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Watts Gallery, Compton, Surrey.
The newly restored Watts Gallery in the Surrey village of Compton. Photograph: Watts Gallery/Richard Bryant/arcaidimages.com
The newly restored Watts Gallery in the Surrey village of Compton. Photograph: Watts Gallery/Richard Bryant/arcaidimages.com

'Secret' George Frederic Watts gallery reopens in small Surrey village

This article is more than 12 years old
£11m restoration of little known shrine to 'England's Michelangelo' in village of Compton retains gallery's unique character

A unique gallery, built as an eternal memorial to an artist once so famous he was recklessly dubbed "England's Michelangelo", but which decayed as fast as his reputation in the decades after his death, has re-opened to the public.

The gallery, described by director Perdita Hunt as "a national gallery in the heart of a small village" has been a hidden treasure in Compton in Surrey, stuffed with huge allegorical paintings and sparkling portraits by George Frederic Watts that were the talk of Victorian society.

The Watts Gallery was beloved by those who knew it but completely unknown to most passing by on the A3 only half a mile away. The campaigners who raised £11m to save it aim to preserve its unique character but make it a much more visible treasure.

When Watts died in 1904, just three months after the gallery opened, he was one of the most famous artists in the world.

He was the first living painter to have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan in New York. He had a whole room of paintings on permanent display at the Tate Gallery, many more in the National Portrait Gallery and two huge canvases hanging in the nave of St Paul's Cathedral.

By the second world war it was all gone. His second wife Mary Seton, who devoted her widowhood to tending the flame of his memory, had died, the Tate and St Paul's had put his paintings into store and the Compton building had begun its long, slow decline.

By the time it closed almost three years ago, the gallery was in danger of being condemned as a dangerous structure, and on the English Heritage register of listed buildings at critical risk.

"It was a sad place," Hunt said, remembering staff working in winter in five layers of clothes.

Curator Mark Bills recalled that by the time he arrived, the walls were streaming with damp and heavy rain filled buckets faster than they could be emptied.

Its beauty and pathetic state helped it to second place in the BBC television series Restoration and the publicity was a considerable help in fundraising, including major Heritage Lottery Fund grants – but fate had one more blow when the original builders went bankrupt half way through the job, delaying the reopening by a year.

The opening displays include loans of many of the once despised paintings Watts gave to the Tate, and the two vast canvases from St Paul's, all now seen as national treasures again, and an exhibition on the worldwide influence of his painting Hope, which Barack Obama named as his favourite painting.

One of the challenges for the team was that people who did know the gallery wanted nothing changed.

"People loved its lost rural decrepitude, but didn't understand that that approach was killing the building," architect Adam Zombory-Moldovan said.

"I think we have retained the magic", Richard Ormond, chair of the trustees, said.

Part of that magic was

the gallery's gift of convincing people it was a secret treasure they had discovered for themselves, and its admirers have shown themselves fiercely protective of its eccentricities.

There was passionate argument when it reintroduced admission charges and sold two pictures from the collection – and an online debate raged over the reduced size of the slices of cake when a new team took over the tearooms.

When Bills became curator, one of his first responsibilities was to source local free range eggs after the farm up the lane stopped keeping hens.

The old shop, a rickety hall table in the entrance, always sold eggs. Devotees can be reassured that although the new shop now takes up a whole smart room, it still sells excellent eggs at £3 a dozen.

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