With a stunning renovation, the historic London residence of Lord Frederic Leighton reopened on Saturday, offering a window into the lavish, meticulously manicured world of Victorian painters.
The Victorian era was obsessed with the “House Beautiful,” which featured tilework with elaborate designs, foliage, ornate mouldings, and iron fireplaces with flowery decorations. Artists went a step farther and built “studio-houses,” which served as both a space to create art and a work of art in itself.
One of the best instances of this kind of living was Lord Leighton’s residence in West London’s Holland Park, which was at the time a rural neighbourhood. And its original splendour is now available for viewing after 18 years of laborious conservation and restoration that cost £8 million ($8.88 million).
Leighton House began as a relatively simple brick home that was later expanded. Large, glass-enclosed studios let in as much light as possible, which is always useful during the dark winters in the UK but is even more important during the London pollution of the late 19th century. Lord Leighton had a salon where he could greet guests and, on his well-liked “Show Sundays,” the curious public. The walls were gridded with paintings by the artist and others.
All of this work was undone during the restoration, which began in 2018 following a private fundraising campaign that gathered funds for the conservation work in collaboration with the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Kensington & Chelsea Council. In order to restore the home to its former splendour, Leighton House collaborated with the architectural firm BDP. They did this by building a gallery in a basement gallery and a spiral staircase that provides access to all floors.
The recovery of the items was the finishing touch, according to Robbins, who called it the “ideal Covid-19 lockdown activity.” Using photographs and descriptions from historical press reports, he and his colleagues located several on eBay and ordered replicas of others.
The museum, which concentrates on the British milieu of the Victorian artists’ home studios, rarely discusses the arguments over Orientalism. It also announces a collaboration with the nearby Sambourne House, the less opulent residence of Victorian magazine Punch cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne.
The offer to an Iranian artist to make her own mural, in Leighton House’s opinion, is a beautiful coda to this tale of misinterpretation and appropriation.