ArtistsAT HOME

Celebrate their 50th anniversary

Artists At Home celebrate their 50th anniversary this year. Chiswick is blessed with many artists and it is a lovely thing to wander around over a weekend in the summer in and out of people’s homes and studios looking at a vast range of styles of work.

Within three square miles, between Brook Green and Strand On The Green, Uxbridge Road and the Thames, there is a surprising diversity of artists – painters, sculptors, ceramicists, photographers, print-makers, textile and fashion designers, jewellers and glassworkers.

The origins of Open Studios

The tradition of ‘Open Studios’ dates back to 17th Century Paris in the modern era where aristocratic French ladies presided over salons hosted in their huge drawing rooms.

In the 20th century the trend for sharing intellectual ideas in public forums was taken up by the Beat Poets, with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg at the fore, and Andy Warhol’s ‘happenings’ at The Factory in New York, which attracted artists, writers, musicians, and underground celebrities.

The post war era in Britain saw an ‘outbreak of talent’, as surrealist painter Paul Nash described the modernist painters he taught at the Royal College of Art, who coalesced as a group which became known as the Great Bardfield Artists, led by Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious.

They showed their work in the Essex village, attracting national and international attention and becoming the first example of an Open Studios in Britain.

Mary Fedden and Julian Trevelyan, who started Artists At Home in 1973

Artists At Home was started in west London in 1973 by Mary Fedden and Julian Trevelyan, who lived at Durham Wharf on the river at Chiswick Mall. On the 30th anniversary of Artists At Home Mary Fedden (then 88) wrote:

“We never realised we would be starting a local tradition. We had been asked to open by Hammersmith and Fulham Council, who enticed us with a £5 grant for tea and biscuits. Much to our surprise the day was a great success … and gradually more and more artists joined in the scheme”.

Mary Fedden OBE studied at the Slade School of Fine Arts, London from 1932 to 1936 and developed her own style of flower paintings and still lifes, reminiscent of artists such as Matisse and Braque.

Julian Trevelyan RA read English Literature at Cambridge and studied art in Paris, where he found himself working alongside artists such as Max Ernst, Oskar Kokoschka, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. He is considered to have made a major contribution to Surrealism in Britain and was an influential teacher at the Royal College of Art in the 1950s.

Trevelyan moved in the same circles as Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious. Both artists had lived in Hammersmith in the early 1930s. Trevelyan bought Durham Wharf in 1935. He also overlapped with Edward Bawden at the Royal College of Art. Bawden taught there between 1930 and 1963 (except for the years of World War II). Trevelyan taught there from 1955 to 1963. It is likely that he was aware of the Open Studios at Great Bardfield.

The tradition Mary Fedden and Julian Trevelyan started in west London is, as far as Artists At Home can tell, the oldest one of its kind still surviving. Cambridge Open Studios started the following year, in 1974, Brighton and Hove’s Artists Open Houses dates from 1981 and Oxfordshire Art Weeks has been going since 1982.

“Excited to be 50”

In the 21st century, the open studio focuses on the creative act of making and sharing, and Artists At Home has become a much more democratic organisation.

Last year the organisation had 83 members who took part at 66 locations across Chiswick, Hammersmith and Shepherd’s Bush and nine artists showed their work online only.

“We are excited to be 50” says Kathryn Davey, Chair of the Artists at Home Steering Group.