Victorian lighting

28 June 2011

The Watts Gallery in Compton, Surrey, reopened on 18 June after a £10 million restoration project in which an extensive lighting scheme plays a major part in representing the work of a major ‘lost’ artist.

The Grade II-listed Arts and Crafts building has been restored and extended with a new gallery and exhibition spaces. It is home to a collection of more than 1,000 works of art by the influential Victorian painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts and his potter wife Mary Seton Watts.

Emphasising the importance of the collection which was left to the nation in 1904, the Prince of Wales and Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt have both recently visited the gallery to view progress on the restoration carried out by Zombory-Moldovan Moore Architects, with Purcell Miller Tritton as conservation architects.

Curator Mark Bills says: ‘The lighting has been a crucial element to the redevelopment of the gallery, not just because of the wonderful atmosphere it creates, but primarily because of the way it illuminates the paintings, which has been a revelation to many.’

Work of art

Museum and exhibition designer Charles Marsden-Smedley was appointed as the lighting designer and also designed the museum’s interpretive gallery (the Richard Jefferies Gallery) and the graphics. The lighting strategy devised was ‘to illuminate Watts’s works of art – painting and sculpture – to their best advantage, focusing light on the works of art and allowing the walls to remain relatively dark. As far as possible the aim was to make the source of light as discreet as possible.’

The lighting scheme features Precision Lighting Evo spotlights with a custom finish on a Eutrac 3 circuit track system. There are 104 Evo 16 lockable spotlights with 6mm honeycomb louvres, plus another 54 Evo 16s with snoots designed to eliminate glare. The specially designed heat sink and airflow system reduces the lamps and surface temperature while preventing any light spill. They house BLV Reflekto 50W 24˚ halogen lamps and are mounted on 130 metres of track housed in specially designed troughs and custom-finished to match the newly painted ceilings.

An Evo 16 with a framing projector was also installed to light the Sower of Systems, a remarkable symbolist painting regarded as having changed the course of modern art in Britain. The projector illuminates the picture without highlighting its gilt frame.

‘We worked with Precision Lighting on the Richard Jefferies Gallery, the Isabel Goldsmith Patino Gallery, the Exhibition Gallery and the Sculpture Gallery,’ says Marsden-Smedley. ‘In the IGP gallery we designed two longitudinal troughs to conceal the light track and most of the light fittings. Fittings in this gallery were painted a special colour to match the architecture. In the Richard Jefferies Gallery and Exhibition Gallery, the architect had included some troughs into which we installed the track. In the Sculpture Gallery, a special detail was designed to house the light track. In these three galleries the colour of the fittings was constant to allow flexibility between galleries.’

Challenging atmosphere

The gallery was originally designed to make maximum use of daylight, which created a strong connection between the art and the surrounding countryside but also made some of the works hard to view. In fact, ‘when the gallery was decrepit, there were a handful of bulbs in odd places where they had replaced gas lamps and they weren’t lighting the paintings,’ says architect Andrew Zombory-Moldovan.

Part of the lighting challenge, therefore, was to introduce properly controlled artificial light on the painting and sculpture that would preserve that original intent by keeping it as discreet as possible by building the lighting into the architecture of the building. Spotlighting the paintings and sculptures in this way was an important part of keeping the gallery’s extraordinary cosiness and homeliness while also modelling the space.

‘The big thing about the Watts Gallery is that is has a magical atmosphere quite unlike most others,’ says Zombory-Moldovan. ‘It is very personal and idiosyncratic. The light plays a vital part in preserving that while also making sure that the viewing and conservation conditions are right. Old friends of the gallery may not even notice the change but it is radical: there is actually less light now but more visibility. It’s about managing the light and putting it in the right place.’ Andrew Molyneux says: ‘This is one of the aspects of this project that most excited us, we relish the challenge of integrating lighting into architecture.’

Varied approach

The Livanos Gallery, the Weston Gallery and the Graham Robertson Gallery form a u-shape around the Richard Jefferies Gallery. ‘The ceilings are coffered so troughs were not viable here,’ explains Charles Marsden-Smedley. ‘Light track was not considered a possibility but a series of diamonds with edge moulding existed in the ceiling for ventilation, so the approach here was to enlarge them a little and to install nine Erco adjustable gimbal downlights in each as well as other services such as alarms and smoke detectors. Fortunately these diamond positions worked well, allowing all the paintings to be illuminated’. John Cullen adjustable recessed downlights were specified for the Showcase Gallery, where the ceilings are low. Automatic grey-out blinds are used to control daylight throughout.

Watt’s Watt

George Frederic Watts was an outstanding portraitist, sculptor, landscape painter and symbolist, widely considered to be the greatest painter of the Victorian age. He lived in Compton for the last 13 years of his life and built the gallery in the Arts and Crafts style with his second wife Mary to provide ‘art for all’. In later years his work faded from public view but is now being revived. The Watts was privately funded until it was put on the English Heritage At Risk Register. It narrowly missed winning the final of BBC’s Restoration Village in 2006 and subsequently received £4.9 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund plus donations from other individuals, trusts and foundations.