Modernism at the Mall
Celia Scott
Location Plan of Mall Studios © Tom de Gay
This generously illustrated display at the Isokon Gallery in London’s Hampstead focusses on the nearby Mall Studios and describes their architecture, their change in use over 150 years, their social history, from the first artist occupants to the present day, and how, during the late 1930s, they became the epicentre of Modernism in Britain.
From the mid-nineteenth century, successful artists gravitated to studio houses in prosperous Chelsea and Kensington. The less affluent artists tended to work in left-over industrial spaces in the more insalubrious parts of town. In the 1860s, when Hampstead became part of the suburban railway system and joined up with the city, some less-established artists began to move to Belsize Park, down-hill from Hampstead village, where earlier generations of artists including Constable, had lived and worked.
Plan and section of 3 Mall Studios © Celia Scott
Originally known as the Mall, the studios, built in 1872, were designed to a novel design, by avant-garde architect Thomas Batterbury, who specialised in studios and studio houses, to be leased to working artists. Several of the original artists lived in the large houses on Parkhill Road, which had gates opening onto the Mall at the bottom of their gardens. An unassuming path leads through a gate from Tasker Road to the studios, seven in a row and one across the end. At first glance, they appear like stables, but passing through a small lobby one enters a double height space with wooden trusses, lit by a large east-facing skylight; facing one, a huge window looking onto a garden with trees beyond, in what was originally part of a Dominican Priory. A notice in The Architect of 17th August 1872 describes them as having “. . . small waiting rooms and costume rooms, lobby and other necessary conveniences.” as well as a balcony for storing paintings and a further two skylights, several of which have since become dormers.
Aerial view showing the Mall Studios, 1961 © Aerofilms Ltd
The original eight artist occupants were younger genre-scene painters and portraitists. Being less established, their work too big to be shown at the Royal Academy, they were known as ‘Outsider Artists’, and the studios were designed for them to both make and display work. From 1885 onwards, the waiting rooms were converted to kitchens, balconies became bedrooms, and bathrooms installed, as the studios began to become spaces for living and working, though they continued to be occupied by working artists until the 1980s.
The Artist’s Studio, 6 Mall Studios, Cecil Stephenson, 1919 © The Artist’s Estate
In 1928, Barbara Hepworth moved into number seven with her first husband, the sculptor John Skeaping. On the arrival of their son Paul, Skeaping constructed an extension for Hepworth in which to sculpt. In 1932, after their separation, Ben Nicholson moved in, but soon started working in another studio backing onto the Mall. Henry Moore, a former contemporary of Hepworth’s at Leeds School of Art, was already installed part-time at 11A Parkhill Road and later, when the Hepworth-Nicholsons decamped to Cornwall in 1939, to stay with their friend and former Belsize Park neighbour Adrian Stokes, he moved into their studio.
In 1933, Herbert Read came to live at number three with his new partner Margaret Ludovich and her friend, who acted as cook and driver. Read became the champion of modern revolutionary art, especially the geometric abstraction of Hepworth and Nicholson as well as the surrealism of Moore. His only novel, The Green Child (1937), was written in the summer house which he had constructed in the garden. The Reads hosted many gatherings of artists, writers and other intellectuals from Europe. Other gatherings took place at the Hepworth-Nicholson’s studio as well at number six, where the artist Cecil Stephenson, who had also studied at Leeds School of Art, had been living since 1919. It was in his studio that in 1938 Alexander Calder gave a performance of his wire ‘Circus’ to an audience sitting on the floor and with mugs of beer.
Hepworth and Nicholson, 7 Mall Studios, c. 1932, photo © Tate
Around 1932, Hepworth and Nicholson painted their studio white, treating the architecture itself as abstract form. They then used it for staging their work, arranging it in different juxtapositions in the studio, and had it photographed by Paul Laib, for inclusion in the publication of Unit One (1934) with text by Herbert Read.
Meanwhile, in the same year, just a stone’s throw away, the Isokon flats were built, designed by Wells Coates for the needs of modern living. This soon became a haven for emigrés escaping the Nazis and, in turn, ex-Bauhäuslers began to arrive: Walter Gropius, given a welcome party by the Reads in their studio in 1934, László Moholy-Nagy and Marcel Breuer the following year. A year later, Naum Gabo came to live in Lawn Road. The work of these artists, along with that of others, was included in Circle (1937) edited by Leslie Martin, Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo at number three, and designed by Barbara Hepworth with Sadie Speight. Some residents of Mall Studios would dine at the eclectic Isokon dining club which from 1937 took place in the Isobar, where many parties were hosted.
A year later, Mondrian took a room at 60 Parkhill Road, overlooking Nicholson’s studio, to be near him and Hepworth. Some of the artist emigrés had already left England and two years later Mondrian himself departed for New York. By 1940, as the war intensified, the group of artists working in the Mall Studios described by Herbert Read as ‘a nest of gentle artists’ had dispersed.
Herbert Read, 3 Mall Studios, 1934 © National Portrait Gallery, photo © Howard Coster
These soundly built studios have an afterlife: from 1956 they were sold to the occupants and since the 1980’s most have been primarily used as living and home-working spaces for various professionals, except for two which have outbuildings, one for a composer, one for an artist.
The exhibition has been designed by Tom de Gay and curated by Celia Scott, an architect and artist, and resident of number three, which her late husband Robert Maxwell (1922-2020), architect and critic, bought in 1963. Over the years Maxwell himself hosted many gatherings of architects, including James Stirling, writers, including Colin Rowe and Reyner Banham, and artists, including Eduardo Paolozzi, at number three, where Scott now lives and works.
7 Mall Studios, From ‘Unit One: The Modern Movement in English Architecture, Painting and Sculpture’, 1934. The De Lazlo Collection of Paul Laib Negatives, © Courtauld Institute of Art.
Link: https://isokongallery.org/blogs/exhibitions/2023-modernism-at-the-mall
Lawn Road,
London NW3 2XD
4th March – 29th October 2023
Open every weekend 11:00 am – 4:00 pm.
Free entry, no booking required
Further Reading
Cohn L. ed. 1986. Belsize Park, A Living Suburb, London, Belsize Park Conservation Area
Campbell L. 2019. Studio Lives, Architect, Art and Artist in 20th-Century Britain, London, Lund Humphries.
Curtis P and Wilkinson G. 1994. Barbara Hepworth, A Retrospective, London, Tate Gallery Publications.
Curtis P. and Wilkinson G. 1994. Barbara Hepworth, A Retrospective, London, Tate Gallery Publications.
Darwent C. 2012. Mondrian in London, How British Art nearly became Modern, London: Double-Barrelled Books.
Gardiner M. 1982. Barbara Hepworth, A Memoir, Salamander Press.
Green B. Wright B. ed. 2012. Mondrian Nicholson in Parallel, London, Courtauld Gallery in association with Paul Holberton Publishing.
Guthrie S. 1997. John Cecil Stephenson, Grange-over-Sands, Cartmel Press.
Lewison J. 1993. Ben Nicholson, London, Tate Gallery.
Read H. 1962, “Nest of Gentle Artists”, Apollo, September.
Walkley G. 1994. Artist’s Houses in London 1764-1914, Aldershot, Scolar Press.
Celia Scott
Celia Scott (b. 1947) is an architect, sculptor and painter based in London. She studied Fine Art at Bath Academy of Art before gaining her diploma in Architecture at the Bartlett, University College London and subsequently took an MA in Fine Art at City and Guilds of London Art School. Scott’s portrait subjects include Sir David Attenborough, Sir Harrison Birtwistle and Sir James Stirling. Her work has been exhibited widely and is held in public and private collections in the U.K. (including the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the British Library) and in private collections in Europe and the U.S.A.