Interiors by Design: Stairs

Given how common stairs are, they only rarely feature in paintings of interiors, and when they do, they’re usually glimpsed to the side or in the background rather than central to the picture. Stairs are normally constructed of a series of steps, alongside which are one or more rails for the hands to grasp, and to prevent folk from falling over the edge. Supporting that rail are vertical balusters, and together they form a balustrade or banisters.

William Frederick Yeames (1835–1918), Amy Robsart (1877), oil on canvas, 281.5 x 188.5 cm, The Tate Gallery (Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1877), London. © The Tate Gallery and Photographic Rights © Tate (2018), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/yeames-amy-robsart-n01609

I’ve recently shown William Frederick Yeames’ painting of the death of Amy Robsart (1877) in suspicious circumstances. On the morning of 8 September 1560, when staying at a country house near Oxford, she dismissed all her servants, and was later found dead, as shown here, with a broken neck at the foot of the stairs. In the gloom above her body is Anthony Forster, one of her husband’s men, leading his manservant down the stairs when they discover Amy’s body. Was he the cause?

A few artists have used stairs for portraits of children.

Briton Rivière (1840-1920), Sympathy (c 1878), oil on canvas, 45.1 x 37.5 cm, The Tate Gallery (Presented by Sir Henry Tate 1897), London. © The Tate Gallery and Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/riviere-sympathy-n01566

Briton Rivière’s Sympathy, from about 1878, shows a girl who has been sent to sit at the top of the stairs in disgrace, as her pet dog comforts her. The steps themselves are carpeted, and beside her is a heavy wooden balustrade. At the top of the flight is a closed door, its key dangling on a chain.

Olga Boznańska (1865–1940), Portrait of Two Children on the Stairs (Siblings, Children Sitting on the Stairs) (1898), oil on canvas, 102 × 75 cm, Muzeum Narodowe w Poznaniu, Poznań, Poland. Wikimedia Commons.

Olga Boznańska’s Portrait of Two Children on the Stairs (1898) shows siblings dressed in matching smocks, sat on a bare wooden staircase with a decorative wrought iron balustrade.

Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema (1852–1909), Girl on Stairs (date not known), oil on canvas, 25.4 × 17.78 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema’s undated Girl on Stairs has just descended this narrow winding staircase and is about to emerge from the doorway at its foot.

The most compact type of stairway short of a ladder is constructed in a spiral, with early examples dating back to around 400 BCE. These came to flourish in town houses of the Dutch Golden Age.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606–1669), Philosopher in Meditation (1632), oil on oak panel, 28 x 34 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Rembrandt’s Philosopher in Meditation from 1632 shows their sinuous curves seemingly defying gravity as they rise to the storey above.

Isaac Koedijck (c 1617–1668), Surgeon Tending a Peasant’s Foot (1649-50), oil on panel, 91 x 72 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Isaac Koedijck shows another early example in his Surgeon Tending a Peasant’s Foot (1649-50), although these seem even more impossible.

Over two centuries later, spiral stairs appeared in one of Edgar Degas’ early paintings of ballet dancers.

Edgar Degas (1834–1917), The Dance Class (c 1873), oil on canvas, 47.6 × 62.2 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Wikimedia Commons.

Degas’ Dance Class from about 1873 is an elaborately composed example of the works that were to make up half his total output. It shows well his meticulous draughtsmanship, and the strange effect of ballet dress in apparently dismembering the dancers, who become head, arms and legs with a white blur of chiffon between. This is most intense in the tangle of legs making their way down the spiral stairs at the upper left, and in the group of dancers just to the right of those. Like many modern spiral stairs, these are built of wedge-shaped steps known as winders joined in a central column, and probably cast in iron.

Louis Béroud (1852–1930), The Staircase of the Opéra Garnier (1877), media and dimensions not known, Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Grand buildings deserve grand stairs, as shown in Louis Béroud’s early painting of The Staircase of the Opéra Garnier (1877).

Finally, stairs are a recurrent feature of Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s series of prints of an Imaginary Prison.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), The Round Tower (Imaginary Prison) (c 1745-50), etching, 53 x 41 cm, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands. Wikimedia Commons.

The Round Tower is the first plate in the first edition, with its fearsome Gothic flights of stairs.