The hidden lives of Holland Park Studios

Holland Park was once a large estate to the west of London. It centred on Holland House, the grand Jacobean mansion occupied by the statesmen and society hostesses of the Fox family. However, midway through the nineteenth century, the family ran out of money.

They started selling off the land surrounding the park for the growing residential neighbourhoods of West London. That includes the farmland to the south of the estate, which became Melbury Road and Holland Park Road. These plots were popular with developers, allowing them to build large Victorian villas with generous gardens.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, several successful artists constructed studio houses on the site of the old farm. The most famous was the painter Frederic Leighton, who completed his magnificent studio villa at No.12 Holland Park Road in 1866. The same year, the Pre-Raphaelite painter Valentine Prinsep completed his own home next door at No.14.

A charity school was also built on the road in 1842 by the Hon. Caroline Fox. However, in 1877, it relocated to Silver Street, and at that point, a builder named William Willett spotted an opportunity. So, he acquired the site at auction for £2,650.

Willet built houses in respectable neighbourhoods like Chelsea and Hove. He later became a leading advocate for Daylight Saving Time, but died before the policy was introduced in Britain during the First World War. He realised that Leighton House had made the neighbourhood much more desirable, and decided to replace the former school with a collection of cottage-like houses with workspaces for creatives.

Later that year, Willet hired Arthur Landgdale and Co. to construct a ‘picturesque group of six two-storey residences arranged round a courtyard with an arched entrance’. Numbered 1-6, they were known to locals as ‘The Studios.’

Willett’s intuition was right, and the houses soon started attracting artists. Among the most well-known was Herbert Gustave Schmalz, a painter of historical scenes and romanticised pictures of the East, whose work was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (William Holman Hunt was an old friend). He occupied No.6.

No.5 was home to William Blake Richmond, a painter, sculptor and designer of stained glass named after William Blake – a close companion of his father. Deeply influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, he succeeded John Ruskin as Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford and was responsible for the sublime mosaics that decorate St Paul’s Cathedral.

Meanwhile, No.3 contained husband-and-wife artists Henrietta Rae and Ernest Normand. Though they often hosted their famous neighbours, Rae became increasingly frustrated by their haughty manners. At one point, she threw Valentine Prinsep’s hat ‘on her stove; on another occasion, she threw it out the window.’

By this point, the artists living here and on nearby Melbury Road were known as the Holland Park Circle. However, in 1891, Schmalz relocated to a villa on Addison Road, and in 1893, Rae and Normand moved to a larger property in West Norwood. But the studios remained popular throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Later residents included George Spencer Watson, an English portrait artist of the romantic school; Phil May, a caricaturist who helped to develop the modern comic cartoon (his blue plaque now decorates No.20); and Sydney Lee, a wood engraver who founded the Society of Engravers.

Today, that feeling of a creative village remains. The houses are still accessed via a pedestrianised path leading under an archway, providing the secluded atmosphere of a mews. Furthermore, this property overlooks the gardens of Prinsep’s former residence, offering beautiful views of greenery.

It is the perfect place to read, paint, play music, or simply retreat from the noise and bustle of the city. And, glancing out over those expansive lawns, you can understand why so many artists were drawn towards this hidden courtyard, to live and work in its peaceful surroundings. Explore Holland Park Road here.