The great 18th-century church of St Martin-in-the-Fields near Trafalgar Square was packed to the rafters yesterday afternoon (11 January) to celebrate the life of the writer and curator Giles Waterfield who died unexpectedly from a heart attack in November last year. Such was the crowd that there was concern not everyone would fit into the capacious church crypt for the reception afterwards—but they did. As the director of Dulwich Picture Gallery, from 1979-96, Giles transformed what had become a shabby, dangerously neglected institution into the vibrant and internationally esteemed museum it is today, safeguarding its stellar collection for posterity.
He did so with an irresistible combination of energy, erudition and often highly mischievous wit. It was during this time that, as a humble volunteer at the gallery in the summer of 1984 (no one talked about interns then), your correspondent first encountered this exceptional man who set the bar impossibly high for future bosses in the art world.
Giles was also an inspirational teacher. Two of his most recent Courtauld Institute students gave highly entertaining accounts of pedagogy, Waterfield style (featuring pots of immaculately brewed lapsang souchong tea) and his influence, which has spanned several generations. Both the artist Jeremy Deller, whose parents were also in the congregation, and the National Gallery director Gabriele Finaldi, were taught art history A-level by Waterfield whilst in the sixth form at Dulwich College, with some lessons taking place in the gallery itself. Finaldi recalls a Damascene moment in front of Rembrandt’s Girl at a Window, when he realised he wanted to make his living in the art world.
Then there are Giles’s books, including the brilliant novel Hound in the Left-hand Corner: A Novel (2002), which brilliantly skewered millennial museum culture in Blair’s Britain along with many of its key, and thinly disguised, protagonists—a number of whom were nonetheless filling the pews of St Martin’s yesterday. For another aspect that was constantly referred-to throughout yesterday’s service was Giles Waterfield’s extraordinary capacity for friendship, which has left many of us feeling especially bereft.
