West House, Campden Hill

Drawing of West House from “Some English Artists and Their Studios,” 1882. 

As one of the earliest of modern artists’ homes, West House, 118 Campden Hill Road, Kensington, is a “red-brick oasis in the architectural desert—a house with crow-step gables and seventeenth-century windows that might in some sense find a parallel in a poem by Herrick dropped into the midst of a Times money article; for its due proportions are dwarfed and hidden by the hard stony wall of the local water-works, the tall chimney of which stands out in grim lines against the sky.” Designed by Norman Shaw specifically for George H. Boughton in 1876, Giles Walkley postulates in Artists’ Houses in London 1764–1914 that the site for Boughton’s home forced Shaw to “build against every boundary,” with only half the overall plan allotted to the artist’s studio. Perhaps at Boughton’s request, Shaw designed the house in the “Wealden manor style he usually prescribed for his country clients.”[1]

Joseph Hatton describes the entrance of the house during his visit to interview Boughton in 1883: “Pushing back a quaint pair of hammered iron gates, you pull at a handle that might have hung by a convent wicket, you raise a knocker that has surely come from the door of a painter’s house in the days and country of Rubens, and you are in a lobby that gives upon the hall of the house.”

Boughton and his wife, Katherine, exclusively decided upon the internal decoration of the home. Utilizing the styles associated with picturesque England in the days of William III, Queen Anne, and the Georges, Boughton and his wife’s cultural tastes converged to create their home. Their knowledge of fine furniture and ornamentation of the Netherlands also played a role in the decoration of the house.[2] Because of Boughton’s American upbringing, he named West House after the American painter Benjamin West.[3] Walkley states that Boughton’s adornment of his home was a testament to his aesthetic refinement.[4] Charlotte Gere, who explores aestheticism from a social perspective in Artistic Circles, pointes out that “the colour scheme revolved around the typical Aesthetic palette of blues, greens and Indian red dado and woodwork below a pinky-red upper register. Every room was filled with Oriental china, Japanese embroideries, Spanish leather and tapestries in a characteristically ‘artistic’ medley.”[5]

In Beautiful Houses, May Eliza Haweis describes West House as an aesthetic model, fitted with “softness, refinement, harmony.”[6] Haweis ascribed the comfort of the home, an anomaly for artists’ households, to Boughton’s American heritage. Most English studio homes sought to be refined rather than comfortable. Boughton’s taste was “more subtle” than that of his English contemporaries. Featured in Beautiful Houses alongside several other English artists, including Frederic Leighton and Lawrence Alma-Tadema, whose studios were included in Artists at Home, West House’s charm can be attributed to the dedication of Boughton and his wife to interior design.

Joseph Hatton also recalls that the effect of West House’s interior was cool and pleasant, describing three rooms and their distinct color choices:

The first room is a successful attempt to deal with pinks and blues, which predominate in frieze and wall, held in check by golden panels with decorative sketches of the Seasons. The furniture is black, picked out lightly with dull gold, and the ornaments are chiefly Venetian glass. . . . Drawing aside a pair of yellow satin hangings embroidered in Japan, you step into the Blue Room, which is one of the most charming bijou parlors, with a fire-place that is a delightful combination of the useful and the beautiful. . . . The third, or Amber Room is the dining room. Having regard to the harmonious effect of the decoration, an investigation of the details of it is full of surprises. Spanish leather, old oak, india matting, gold and brass, are all used upon dado and walls, with here and there a paper panel deftly worked in.[7]

Haweis’s account of the rooms of the house is similar. She describes the stained-glass window in the dining room, carefully designed under Boughton’s direction, depicting “sunflowers and lilies on a deep blue ground.” This window, augmented by “peacock velvet here and there, on chair or table, and some beautiful bits of turquoise porcelain,” also shares the room with several pictures and sketches, one of Boughton himself, by J. Pettie, R.A., as well as a cabinet decorated by Boughton himself. The drawing room, “charmingly proportioned and lighted by a deep bay window, wears a soft indescribable bloom which is quite uncommon,” and the staircase, paneled with Indian red and tapestry, illuminates the dedication of Boughton and his wife to the selection of each detail of their home.[8]

The Boughton household was distinguished not only for its carefully curated interior, but also its hosts' generous reputation.[9] Walter Crane, a guest at one of many of the Boughton's gatherings, recalled the Boughtons’ housewarming in 1878: “There were a very large number of guests and they included, I think, most of the artistic celebrities of London. The stream of many-coloured costumes on the picturesque staircase, where there was a tremendous crush, formed a curious sight.”[10] Mrs. Boughton often annexed George’s studio for social gatherings and receptions. Lectures and balls were held as well, with musicians to accompany.[11] “Those who have seen these rooms by night," Haweis writes, "on those charming occasions of hospitality for which Mr. and Mrs. Boughton are conspicuous, are aware that the scheme of colour lends itself no less pleasantly to artificial than to day light and is fully worthy the painter of Evangeline.