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Mr Menpes on the river
There are several parallels between the work of Mortimer Menpes and Yoshio Markino. Markino brought a Japanese sensibility to the way he looked at London and Londoners, and an outsider’s eye for the...
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The Red Portfolio: more tales of old Brompton
It’s an archivist’s joke. The watercolour paintings by an unknown artist which were formerly kept in a red portfolio are now stored in a green archive box labelled…the Red Portfolio. The pictures,...
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Markino: bright lights, big city
I’ve been looking through illustrated books about London in the early years of the 20th century. Herbert Marshall’s Scenery of London and Mary Rose Barton’s Familiar London were both popular then....
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Markino in daylight: the sights of London
“A few years ago there appeared in the doorway of my room a young Japanese with a portfolio under his arm.He looked tired and pale, but as he smiled and bowed, with difficulty keeping his hands from...
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Griffen of Chelsea: fragments from an artist’s studio
It was back in 2012 that I used a picture of Lots Road Power Station by Alfred Francis Griffen in a post and promised you would see more of the artist in the future. I’m finally making good on that...
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Down Brompton Lane: more houses and stories
This is another leg in our journey through Old Brompton in the first half of the 19th century when Brompton Lane (now Old Brompton Road) was a main artery linking Fulham with the Kensington Turnpike....
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Shepherd in Kensington
Thomas Hosmer Shepherd doesn’t get a whole entry to himself in the Dictionary of National Biography. The details of his life are tagged on to the entry about his more eminent older brother George...
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Mr Menpes I presume
Mortimer Luddington Menpes is having a bit of a renaissance in his home country. This year there were two exhibitions devoted to his work one in Adelaide, the city of his birth and one in Melbourne. We...
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Shepherd in Chelsea
Thomas Hosmer Shepherd is one of the few artists in our collection who seemed equally happy in Chelsea and Kensington. It could be argued that his Chelsea watercolours have the edge for the variety of...
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Mr Griffen in his studio
Although some people liked my post about Francis Griffen back in July as it turned out there still seems to be little known about him. One reader made a comment about buying some greetings cards...
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Halloween story: the stranger
This week’s guest blogger is Marianne Collins, former Librarian at the J____ Street Library, now Head Archivist at the European Institute of Esoteric Studies, She presents an episode of library history...
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Sunny afternoon: a garden party in Holland Park
The taxman’s taken all my dough / and left me in my stately home /Lazing on a sunny afternoon. [Ray Davies] After last week’s look at a couple of the lost houses of Campden Hill I was reminded that I’d...
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Charles Conder’s bohemian days
Conder created an Arcadia peopled by dreamy, capricious figures who lead lives of luxurious idleness. They wander at dusk on the margins of tranquil, lapis lazuli seas, of lakes cerulean under the...
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Christmas days: a Markino bonus
Today’s short post is a small installment of pictures by an old friend of the blog, the Japanese artist who lived in London, Yoshio Markino. This one is simple called Autumn: The woman wrestling with...
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Christmas days: a preview for Estella
Only the second year of short posts for Christmas week and I’m already breaking my own rules. I had intended these posts to cover subjects where there wasn’t much to say or where we only had a few...
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What Estella saw
`In 1965 a woman died in an old house in Palace Green, a house she had lived in all her life. The house had once been the laundry of Kensington Palace but her parents had just been looking for a...
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In Estella’s house
In the previous post about Estella Canziani I showed you some of the pictures she painted or drew of the garden and the area around the house she lived in for her whole life. This week we’re...
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Markino returns: alone in this world
The recent Christmas post I did about Yoshio Markino, the Japanese artist who lived in Chelsea, reminded me that there were still some images I hadn’t used in a post, even though I wrote four about him...
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Louisa’s album, and other memories of an ancient house
Louisa Boscowen Goldsmid’s album is a threadbare scrapbook with a stained fabric cover. Inside it are a set of watercolours. Mrs Goldsmid was clearly an amateur but like other amateur artists featured...
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The Children’s Library murals: 1947 and afterwards
Today’s post requires another story about the archive life. Sometime in the late 1990s I found myself, with a couple of companions piloting a large trolley (with pneumatic tires, bought for...
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