Artists’ homes: a portfolio of drawings including the houses and studios of several eminent painters, sculptors and architects

PREFACE

THE title adopted for this Collection of Drawings tells readily its own tale, and the subjects illustrated require but little introduction.  To give here an historical resumé of the Art-Revival of which, in one sense, these buildings are a result seems also unnecessary, as its details are so well known; while the interest now shown on every hand in the proper erection of Artistic Dwellings, renders any apology for the publication of such a series of illustrations equally uncalled for.  The direct Art-Teachings of such writers as Sir Walter Scott, Thackeray, Ruskin, George Eliot, and Dickens, have done much to promote the homely influence of good taste, as with graphic fancy they have made familiar to the minds of many the simple and graceful characteristics of our Old English Homes.

The enthusiasm inspired by the so-called Gothic Revival, aided by the Ecclesiastical spirit of the Oxford Movement, led many to revel for a time in the poetry of Mediævalism, admirable in so many ways, but scarcely adapted to the every-day requirements of modern house-building. For Churches and for Monumental Buildings the Gothic Style, in its later phases, will probably never be surpassed; but for ordinary domestic architecture it has in experience been found difficult of treatment, and is certainly out of harmony with our present tastes and customs.  Several Country Mansions were built in this style, while a few smaller houses designed by leading Architects were also erected with considerable skill and success; but these can only be referred to as exceptions, so little was the spirit of Gothic really understood and artistically appreciated.  The speculating builder soon travestied the style, and rendered its forms ridiculous by ignorant efforts after novelty, producing miserably uninteresting houses which had nothing in common with good taste, and which reduced, as was inevitable, the possibilities of “Art at Home” to a minimum.  Not to Architects alone, but to Painters and to Sculptors, remained the task of embodying in a practical form the art- {ii} teachings and influences of those who had charmed by their writings; and the Public looked, with reason, to Artists to show them how best to profit by the lessons learned from the first workers in our modern Art-Revival.

Those Artists who have been enabled to build houses for their own occupation have had the opportunity of practically embodying special ideas of what “Art at Home” really means, as they have introduced, with more or less success, their own individualities into their dwellings.  Houses erected with these advantages, besides possessing an interest peculiarly their own, doubtless invite criticism; but it should be noted that those here illustrated were built for the most part with, comparatively speaking, modest means, the primary aim being to make them simply “Artists’ Homes,” where art as well as utility should find a place, and where practical work might most conveniently be performed.

The descriptive notes accompanying the drawings furnish particulars of the various peculiarities and details of the several houses illustrated.  Many of the drawings reproduced have been exhibited at the Royal Academy, and those given in Plates 16, 20, 26, and 28, were furnished by the Architects of the works they illustrate.  All have appeared in the “Building News,” and I have here to express my indebtedness for the kind permission which enables me to publish the collection in its present form.

                                     MAURICE B. ADAMS,

                                                A.R.I.B.A.

 BEDFORD PARK, CHISWICK, W.

December, 1883