemenschneider wood carving of a female saint are souvenirs of his stay in Germany where he went not long after the war to gain fluency in the language.

Sir Peter admits he's been buying British portraits simply because he thinks people will enjoy them. But his purchases are not frivolous. In 2007, the PMF paid £535,200 ($1.1m), five times the estimate, for an Oliver Cromwell miniature.

The bronzes, however, are a passion, which he has developed since seeing two at Harvard in 1984 and discussing them with Dame Jessica Rawson, a Chinese-art expert, shortly thereafter. With Dame Jessica's encouragement and advice, he has amassed more than 80, one of the most important collections of Chinese bronzes in Europe. Last year, the PMF paid $8.1m for a rare Shang dynasty wine cooler with an owl-face motif (pictured). From 2010 to 2012, Compton Verney's bronzes will tour North America (loaned jade and ivory collections will replace them).

Though magnificent, the bronzes are also daunting relics, remote from us in time and culture--not at all what one expects to find at a museum striving for accessibility. But Sir Peter sees no inconsistency. "Once you tell people they are four thousand years old," he says, "they are sideswiped."

(Paula Weideger is a London-based journalist and author. Her most recent book is "Venetian Dreaming". The Art.view column appears every week on Economist.com.)