Laboratories of Creativity : the Alma-Tademas' Studio-Houses and Beyond
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This is a repository copy of Laboratories of Creativity : The Alma-Tademas' Studio-Houses and Beyond. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/134913/ Version: Published Version Article: (2018) Laboratories of Creativity : The Alma-Tademas' Studio-Houses and Beyond. British Art Studies. 10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-09/conversation Reuse This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) licence. This licence allows you to remix, tweak, and build upon this work non-commercially, and any new works must also acknowledge the authors and be non-commercial. You don’t have to license any derivative works on the same terms. 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A joint publication by Contents Laboratories of Creativity: The Alma-Tademas' Studio-Houses and Beyond, Elizabeth Prettejohn and Peter Trippi Laboratories of Creativity: The Alma-Tademas' Studio-Houses and Beyond Elizabeth Prettejohn and Peter Trippi Authors Professor of History of Art at the University of York Independent scholar and editor of Fine Art Connoisseur magazine, New York Cite as Elizabeth Prettejohn and Peter Trippi, "Laboratories of Creativity: The Alma-Tademas' Studio-Houses and Beyond", British Art Studies, Issue 9, http://dx.doi.org/10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-09/conversation Introduction This Conversation Piece highlights the range of new research discoveries that are being -- and are still to be -- made about artists’ studio homes. This conversation was irst aired in a workshop at the Paul Mellon Centre in October 2017 when a group of invited curators, scholars, and students shared their research about the Alma-Tadema studio-houses, exploring how they were designed, used and re-used, unearthing many tantalising links to other studio-houses created or inhabited by artists of the previous, contemporary, and next generations. This Conversation Piece aims to recapture the sense of discovery that made that workshop so exciting, and also to make the speakers’ contributions available to wider audiences. It is coordinated by Elizabeth Prettejohn and Peter Trippi, who have published an extended introduction to the topic in this issue. Response by Charlotte Gere, Independent Historian An Artistic Interior by Jan Frans Verhas Living in Melbury Road, Holland Park, in 1958 was an education in aesthetic studio-houses at a time when they were quite unknown and unappreciated. The leases were coming to an end and the houses, many of them in a poor state, were threatened with demolition. They were lived in by old ladies and bedsitting tenants, often only three or so owners after the original inhabitants had departed. Getting an order to view the property when it was for sale was the way inside William Burges’ Tower House, and very grim it was, almost completely vandalized with the gilding dimmed and carvings littering the loors. Leighton House was all strip lighting and plasterboard, so there was no reason to visit. The ruinous Casa Tadema in St John’s Wood, carved up into lats, was still just about recognisable. In view of the wealth of surviving artists’ houses, choosing to discuss Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s former home in Regent’s Park, Townshend House, of which no trace remains, is little short of perverse. But, over time, an impressive quantity of evidence for its interiors has emerged. The painting by Jan Frans Verhas illustrated here was advertised for sale by the dealer Christopher Wood in 1990 as “An Artistic Interior”, signed and dated 1870 (Fig. 1). It compares closely with the illustration of the curtained opening to the two drawing rooms on the irst loor of Townshend House in Daniel Moncure Conway’s book Travels in South Kensington, published in 1882 (Fig. 2). Because both the painting and illustration repeat exactly the relative positions of the two layers of striped door hangings, a connection with some phase of Townshend House seemed indisputable. Figure 1. Jan Frans Verhas, An Artistic Interior, 1870, oil on panel, 59 x 85.7 cm. Private Collection, New York. Digital image courtesy of Kevin Noble Photography. Figure 2. Townshend House Interior, illustration in Daniel Moncure Conway, Travels in South Kensington (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1882). Figure 3. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Woman and Flowers, 1868, oil on panel, 49.8 x 37.2 cm. Collection of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (41.117). Digital image courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The painting is dated 1870, but Alma-Tadema moved into Townshend House only upon his marriage to Laura Epps in the summer of 1871. So, although unarguably an Alma-Tadema interior, Verhas’ image poses more questions than it answers—and the workshop audience had many suggestions. There are diferences, most strikingly the itted patterned carpet in the painting and the dado, now topped by a miniature cast of the Parthenon frieze (a detail, much remarked, of the Townshend House décor) in Conway’s illustration. Although hardly legible here, the Parthenon cast is described in Conway’s text. The room in the painting must be at ground level because it leads to a conservatory. In 1870, the painting’s date, Alma-Tadema was living in Frederick Goodall’s house at 31 Camden Square with his two small daughters and his sister, Artje, who had accompanied him to London. Artje is portrayed in Alma-Tadema’s 1868 painting, Flowers (Fig. 3), which Verhas shows in reproduction to the left of the curtained opening, and she may also be the seated igure in his painting. The striped curtains (possibly North African) are known to have been among the chattels shipped from Brussels to London in the autumn of 1870. Although his book was not published until 1882, Conway’s drawing appears to date from before the remodelling of Townshend House (1875–1876) after the Regent’s Canal explosion of October 1874. A painting by Nellie Epps, dated 1873 and illustrated on page 81 of the exhibition catalogue, shows that the Japanese tatami matting “dado” in the Verhas painting was by then in the ground loor “Dutch Room”; the woven basket chair had migrated to Alma-Tadema’s studio (illustrated on page 121). During the remodelling, the double drawing room opening was altered and the striped curtains were not re-hung in that position. If Verhas’ interior is, uniquely, the Camden Square house, it shows the remarkable lengths Alma-Tadema was prepared to go to adorn a house he rented only briely. When Christopher Wood advertised it in 1990, the painting had no recorded history; he sold it to a private collector, who has recently allowed it to be photographed. In time, some puzzling aspects may be resolved, but for the moment, it is almost certainly a sublime addition to the small number of images we have of Alma-Tadema’s sister Artje. Response by Stephanie Moser, Professor and Head of Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton An Aura of Antiquity: Archaeology and the Ancient World in Alma- Tadema’s Studio-Homes During his lengthy and highly productive career, Lawrence Alma-Tadema established distinctive strategies to communicate the rich beauty of antiquity. Chief among them was the detailed representation of archaeological elements, which promptly became the hallmark of his paintings. While it is reasonable to assume that the accurate portrayal of ancient material culture bolstered the veracity of Alma-Tadema’s interpretations of the past, his use of archaeology serviced other important aesthetic agendas. With their highly decorative qualities and inely crafted appearance, domestic antiquities became a unique lens through which Alma- Tadema expressed and conceptualised beauty. Integral to his approach and working methods was the central place accorded to archaeology in his studios and homes. In my recent study of Alma-Tadema’s engagement with archaeology, four key elements were examined: his portfolios of photographs and drawings; his library; the studio props he amassed; and the interior decoration of his homes. Intimately related and dependent on each other, these aspects of his working practice testify to an intense and sustained engagement with archaeology. From early in his career, Alma-Tadema adopted a comprehensive and systematic approach to collecting, studying, and ordering materials upon which he based his paintings of life in antiquity.