Boughton's Studio

Drawing of George Boughton's Studio from “Some English Artists and Their Studios," 1882. 

Boughton’s studio was the chief point of interest in his home and, in the words of Mary Eliza Haweis, author of Beautiful Houses (1882), “the most difficult to describe,” as well as the most beautiful of painting rooms. Haweis observes that the walls and beams are “greyish drab in tone,” and the room “hung with old tapestry all round; the gallery . . .  forming at one end of the room a nook which is particularly picturesque.” She tells of a deep oblong niche, grey as well, with a gold ceiling, containing a settee of soft colors, ancient Persian and Indian rugs strewn about, “never to be worn out,” and the mantelpiece set with blue-green tiles juxtaposed with a hearth of the “deepest purple.”[1]

Upon entering Boughton’s studio, Joseph Hatton recounts a conversation with the artist, from the interview for "Some Glimpses of Artistic London" in 1883, describing the difficulty of painting a human face: “There is nothing that requires so many colors for its representation as the human face,” Boughton notes. Hatton remarks that Boughton works as though he is engaged in a “labor of love, stepping back now and then to see the effect of those touches he is pleased to call accidental but which are strokes of technical genius.”[2]

The studio is the culmination of the many indications of individual talent and taste present in the rest of the house. “The dream of [Boughton’s] life to build and furnish,” says Hatton, the beautiful studio mirrors the “gray English landscapes” and “grass-grown wharves and picturesque barges of the dead cities” in Boughton’s art. Not only in its color, but also in the outside view, the studio provided a great advantage for Boughton’s work, deliberate in its inception, as “there is no kind of light he can not command—north or south, high or low, straight line or cross light.”[3] This control of lighting was the result of the chief feature of Boughton’s studio, a great window occupying its northern wall as well as a portion of the slanted roof. Edward Tarver, an author who advocated for the preservation of artistic studios, wrote: “This vast source of steady light illumines every part of the room.” The window was a quality unique to Boughton’s studio. Additionally, a balcony set Boughton’s studio apart from others of the time. The great amount of light and the freedom of the space allowed the painter to “stand where he pleases, or place his subject where he pleases, either on the floor or on the balcony at the south end of the studio, with the certainty of getting a full, steady light on both his canvas and on his model.”[4] This individuality is a testament to the personal nature of artistic studios. These studios catered to not only the promotion of creativity but also to individualized expression as well, facilitating the perfect experience for a specific artist.

Overall, the studio in Victorian England functioned as much more than just a place to create art. Hatton describes Boughton’s space as “a work-room, living-room, recreation-room, reception-room, is this sensibly furnished studio, in which Mr. Boughton gives form and color to his elaborate studies.”[5] Surrounded by a well-filled bookcase, writing desk, shelves full of writing and drawing materials, a bust of Dante, miscellaneous decorative objects, and repetition of the tapestry of the staircase, Boughton’s studio is a space of beauty, dedicated to the facilitation of the mind of the artist.