The World of Interiors

Opposite: the

upper studio in

its ‘country

house drawing

room’ get-up.

Julian Barrow’s

‘house portraits’

hang cheek by

jowl above the

salvaged chimney

piece another

present from his

predecessor

Norman Hepple.

Clustered round

are a bergère sofa

and a Charles II-

style chair both

Victorian. This

page: the room is

painted in Farrow

& Ball’s ‘Book

Room Red’. Its

1610 salvaged

Italian overdoor

is a one-time

prop of John

Singer Sargent

JUST THINK ‘Chelsea artist’s studio’ and
this one (or rather these two in the same Tite Street
house) will pretty much cover all the bases. There’s
scale and style – lofty ceilings grand architectural
salvage props – and a deep historic trail to every
‘Chelsea’ artist you’d expect. Of course Whistler
Sargent and Augustus John feature in the history of
this house. And most of the Edwardian haut ton too.
And more recently this is where Diana Princess
of Wales and Lady Thatcher had their portraits
painted by the American artist Nelson Shanks a
friend of the owner within a few months of each
other in 1994. This is where back in the 1930s all the
Mitford girls trooped up to be painted by William
Acton (WoI June 1994) brother of Harold. You can
still buy their pictures on Chatsworth beer mats.
And this is where over the past 50 years another
kind of portrait was produced – almost a thousand
of them: portraits of grand houses in Britain in-
cluding Castle Howard and Shugborough Hall and
every sort of palace across the world from Venice to
New Jersey. Step forward Julian Barrow doyen of
country-house painters.
Barrow lived and worked here from the mid-
1960s. He married in 1971 and dwelt with his wife
Serena in the small rather basic flat downstairs
until he died at the end of last year. His paintings
are everywhere and of everywhere from Venice to
Bangkok from Scotland and across India.
Later Barrow took over the equally large studio
on the floor below increasingly using the top-storey
studio as a stand-in drawing room. Painted in Far-
row & Ball’s ‘Book Room Red’ it is dominated by a
great Robber Baron chimney piece – a salvage find

installed by Barrow’s predecessor the painter Nor-

man Hepple – with 19th-century animalier bronzes

and family furniture from Cumberland converged

around it and close-hung pictures above it. Here’s

another characteristic set-piece. Above what Serena

Barrow calls ‘a Tudoresque Court cupboard affair’

there’s an engraving by James Denison-Pender.

Above it are two works by Julian Barrow: one of

New York harbour and above that Easton Neston.

To the left is Goa with Oman alongside. Just like a

room from one of the houses Bar row painted at

first it seems more Chillingham than Chelsea.

That’s when you open the door but look left or

right and you couldn’t be anywhere else. To your

right is that studio window huge purpose-built

for maximum light and minimum distraction. You

see sky and tall buildings but not the neighbours.

(In one of his best-known paintings Julian Barrow

did paint the Royal Hospital from up here laid out

below like an early 18th-century pleasing prospect).

To your left around the curtained window over Tite

Street is a great gilded-wood affair of columns and

Corinthian capitals and a pediment from 1610 prob-

ably liberated from a crumbling Tuscan palazzo in

1880. It’s a bravura bit of salvage taken by the stu-
      dio’s previous tenant from a store at the Royal Aca-
      demy Schools where he taught. He knew it belonged
      in Tite Street because it had once been Sargent’s.
      John Singer Sargent worked here (WoI Oct 1998)

• ‘the Van Dyck of Tite Street’ the supreme Grand
  Manner portraitist of the Gilded Age. Painter of that
  particular mix of English aristos and Amer ican plu-
  tos of ladies and actresses... the compelling full-on
  Edwardian celebrity mix all big hats and big hair