When Sydney Carlyle Cockerell was appointed director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in the early summer of 1908, characteristically he wasted little time in starting work.
He was 41 and newly married to the remarkable calligrapher Florence Kingsford, who was expecting their first child in the autumn. Within three weeks of his appointment the Cockerells were living in Cambridge and the new director was in his office. He was to remain in the post until 1937.
He brought with him unbounded energy, a bucketful of self-confidence - one friend described him as "Cockerellsure" - and an address book to die for. Above all he had a ceaseless, driving passion for collecting.
He was not alone in that, but collecting takes many forms. In a seminar for the British Museum, Margaret Caygill quotes John Addis, the British diplomat, writing regretfully about the size of his collection of 23 pieces of Chinese porcelain: "I was encouraged by the example of a Chinese friend who, after a lifetime of collecting, had reduced his collection to five pieces. I have not succeeded so well..."
Cockerell's philosophy of collecting was a very different one. Under his directorship, the Fitzwilliam's collections grew three-fold and the museum buildings were to double in size, partly to accommodate the expanding contents of the museum's store.
"No collector in the world" thought his treasures safe "so long as Sir Sydney is in the land," wrote the vice-chancellor on Cockerell's retirement. He was, I suspect, someone whom private collectors would cross Trumpington Street to avoid. It was probably a futile gesture. Once you were in the Cockerell sights, it was difficult to escape. As Wilfrid Blunt wrote in his 1964 biography, Cockerell "never admitted the possibility of a refusal".
His Cockerellsure boast that he had found a pigsty and turned it into a palace was, as Mark Fisher has pointed out, less than fair on his predecessor. MR James was perhaps better known for his popular ghost stories, but with the acquisitions that began the Fitzwilliam's early Italian collection, he had set a quality benchmark upon which Cockerell was to build.
There is no doubt, however, that as the authoritative Bernard Berenson declared, "Cockerell has transformed [the Fitzwilliam] from the dismal miscellany it used to be into one of the finest museum buildings existing, with lighting and arrangement, not to speak of contents."
I Turned It Into a Palace was published to coincide with an exhibition celebrating the centenary of Cockerell's appointment. Its author, Stella Panayotova, who both curated the exhibition and wrote this very enjoyable book, takes pains to explain that it is not an exhibition catalogue and, despite a couple of little exhibition references which somehow slipped under the radar, it stands alone as a tribute to one of the 20th century's great museum directors.
Cockerell was a prodigiously hard worker. The staff of the Fitzwilliam in 1908 was six, including a doorman and two boys, and Cockerell, who had no typewriter, answered every letter by return and would often interrupt his work to guide visitors around "my museum".
Panayotova, keeper of manuscripts and printed books at the Fitzwilliam, has successfully caught the energetic Cockerell style, including his fight to allow the museum to open on Sundays; his creation of the Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum, a first for a British museum; the introduction of the now much-replicated "country house style"; and his skilful management of the museum's building programme.
In the early sections, she also manages to create a rounded portrait of the man at home and at work, but perhaps inevitably, the book slips more and more into cataloguing mode and glimpses of the private Cockerell are less and less frequent.
The focus on his "spoils", as Cockerell liked to describe his acquisitions, means that this is a beautifully illustrated book. And thanks to support from Melvin Seiden, it's reasonably priced.
Timothy Mason is an arts and heritage consultant
He was 41 and newly married to the remarkable calligrapher Florence Kingsford, who was expecting their first child in the autumn. Within three weeks of his appointment the Cockerells were living in Cambridge and the new director was in his office. He was to remain in the post until 1937.
He brought with him unbounded energy, a bucketful of self-confidence - one friend described him as "Cockerellsure" - and an address book to die for. Above all he had a ceaseless, driving passion for collecting.
He was not alone in that, but collecting takes many forms. In a seminar for the British Museum, Margaret Caygill quotes John Addis, the British diplomat, writing regretfully about the size of his collection of 23 pieces of Chinese porcelain: "I was encouraged by the example of a Chinese friend who, after a lifetime of collecting, had reduced his collection to five pieces. I have not succeeded so well..."
Cockerell's philosophy of collecting was a very different one. Under his directorship, the Fitzwilliam's collections grew three-fold and the museum buildings were to double in size, partly to accommodate the expanding contents of the museum's store.
"No collector in the world" thought his treasures safe "so long as Sir Sydney is in the land," wrote the vice-chancellor on Cockerell's retirement. He was, I suspect, someone whom private collectors would cross Trumpington Street to avoid. It was probably a futile gesture. Once you were in the Cockerell sights, it was difficult to escape. As Wilfrid Blunt wrote in his 1964 biography, Cockerell "never admitted the possibility of a refusal".
His Cockerellsure boast that he had found a pigsty and turned it into a palace was, as Mark Fisher has pointed out, less than fair on his predecessor. MR James was perhaps better known for his popular ghost stories, but with the acquisitions that began the Fitzwilliam's early Italian collection, he had set a quality benchmark upon which Cockerell was to build.
There is no doubt, however, that as the authoritative Bernard Berenson declared, "Cockerell has transformed [the Fitzwilliam] from the dismal miscellany it used to be into one of the finest museum buildings existing, with lighting and arrangement, not to speak of contents."
I Turned It Into a Palace was published to coincide with an exhibition celebrating the centenary of Cockerell's appointment. Its author, Stella Panayotova, who both curated the exhibition and wrote this very enjoyable book, takes pains to explain that it is not an exhibition catalogue and, despite a couple of little exhibition references which somehow slipped under the radar, it stands alone as a tribute to one of the 20th century's great museum directors.
Cockerell was a prodigiously hard worker. The staff of the Fitzwilliam in 1908 was six, including a doorman and two boys, and Cockerell, who had no typewriter, answered every letter by return and would often interrupt his work to guide visitors around "my museum".
Panayotova, keeper of manuscripts and printed books at the Fitzwilliam, has successfully caught the energetic Cockerell style, including his fight to allow the museum to open on Sundays; his creation of the Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum, a first for a British museum; the introduction of the now much-replicated "country house style"; and his skilful management of the museum's building programme.
In the early sections, she also manages to create a rounded portrait of the man at home and at work, but perhaps inevitably, the book slips more and more into cataloguing mode and glimpses of the private Cockerell are less and less frequent.
The focus on his "spoils", as Cockerell liked to describe his acquisitions, means that this is a beautifully illustrated book. And thanks to support from Melvin Seiden, it's reasonably priced.
Timothy Mason is an arts and heritage consultant
By Stella Panayotova
£24.95, Fitzwilliam Museum
ISBN 9780-0-90445484-0
£24.95, Fitzwilliam Museum
ISBN 9780-0-90445484-0
