Art history

Farrow & Ball’s Calke Green covers the walls of the first floor sitting room. “I always think paintings work much better on a darker background,” Frank says. “They lose part of their luminosity when they are hung against a very light or white wall.” The large floral painting on the far wall by Jan Brueghel the Younger was Frank’s first artwork.

Walls lined with paintings by the great Dutch Masters, assemblages of plaster casts and shelves of treasured porcelain may give the impression of a museum, but this London home, located on a picturesque garden square, is undeniably lived in and loved. “A lot of my friends think this house is a ‘folie de grandeur’, but I use every single part of it,” says Frank Hollmeyer, a headhunter in asset management, who has brought personality and charm back to this Georgian townhouse.

Looking to move from his previous three-storey home in Islington, Frank first discovered the townhouse after being persuaded to search in South London by a friend. The property was not for sale, but one Sunday evening a moment of pure serendipity occurred. “I was walking past, and a young man ran out of the house and put a ‘for sale’ sign up,” he recalls. It turned out to be the owners’ son who aspired to be an estate agent, so his parents had given him the chance to sell their house. Upon viewing it, Frank saw the potential and, swayed by the room for entertaining and generous wall space for his art collection, acted quickly. “I dealt directly with the family. Monday I called them, Tuesday I saw the house, Wednesday I put in the offer.”

Built in 1792, the townhouses on the square were originally developed to provide homes for doctors working in the nearby Bethlem Royal Hospital, now the Imperial War Museum. But by the 19th century the properties had become overcrowded and rundown, leading to a compulsive purchase order by the council in the 1930s. “They knocked two houses together, so every floor became an apartment,” explains Frank. “They took out lots of period features, there was carpet everywhere and all the walls had woodchip wallpaper. It was a modern house.” The council eventually deemed the buildings too expensive to maintain and they were converted back into single family dwellings and sold to private owners.

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