Interiors by Design: The artist’s studio

In the seventeenth century, Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici started collecting self-portraits of painters. This collection has grown to include over two thousand paintings, sculptures and drawings, and is now part of the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy. During the eighteenth century, as painting interiors was developing as a genre, some artists took to painting not just themselves, but their studio as well. Here’s a selection of those.

John Ferguson Weir (1841-1926), An Artist’s Studio (1864), oil on canvas, 64.8 x 77.5 cm, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA. Courtesy of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, via Wikimedia Commons.

The American artist John Ferguson Weir’s first major painting was An Artist’s Studio from 1864, in which the artist in question is his father, not himself. It has the air of meticulous veracity, and was exhibited, sold, and brought the painter’s election as an associate of the National Academy.

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), The Stove in the Studio (c 1865), oil on canvas, 41 x 30 cm, National Gallery, London. Wikimedia Commons.

Paul Cézanne’s roughly painted Stove in the Studio from about 1865 includes the two most important items, the stove to provide heat, and a canvas to provide a painting surface.

Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870), Bazille’s Studio (The Studio on the Rue La Condamine) (1869-70), oil on canvas, 98 x 128.5 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Frédéric Bazille’s broad view of his Studio on the Rue La Condamine, from 1869-70, reveals the wide open space that he shared with Renoir at the time. The artist stands at the centre, next to his easel with his View of the Village in progress. Manet painted himself standing in front of Bazille, with a hat and beard.

In 1878, the American artist William Merritt Chase rented the main gallery in the Tenth Street Studio Building at 51 West Tenth Street, Greenwich Village, New York City. For the next seventeen years this was to be his place of work, public image, extended persona, private stage, personal gallery, and the motif for at least a dozen of his paintings.

The building, designed by Richard Morris Hunt, had been completed in 1857, was demolished in 1956, and was one of the first in America to be designed specifically for visual artists. Notable previous occupants include Winslow Homer, Frederic Church, and Albert Bierstadt. When Chase moved in, the building was owned by John Taylor Johnston, who later became the first president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), Studio Interior (c 1879), oil on canvas, 55.9 x 35.6 cm, Private collection. The Athenaeum.

Painted just the year after he moved in, Chase’s Studio Interior (c 1879) is one of his few paintings of studios lacking figures, but shows off his ornately carved wooden chest, a copy of an Old Master, and some of his more exotic props. Chase was quick to recognise the promotional value of his studio: as it grew steadily more exotic, and more populated with his own work, he encouraged the press to write about it, to promote his image as a successful artist.

William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), The Tenth Street Studio (1880), oil on canvas, 92.1 x 122.6 cm, Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO. Wikimedia Commons.

His Tenth Street Studio from 1880 shows one of his portraiture clients, engaged in discussion with a painter who could be Chase, but recedes into the shadows. At the woman’s feet is an elegant dog, and she is surrounded by intriguing and tasteful objects.

William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), Studio Interior (c 1882), oil on canvas, 71.3 x 101.9 cm, Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

In his Studio Interior (c 1882), another fashionably dressed young woman is glancing through a huge bound collation of Chase’s work, sat by an even grander carved wooden sideboard, decorated with almost outlandish objects including a model ship, a lute, and sundry objets d’art.

William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), A Corner of My Studio (c 1895), oil on canvas, 61.3 x 91.4 cm, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco – de Young, San Francisco, CA. The Athenaeum.

A Corner of My Studio (c 1895) is a more formal and finished record of Chase’s studio in its final year. Through the curtained doorway, we see in the distance one of Chase’s students painting diligently.

William McGregor Paxton (1869–1941), In the Studio (1905), oil on canvas, 76.2 x 63.5 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

William McGregor Paxton’s open fire In the Studio (1905) is appropriately classy, glowing in the background. He deliberately defocussed it in what he termed Vermeer’s “binocular vision”. His model is in crisp focus, and as the eye wonders further away from her as the optical centre of the painting, edges and details become progressively more blurred.

Olga Boznańska (1865–1940), Interior of the Artist’s Studio in Krakow (1906), oil on cardboard, 50.5 × 73 cm, Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie, Kraków, Poland. Wikimedia Commons.

Olga Boznańska, the Polish Impressionist, painted this uncomplicated Interior of the artist’s studio in Krakow in 1906.

Carl Larsson (1853–1919), Self-Portrait (In the new studio) (1912), watercolour on paper, 54.3 x 75 cm, Malmö konstmuseum, Malmö, Sweden. Wikimedia Commons.

When Carl Larsson painted his Self-Portrait in his new studio in 1912, he sits back with the ease of a successful artist in his late fities. Around him are the creature comforts furnished by that success, and designed by his wife. There are some gentle touches of eccentricity, like the sword passing through the huge book open in front of him, and the statue whose feet are propping the book up.