16 oktober 2013

St Paul’s Studios




Let there be light: The double-height windows on the top floor was built specifically to suit 'bachelor artists' and allow sunlight to flow into the studio.


The reception room in the house on Artists' Row, home of painters.


St Paul's Studios: The eight houses were build in 1891 to become the perfect home for artists and painters.

"With its thundering, round-the-clock traffic, Talgarth Road in West London is hardly the place you would expect to find a row of houses purpose-built for painters to gather inspiration. But it’s on this section of the A4 in Baron’s Court where you’ll find a terrace of Art and Crafts-era dwellings known as St Paul’s Studios, which were indeed created as artists’ homes.

Amid the rows of conventional Victorian terraces that line this artery linking Central London, Heathrow Airport and the West, the eight houses stand out majestically with their soaring chimneys and red-brick and terracotta exteriors.

But their most distinctive feature – north-facing double-storey windows – provides the biggest clue to the fact that they were designed for artists. The muted yet constant light that comes through the expansive panes would greatly enhance the conditions for any painter’s work.

In 1891, when the eight houses were built, the area was an altogether more peaceful setting than now, and a colony of artists, including Pre-Raphaelite painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones, were already living nearby.

Landscape painter William Logsdail and illustrator Charles Sims were among those who made their homes here a century or so ago. The houses went on to attract residents from the arts in general – most famously the great ballerina Margot Fonteyn, as well as Ernest Gebler, a bestselling author in the Fifties who is better known today as having been married to writer Edna O’Brien.
....
The terrace was built by architect Frederick Wheeler, who picked the location – then called Colet Gardens – because of what was an almost rural view looking out over the playing fields of the fee-paying St Paul’s School.

Wheeler designed the houses for ‘bachelor artists’. Each property had a bedroom, reception area and a bathroom on the ground floor for the artist, and a scullery, kitchen and bedroom in the basement for a housekeeper.

Upstairs, the artists would work in the studio behind the vast window. Though there was no major road nearby, Barons Court Underground station, which opened in 1874 to serve the District Line, lay immediately behind the terrace’s small, south-facing gardens to provide a convenient transport link.

But in the Sixties, Colet Gardens became an extension of Talgarth Road, which was widened to become the A4 trunk road. Meanwhile, St Paul’s School moved to nearby Barnes. First council flats were built on its old playing fields, followed in 1980 by West London College." (bron: Daily Mail)



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