The World of Interiors

Top: hanging

above a Tudor-

style press

the two largest

paintings are of

Easton Neston

the Baroque

stately home in

Northamptonshire

and New York

harbour. They are

both works by

the studio’s last

occupant – as

is the oil sketch

of a City livery hall

to their right.

Opposite: an 18th-

century Dutch

marquetry card

table stands

on Marmoleum

in the landing

whose curves

look oddly 1920s

for a building

from the 1880s

set about with over-sized props and children incan-
descent with power. This is the world of Admiralty
Arch the new Piccadilly line and Mr Selfridge the
combination of those Neo-Everything buildings and
an explosion of money and technology.
Taking over from Whistler Sargent worked here
from 1886 and lived next door at No. 31 from 1900
making an opening between the houses and a small
staircase up to the studio. By 1909 he’d had it with
aristocrats but still painted Edward VII on his death
bed. He died in 1925 at No. 31.
As orderly as a bishop Sargent for huge prices
painted huge commissions for the masters of the
universe here each day. His Grand Manner factory

• the subject of a Max Beerbohm cartoon that shows
  an eager queue of beauties and matrons snaking
  down Tite Street – sealed the bond between Chelsea
  and the establishment. The area had grown from
  a village just outside London via a development
  of purpose-built Tite Street studios for bankable
  bohemians like Whistler. By the time this studio
  house No. 33 and its neighbour No. 31 were de-
  signed by the very mainstream Colonel RW Edis
  (later knighted he did the ballroom at Sandringham
  and the Great Central Hotel – now the Landmark –
  by Marylebone station) artistic Chelsea with Tite
  Street at its heart was on the metropolitan map.
  The house was conventional by the lights of Ed-
  ward Godwin who designed Whistler’s plain and
  purist White House on the corner in 1877 and went
  on to be the architect of choice for all the street’s
  bohemians. Edis built three big studios in No. 33
  and three smallish flats to the other side of the stair-
  case. The exterior is upper-middle acceptable in the

‘Victorian Renaissance’ style. The staircase is oddly

anachronistically Deco-looking and the studios are

what their tenants and owners made of them with

their props and salvage colour and collections.

As the Barrows had it until last year the top-

floor red-and-gilt studio was both a working stu-

dio and the best London party room imaginable.

Julian’s younger brother Andrew the writer and

novelist held soirées here when his brother had

gone downstairs to bed or when he went off to paint

houses for maharajas and marchesas. Andrew can

dredge up memories of these nights over four dec-

ades. Quentin Crisp and Germaine Greer. Nicky

Haslam and Beryl Bainbridge. John Betjeman and

Shell heiress Olga Deterding. Ann Barr and ‘Fat

Lady’ Jennifer Patter son. And Mick Jagger having

a party in David Mlin aric’s ground-floor studio

(once Augustus John’s) and the Stones arriving in

a flower-decked horse-drawn taxi.

The parties and the sitters brought absolutely

everyone here from the Prince of Wales and Lily

Langtry in the 1890s to Archbishop Ramsey in the

1970s (turning up from Lambeth Palace just over

the river in his chauffeur-driven Morris Minor).

Over the years artistic Chelsea the Chelsea of

river views and Whistler’s ‘Nocturnes’ has mor-

phed into smart Chelsea and pop star Chelsea and

King’s Road parade Chelsea. Increasingly as Oscar

Wilde once said the occupants of Tite Street put

their genius into their lives rather than actually

painting. Wilde of course friend of Whistler and

Sargent lived opposite at No. 34 $

Julian Barrow’s work can be seen by appointment at Browse

& Darby. Ring 020 7734 7984 or visit browseanddarby.co.uk