Leighton House, 12 Holland Park Road, London W14 A property of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
An ambitious redevelopment project has augmented the celebrated interiors of this magnificent studio house. John Goodall reveals how it came into being
IN October 2022, the museum and former home of the celebrated Victorian artist Frederic, Lord Leighton reopened after an award-winning redevelopment. This three-year project has focused on the operation and infrastructure of the building, but it has also aimed to reinstate further the principal historic interiors of the house. As a consequence, the visitor today can appreciate more fully than ever the evolution of this property during the lifetime of its creator.
The story of Leighton House properly begins in Italy, with the introduction of the artist and sculptor George Frederick Watts to the British Minister Plenipotentiary to Tuscany and his wife, Lord and Lady Holland, in 1843. Lord Holland was then the prospective heir of Holland House and its estate on the outskirts of London. The Hollands invited Watts to stay with them in Florence until he could find lodgings in the city, but he immediately became a close friend and remained with them as a permanent lodger for nearly four years.
Meanwhile, the young Frederic Leighton, was likewise in Europe. He had been born in Scarborough in 1830, before his family moved to London and then, from 1840, spent long periods abroad. Leighton showed an early enthusiasm for drawing and, as the family moved, he studied in sequence in Germany at the Academy of Art in Berlin, Stellwag’s Academy at Frankfurt am Main, the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, Italy, and finally, from the age of 16, in Germany again at the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt.
This astonishing education accounts for his remarkable facility for languages. He was also an enthusiastic musician.
By the autumn of 1850, Watts was back in England with new friends, the Prinseps. Henry Thoby Prinsep had retired in 1843 as an administrator in India and his wife, Sara, was one of seven Pattle sisters noted for their beauty and accomplishments. They included the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and—the original point of introduction to Watts—Virginia, Countess Somers. Prinsep’s election to the Court of Directors of the East India Company demanded that he spend more time in the capital and Watts, as a friend of the Hollands, showed the Prinseps an empty, rambling dower house—Little Holland House—on their London estate.
The Prinseps were clearly pleased with the house in its unspoilt setting and, on December 25, 1850, signed a 21-year lease. Once again, Watts became a resident. By Sara Prinsep’s account: ‘He came to stay three days, he stayed thirty years.’ Her
