Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
Colin St John Wilson, who died last year at the age of 85, was one of the most distinguished architects of his time and perhaps the best president that the Royal Academy never had.
But his first ambition was to be a painter, and painting and the processes of painting, closely observed in the practice of his friends, remained a particular fascination throughout his long life.
From the start he clearly had a gift for making friends among the artists of more or less his own generation and sustaining their active friendship until the end. He was, more than any of his peers, truly an artists' architect, and if there is a key to his career as a collector, this is it.
The remarkable collection of modern British painting and sculpture he put together, at first on his own and then with his wife and fellow architect MJ Long, is now substantially housed at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, where this new exhibition celebrates Wilson's life and work.
The Wilson collection has been rehung through the principal gallery of the extension to Pallant House, and the more hugger-mugger reserve hang in the large neighbouring room, and includes many of his artist friends' most important works - notably RB Kitaj's large double portrait of Wilson and his wife, schematically shown at work together in the house they had built for themselves in Cambridge.
There are many other major works by other friends, such as Patrick Caulfield, Paul Huxley, Victor Willing and Peter Blake in this general hang, often early and significant acquisitions in terms of the artists' own careers.
But it is the Kitaj that points to the closeness of the Wilsons' engagement with the artists. It is a point that is reinforced in the two temporary study exhibitions in the smaller adjoining galleries.
The larger is an account of Wilson's life and career drawing on both the collection and the family archive. Wilson came out of the navy at the end of the second world war with his ambition set on architecture, but he was still painting and was already a collector in a small way.
His interest rapidly settled on what he saw as the more adventurous modernism of his contemporaries - he picked up an early Eduardo Paolozzi collage for 37/6d even as his architectural ideas were crystallising around the rigorous idealism of Le Corbusier, whom he later came to know and whose work he also acquired.
On leaving University College London in 1949, he joined the architecture department of the old London County Council under its chief architect Leslie Martin, a move that seems no more than an obvious and natural step.
Linking art and architecture
We follow his career, through his long association with Martin, his move to Cambridge in 1956 to teach at the School of Architecture, and his subsequent major projects - his work for Peterhouse, then Gonville & Caius colleges, his own house, the British Library and Pallant House itself.
But he was always involved in other things, such as his leading participation in This Is Tomorrow, the groundbreaking exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1956.
There he was, with Paolozzi, Peter and Alison Smithson, Richard Hamilton and Nigel Henderson and several others of that circle, bringing art and architecture together and heralding the brave new modernist dawn.
The underlying principle, as he saw it then, and which never left him, was that "painting and sculpture and architecture really can make a difference when they are together".
He certainly practised what he preached, and it is surely no mere quirk of taste that in his collecting, alongside the major works, he should so often go for the more intimate material - the working or preparatory drawing, the apparently insignificant scrap, the unfinished canvas, the work in progress. These are a particular joy of this exhibition.
The Artist at Work is the subject of the second, smaller gallery. In the early 1980s he sat for his portrait to William Coldstream, and again, some dozen years later, to Michael Andrews. And while they scrutinised him, he watched them no less closely, taking careful note.
His extended rumination on the experience, and by extension on the eternal mysteries of painting, was published in 1999, and is a model of its kind - open-minded in its curiosity, questioning, sympathetic, and inevitably inconclusive.
The Wilsons had first looked to Cambridge for a home for their collection, possibly the Fitzwilliam Museum, but nothing came of it. But they had a cottage in Sussex, knew Chichester, and so made the offer to Pallant House, to complement its own modern British collection.
But the existing collection was already outgrowing the place and an extension would clearly be needed if Wilson's offer was to be accepted. So who better than the Wilsons to design it? The Heritage Lottery Fund put up the money, but only with conditions: first, the acquisition of larger site, and then an open competition.
The upshot was that the neighbouring office block was bought by friends of the gallery in 1997; the competition announced in 1998; a shortlist of five drawn up from the 25 submissions; and Long & Kentish Architects in association with Colin St John Wilson and Associates was awarded the contract.
The extension opened to the public in the summer of 2006 and has subsequently won a number of awards, notably the £100,000 Gulbenkian Prize.
All-round value
The redevelopment seems to be settling down very well, and on the weekday morning I visited, it was busy enough. There is no charge for admission to the ground floor, with its print-room, restaurant and shop, and entry to the whole building is free on Tuesdays. A single ticket for the collections and temporary shows upstairs costs £6.50, but an annual subscription seems a bargain at only £24.
The physical connection to the parent Queen Anne house is ingenious, split at the upper level, and the galleries agreeably straightforward, with lots of daylight.
No exhibition can be so large as to be daunting, and the spaces can be used to mount several shows at once. A pretty courtyard, attractive restaurant, and an impressive bookshop complete the picture: the Wilsons have served Chichester well.
William Packer is a freelance journalist
Colin St John Wilson, who died last year at the age of 85, was one of the most distinguished architects of his time and perhaps the best president that the Royal Academy never had.
But his first ambition was to be a painter, and painting and the processes of painting, closely observed in the practice of his friends, remained a particular fascination throughout his long life.
From the start he clearly had a gift for making friends among the artists of more or less his own generation and sustaining their active friendship until the end. He was, more than any of his peers, truly an artists' architect, and if there is a key to his career as a collector, this is it.
The remarkable collection of modern British painting and sculpture he put together, at first on his own and then with his wife and fellow architect MJ Long, is now substantially housed at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, where this new exhibition celebrates Wilson's life and work.
The Wilson collection has been rehung through the principal gallery of the extension to Pallant House, and the more hugger-mugger reserve hang in the large neighbouring room, and includes many of his artist friends' most important works - notably RB Kitaj's large double portrait of Wilson and his wife, schematically shown at work together in the house they had built for themselves in Cambridge.
There are many other major works by other friends, such as Patrick Caulfield, Paul Huxley, Victor Willing and Peter Blake in this general hang, often early and significant acquisitions in terms of the artists' own careers.
But it is the Kitaj that points to the closeness of the Wilsons' engagement with the artists. It is a point that is reinforced in the two temporary study exhibitions in the smaller adjoining galleries.
The larger is an account of Wilson's life and career drawing on both the collection and the family archive. Wilson came out of the navy at the end of the second world war with his ambition set on architecture, but he was still painting and was already a collector in a small way.
His interest rapidly settled on what he saw as the more adventurous modernism of his contemporaries - he picked up an early Eduardo Paolozzi collage for 37/6d even as his architectural ideas were crystallising around the rigorous idealism of Le Corbusier, whom he later came to know and whose work he also acquired.
On leaving University College London in 1949, he joined the architecture department of the old London County Council under its chief architect Leslie Martin, a move that seems no more than an obvious and natural step.
Linking art and architecture
We follow his career, through his long association with Martin, his move to Cambridge in 1956 to teach at the School of Architecture, and his subsequent major projects - his work for Peterhouse, then Gonville & Caius colleges, his own house, the British Library and Pallant House itself.
But he was always involved in other things, such as his leading participation in This Is Tomorrow, the groundbreaking exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1956.
There he was, with Paolozzi, Peter and Alison Smithson, Richard Hamilton and Nigel Henderson and several others of that circle, bringing art and architecture together and heralding the brave new modernist dawn.
The underlying principle, as he saw it then, and which never left him, was that "painting and sculpture and architecture really can make a difference when they are together".
He certainly practised what he preached, and it is surely no mere quirk of taste that in his collecting, alongside the major works, he should so often go for the more intimate material - the working or preparatory drawing, the apparently insignificant scrap, the unfinished canvas, the work in progress. These are a particular joy of this exhibition.
The Artist at Work is the subject of the second, smaller gallery. In the early 1980s he sat for his portrait to William Coldstream, and again, some dozen years later, to Michael Andrews. And while they scrutinised him, he watched them no less closely, taking careful note.
His extended rumination on the experience, and by extension on the eternal mysteries of painting, was published in 1999, and is a model of its kind - open-minded in its curiosity, questioning, sympathetic, and inevitably inconclusive.
The Wilsons had first looked to Cambridge for a home for their collection, possibly the Fitzwilliam Museum, but nothing came of it. But they had a cottage in Sussex, knew Chichester, and so made the offer to Pallant House, to complement its own modern British collection.
But the existing collection was already outgrowing the place and an extension would clearly be needed if Wilson's offer was to be accepted. So who better than the Wilsons to design it? The Heritage Lottery Fund put up the money, but only with conditions: first, the acquisition of larger site, and then an open competition.
The upshot was that the neighbouring office block was bought by friends of the gallery in 1997; the competition announced in 1998; a shortlist of five drawn up from the 25 submissions; and Long & Kentish Architects in association with Colin St John Wilson and Associates was awarded the contract.
The extension opened to the public in the summer of 2006 and has subsequently won a number of awards, notably the £100,000 Gulbenkian Prize.
All-round value
The redevelopment seems to be settling down very well, and on the weekday morning I visited, it was busy enough. There is no charge for admission to the ground floor, with its print-room, restaurant and shop, and entry to the whole building is free on Tuesdays. A single ticket for the collections and temporary shows upstairs costs £6.50, but an annual subscription seems a bargain at only £24.
The physical connection to the parent Queen Anne house is ingenious, split at the upper level, and the galleries agreeably straightforward, with lots of daylight.
No exhibition can be so large as to be daunting, and the spaces can be used to mount several shows at once. A pretty courtyard, attractive restaurant, and an impressive bookshop complete the picture: the Wilsons have served Chichester well.
William Packer is a freelance journalist
Project data
Cost: £10,000
Curator: Frances Guy
Exhibition ends: 8 June
Cost: £10,000
Curator: Frances Guy
Exhibition ends: 8 June
