Leighton House was the home and studio of the leading Victorian artist, Frederic, Lord Leighton.
Located on the edge of Holland Park, it has been described as one of the most remarkable buildings of the 19th century, one of Britain’s great interiors, and the best example of an artist’s home open to the public in the UK. It’s also been nominated as the artist’s greatest creation.
Above all, it stands as testimony to a particular moment in British cultural history and to the preoccupations of London’s late Victorian artistic elite – their unconstrained Orientalism in particular.
The house was jointly created by Leighton and his architect, George Aitchison, over the 30 years from 1865 to the artist’s death in 1896. Leighton referred to it as “a private palace of art” and used it as a showplace. This is where he worked, received clients, entertained and demonstrated his status as one of the most successful artists of his day.
Such behaviour was neither unique nor unusual: the cluster of purpose-built studio-houses in the immediate vicinity, designed by such eminent architects as Philip Webb, William Burges and Richard Norman Shaw, functioned in much the same way.
But even during the artist’s lifetime, 12 Holland Park Road was a visitor attraction – the focus of organised tours, including those for London’s poor, who were permitted to view the ground floor of the house in Leighton’s absence. With each successive development, the house became more of an architectural fantasy.
Its opulence is manifest in its richly decorated interiors, gilded ceilings and walls lined with silks, and antique and contemporary tiles. Its centrepiece is the Arab Hall, an internal courtyard based on a 12th-century palace in Palermo. This was designed to display the massive collection of 16th- and 17th-century Islamic tiles that Leighton and his fellow Orientalists, including Sir Richard Burton, imported from Syria, Turkey and Persia.
The hall also featured a mosaic fountain and a mashrabiya window screen, transplanted from Cairo. Artist Walter Crane and ceramicist William De Morgan created friezes to match the tiles.
Leighton’s visitors would have already been familiar with Owen Jones’s Islamic-inspired work for the Alhambra Court for the Crystal Palace, his Oriental and Indian Courts for the South Kensington Museum, his shops and domestic interiors and his seminal design sourcebook for the Government School of Design, The Grammar of Ornament.
Decline
Following Leighton’s death, his sisters sought to keep the house and contents together as a museum in memory of their brother. But their attempts to sell everything to one buyer failed. They were also unsuccessful in selling the house (the market for a one-bedroom house not being good, even then) and they eventually disposed of the contents through the auction house Christie’s.
The denuded house itself suffered from the 20th-century backlash against Victorian art and architecture. Damaged by bombing in the second world war, it was left boarded up and unused.
Kensington council modernised it in the 1950s for use as a local arts amenity and children’s library: It was whitewashed and neon lighting was installed. The ceilings were covered in lining paper and painted dull bronze and the spectacular gold dome in the Arab Hall was painted over. Other features, such as fireplaces, were removed. There was even a plan to demolish the house in the 1960s.
Times change and Leighton House Museum is now regarded as the jewel in the crown of Kensington and Chelsea’s cultural assets. The council has been supporting the restoration of the house over the past 25 years, and was largely responsible for its latest £1.6m refurbishment.
The house reopened in March, after 18 months’ restoration. The creation of a stable and safe environment for the preservation of the building and its contents included extensive repairs to the original fabric, a new control system that replaced a 60-year-old central heating system and a complete rewiring.
Original schemes
But over and above these structural improvements, the closure provided the museum with an opportunity to return to Leighton’s original decorative schemes. Contemporary descriptions, photographs and scientific analysis were used to establish the original decor.
Original architectural features have been put back where possible. A paint specialist found that the decorations were even more extraordinary than expected. Contemporary accounts had referred to the floorboards in the dining room and drawing room as being painted red and blue respectively.
Evidence of original pigment was found on the original boards, hidden under 1960s modern flooring. Forensic analysis revealed a mass of new information about the colours and textures of wallpaper, silks and soft furnishings, and computer technology uncovered details such as a previously unsuspected taste for William Morris patterns.
The house has now been painted with its the original reds, blues and gold, and the dome of the Arab Hall gilded with gold leaf. Interior decorations and soft furnishings have been recreated as far as possible by the methods that were in use in Leighton’s lifetime.
Where appropriate, copies have been made, such as Leighton’s writing desk designed by George Aitchison. The processes involved in this have been documented in a film and photographic exhibition on the restoration of the house by Frédérique Cifuentes.
While the house was closed to the public, the museum also tried to improve its understanding of Leighton’s collection and how it had been displayed throughout the house. It also tried to locate items from the collection that had been so widely dispersed.
Visual wealth
The list is staggering. It includes works by Leighton’s contemporaries, such as Alfred Gilbert; Constable; Delacroix; Moore; Watts; Legros; Millais; Singer Sargent; and Burne Jones.
He also owned many Old Masters – Ingres; Rosellino and del Piombo. Some were bought back – Clytie, for instance, a painting left unfinished by Leighton’s death, was purchased with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Reproductions were made of others, including a print of Rembrandt’s Descent from the Cross and Corot’s Times of the Day series – the keynote to the dining room decorations.
It was fitting that the house should have reopened with a special exhibition, Leighton’s Collection Returned, which closed on 12 July. The show featured more than 20 paintings that were returned to their original locations for the first time in more than a century. They included loans from the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, Tate and National Museum Wales.
The collection, as a whole, is mesmerising. Paintings and sketches are placed nonchalantly on chairs and other pieces of furniture along with contemporary swatches of fabrics and silks. The golden walls of the Silk Room, a boudoir style waiting room to the studio, are lined with Madonnas, nymphs and a couple of Tintorettos.
Unlike many other house museums, there’s little that’s domestic about it. The front of house belies the modesty of the living quarters – Leighton’s own austere bedroom, which was hung with photographic reproductions of works that he admired; below-stairs servants’ quarters; and the necessary provision for the artist’s models to change and wash.
The restoration has included the backstairs, which were principally used by servants but also took models directly into the studio. The restored basement rooms include the butler’s pantry and bedroom and the window from which he could keep an eye on various comings and goings.
Visitors can immerse themselves fully in all aspects of the house. Leighton House’s wow factor is second to none.
Sara Selwood is an independent consultant
Cost £1.6m
Main funder Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
Architect Purcell Miller Tritton
Main contractor Coniston
Electrical and mechanical engineer Harley Haddow
Quantity surveyor Sawyer & Fisher
Structural engineer Morton Partnership
Lighting design Sutton Vane Associates
Located on the edge of Holland Park, it has been described as one of the most remarkable buildings of the 19th century, one of Britain’s great interiors, and the best example of an artist’s home open to the public in the UK. It’s also been nominated as the artist’s greatest creation.
Above all, it stands as testimony to a particular moment in British cultural history and to the preoccupations of London’s late Victorian artistic elite – their unconstrained Orientalism in particular.
The house was jointly created by Leighton and his architect, George Aitchison, over the 30 years from 1865 to the artist’s death in 1896. Leighton referred to it as “a private palace of art” and used it as a showplace. This is where he worked, received clients, entertained and demonstrated his status as one of the most successful artists of his day.
Such behaviour was neither unique nor unusual: the cluster of purpose-built studio-houses in the immediate vicinity, designed by such eminent architects as Philip Webb, William Burges and Richard Norman Shaw, functioned in much the same way.
But even during the artist’s lifetime, 12 Holland Park Road was a visitor attraction – the focus of organised tours, including those for London’s poor, who were permitted to view the ground floor of the house in Leighton’s absence. With each successive development, the house became more of an architectural fantasy.
Its opulence is manifest in its richly decorated interiors, gilded ceilings and walls lined with silks, and antique and contemporary tiles. Its centrepiece is the Arab Hall, an internal courtyard based on a 12th-century palace in Palermo. This was designed to display the massive collection of 16th- and 17th-century Islamic tiles that Leighton and his fellow Orientalists, including Sir Richard Burton, imported from Syria, Turkey and Persia.
The hall also featured a mosaic fountain and a mashrabiya window screen, transplanted from Cairo. Artist Walter Crane and ceramicist William De Morgan created friezes to match the tiles.
Leighton’s visitors would have already been familiar with Owen Jones’s Islamic-inspired work for the Alhambra Court for the Crystal Palace, his Oriental and Indian Courts for the South Kensington Museum, his shops and domestic interiors and his seminal design sourcebook for the Government School of Design, The Grammar of Ornament.
Decline
Following Leighton’s death, his sisters sought to keep the house and contents together as a museum in memory of their brother. But their attempts to sell everything to one buyer failed. They were also unsuccessful in selling the house (the market for a one-bedroom house not being good, even then) and they eventually disposed of the contents through the auction house Christie’s.
The denuded house itself suffered from the 20th-century backlash against Victorian art and architecture. Damaged by bombing in the second world war, it was left boarded up and unused.
Kensington council modernised it in the 1950s for use as a local arts amenity and children’s library: It was whitewashed and neon lighting was installed. The ceilings were covered in lining paper and painted dull bronze and the spectacular gold dome in the Arab Hall was painted over. Other features, such as fireplaces, were removed. There was even a plan to demolish the house in the 1960s.
Times change and Leighton House Museum is now regarded as the jewel in the crown of Kensington and Chelsea’s cultural assets. The council has been supporting the restoration of the house over the past 25 years, and was largely responsible for its latest £1.6m refurbishment.
The house reopened in March, after 18 months’ restoration. The creation of a stable and safe environment for the preservation of the building and its contents included extensive repairs to the original fabric, a new control system that replaced a 60-year-old central heating system and a complete rewiring.
Original schemes
But over and above these structural improvements, the closure provided the museum with an opportunity to return to Leighton’s original decorative schemes. Contemporary descriptions, photographs and scientific analysis were used to establish the original decor.
Original architectural features have been put back where possible. A paint specialist found that the decorations were even more extraordinary than expected. Contemporary accounts had referred to the floorboards in the dining room and drawing room as being painted red and blue respectively.
Evidence of original pigment was found on the original boards, hidden under 1960s modern flooring. Forensic analysis revealed a mass of new information about the colours and textures of wallpaper, silks and soft furnishings, and computer technology uncovered details such as a previously unsuspected taste for William Morris patterns.
The house has now been painted with its the original reds, blues and gold, and the dome of the Arab Hall gilded with gold leaf. Interior decorations and soft furnishings have been recreated as far as possible by the methods that were in use in Leighton’s lifetime.
Where appropriate, copies have been made, such as Leighton’s writing desk designed by George Aitchison. The processes involved in this have been documented in a film and photographic exhibition on the restoration of the house by Frédérique Cifuentes.
While the house was closed to the public, the museum also tried to improve its understanding of Leighton’s collection and how it had been displayed throughout the house. It also tried to locate items from the collection that had been so widely dispersed.
Visual wealth
The list is staggering. It includes works by Leighton’s contemporaries, such as Alfred Gilbert; Constable; Delacroix; Moore; Watts; Legros; Millais; Singer Sargent; and Burne Jones.
He also owned many Old Masters – Ingres; Rosellino and del Piombo. Some were bought back – Clytie, for instance, a painting left unfinished by Leighton’s death, was purchased with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Reproductions were made of others, including a print of Rembrandt’s Descent from the Cross and Corot’s Times of the Day series – the keynote to the dining room decorations.
It was fitting that the house should have reopened with a special exhibition, Leighton’s Collection Returned, which closed on 12 July. The show featured more than 20 paintings that were returned to their original locations for the first time in more than a century. They included loans from the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, Tate and National Museum Wales.
The collection, as a whole, is mesmerising. Paintings and sketches are placed nonchalantly on chairs and other pieces of furniture along with contemporary swatches of fabrics and silks. The golden walls of the Silk Room, a boudoir style waiting room to the studio, are lined with Madonnas, nymphs and a couple of Tintorettos.
Unlike many other house museums, there’s little that’s domestic about it. The front of house belies the modesty of the living quarters – Leighton’s own austere bedroom, which was hung with photographic reproductions of works that he admired; below-stairs servants’ quarters; and the necessary provision for the artist’s models to change and wash.
The restoration has included the backstairs, which were principally used by servants but also took models directly into the studio. The restored basement rooms include the butler’s pantry and bedroom and the window from which he could keep an eye on various comings and goings.
Visitors can immerse themselves fully in all aspects of the house. Leighton House’s wow factor is second to none.
Sara Selwood is an independent consultant
Project data
Cost £1.6m
Main funder Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
Architect Purcell Miller Tritton
Main contractor Coniston
Electrical and mechanical engineer Harley Haddow
Quantity surveyor Sawyer & Fisher
Structural engineer Morton Partnership
Lighting design Sutton Vane Associates
