Grayson Perry (2025)

This fully illustrated catalogue presents new work and texts by Sir Grayson Perry and accompanies a major exhibition he created and curated at the Wallace Collection to celebrate his 65th birthday. Perry has long been fascinated by François Boucher’s famous portrait of Madame de Pompadour, as well as other works in the Collection, including its group of portrait miniatures and an early eighteenth-century bronze of Mezzetin playing his guitar. He has created the fictional persona Shirley Smith, who believes herself to be the rightful heir to Hertford House’s treasures and the entire Wallace Collection. Through this identity, Perry has produced new artworks inspired by the Collection and intended to decorate an imagined family home filled with ancestral portraits, Old Masters and priceless antiques. Delusions of Grandeur presents this fantasy world while exploring the meaning of home and its sense of safety, the gendering of decoration, perfection versus authenticity, the exquisite and pretty versus masculine brutality and pomp, and the transformative and healing nature of art. The book presents Perry’s new ceramic, sculptural, textile and paper works, reflecting the diversity of objects in the Collection, and offers a meditation on making and collecting art.