Visit to Leighton House

Needlemakers always enjoy some fellowship and the Functions Committee organised a guided tour of Frederic Leighton's Holland Park House in November.

Angela, our excellent guide, talked us through  the evolution of the house. She explained that the initial house was relatively modest, consisting of a dining room, drawing room, breakfast room and staircase on the ground floor. Whilst Upstairs there were just two rooms: Leighton’s great painting studio and his surprisingly modest bedroom.

Within three years of being completed, Leighton undertook the first of a series of extensions and alterations. To increase the size of the studio on the first floor, the east wall was taken down and the house extended by 5 metres. The extension incorporated a new canvas store accessed via a trapdoor in the floor of the studio and gave the models a side entrance to the studio via the service staircase.

Leighton traveled extensively to Turkey Egypt and Syria where he collected textiles, ceramics and other objects. In 1877, he began the construction of the Arab Hall to display his extensive collections. The Arab Hall became his principal entertaing area and the parties were so raucous that guests are known to have toppled into the indoor pond much to the surprise of the resident goldfish.

The last addition to the house was the Silk Room designed as a picture gallery to house Leighton’s expanding collection of paintings by his contemporaries. The walls were lined with green silk and the artists represented included many of the leading painters of the day: John Everett Millais, John Singer Sargent,  and George Watts as well as his own compositions.

Leighton House is to host an exhibition of Leighton's landscape paintings inspired by his travels, whilst one of his best known works "Flaming June" is currently on loan from Puerto Rico in the Royal Academy and can be viewed without charge until 12 January.  We encourage you to visit.