‘Home’ can be a nebulous concept, though one with endless romantic appeal. It is particularly the case, perhaps, for someone who has what could be termed an insecure attachment to her house. It’s coming up for five years since we moved to the East Sussex coast, in which time we’ve wallpapered and painted and arranged books and paintings and other treasure, and yet still I have not discovered the straightforward love that I had for our old flat in London. Occasionally I count the years ‘til the children finish school, when we could sell up. But I’ve also considered how I might change the connection, for my husband’s sake as much as my own. It’s driven me in the direction of home-themed literature, from Rebecca to Gone with the Wind – and to art. At House & Garden, we often recommend commissioning an interior portrait as a means of preserving a memory of a house you can’t, for whatever reason, hold on to, or to mark an occasion or anniversary – and there is no doubting the charm. Could a painting, I wonder, change my relationship with where I live?
An interior portrait - or room portrait - is distinguished from a still life in scope, and a ‘conversation piece’ by (usually) the lack of people. In art historical terms, the genre has a lengthy history, and a spectrum of reason that is as broad as the works’ appeal. Rewind to the 17th century, and the artists of the Dutch Golden Age met the growing middle class’s desire for art that reflected their own lives with exquisite paintings that capture a sense of light and space while celebrating the beauty and luxury of the furnishings. Towards the end of the same century, the Zimmerbild rose to prominence in Germany, and spread across Europe – a detailed representation of an often-grand living space, generally rendered in watercolour, it served to accurately document decoration. For Matisse, in the early 20th century, his pictures of rooms were a means of exploring the dialogue between the inside and the outside, a vehicle for experimentation - and, perhaps, a paean to the beauty to be found in normality in otherwise tumultuous times. Almost concurrently, the Camden Town Group artists painted interiors because they saw in them an authenticity; they sought out the everyday and the commonplace, and the loveliness that can exist there.
There’s merit to each instance – and, excitingly, a wealth of styles being practiced today. However, my home is less on the grand side, and, thanks to my collector-hoarder tendencies, spaciousness would be tricky to imply. With this, I hold in my mind’s eye a painting by Mike Silva that I saw at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, of a shower curtain drawn across a bath, bathed in light. I’m with Sickert et al: it is the prosaic that seduces me. Happily, I’m introduced to Haidee-Jo Summers, Vice President of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, who explains that while she has painted castles and stately homes, she also finds beauty in ‘the ordinary, mundane and intimate.’ Among the interior portraits in her portfolio is a view of a rumpled bed, and a kitchen that contains an un-skirted washing machine beneath the sink. Her brush marks and her skilled rendering of light have made covetable rooms of both.
Usually, Haidee-Jo explains, she would travel in person to view an interior. However, she’s kindly fitting me in between other commissions, and it is via Facetime that we walk around the house together, looking at possible angles. ‘A client might have a favourite room, or might not – and a painting can be a balance between what a client wants, and what might be a great view,’ she explains. ‘I look for the light coming in, the colours outside a window, the light on surfaces, and I like a room that has lots of shapes in it, that tells the story of whoever lives there.’ I’m interested in having a portrait made of a room that is all of ours – which rules out bedrooms – and Haidee-Jo nominates three possibilities: the view through the sitting room, my bathroom (which doesn’t quite adhere to my original idea), and the kitchen. I’m not a cook – the microwave is my favourite bit of culinary kit – but the kitchen is the first room I encounter every day, and it’s where the children come together after school to make illicit and elaborate snacks. I perform a cursory clean and tidy, take a variety of photographs including close-ups, send them to Haidee-Jo, and wait.
As time would have it, my commission coincides with the Royal Institute of Oil Painters Annual Exhibition, held at the Mall Galleries, SW1, which, this year, has a section themed around ‘Home’. Haidee-Jo asks if my painting might be able to be exhibited - so it was there, earlier this week, that I first encountered it. There are more than 300 paintings currently hanging, by both institute members and other artists who have been invited to show with them. Interiors abound in a variety of guises: bright yellow marigolds draped over a sink, a poster of John Singer Sargent’s Madame X tacked to the back of a white-painted door, lamps lit in a cosy sitting room, a dresser brimming with china. If you too were thinking of commissioning a room portrait, it’s the ideal research opportunity, but every painting is appealing in itself – and for sale (in person and online). Home, I realise, can be recognised in the universality of how we live, in common ownership of washing up brushes, cheese graters, blue-and-white china, barley-twist candlesticks - and, as Haidee-Jo identifies, ‘in the feelings of light, and warmth.’
And then, I find it. It’s not a facsimile copy, but it’s my kitchen – with the Milola ‘Costumes’ wallpaper on the back wall, the tiles that I arranged according to a Sean Scully abstract, the Gavin Houghton plate of David Hockney I gave my husband one Christmas, and the Iznik baubles we’ve been collecting with the help of Susan Deliss. There’s a Russian print we’ve had for decades, a votive cross bought in the Westminster Cathedral shop, and beyond the garden door a tumble of nasturtiums planted as an ode to Gustave Caillebotte. There’s also, on the pale pink concrete countertops cast by my husband, a half-drunk pot of coffee, while a damp tea towel hangs on the oven door, and sniffing around the floor is Next Door’s Cat, who bounces in every morning as the children are having breakfast, hoping for dropped morsels and split milk.
All glows in a particular light – for Haidee-Jo has merged her impression from the video call with the bald candour of my photographs. Gazing at it, transfixed, I see beyond the picture plane, to the children’s paintbrushes in the sink, a coffee cup waiting to be washed up - and us. And I realise that what makes an interiors portrait so alluring is that it is more than it seems, being a portrait of those who live there as well as the room, transmitted through a combination of the objects they choose to live with and the truth of how they live, and all made more pleasing by the veneer of appreciable beauty. I love it, as do my husband and children (in fact, it might be the most unanimously liked piece of art ever to enter our house - when it does, for now it’s still at the Mall Galleries). Haidee-Jo has captured a moment of our lives - a moment when we are, unequivocally, happy. And that suddenly seems much more important than my somewhat self-indulgent issues of attachment - and, as such, precious to have recorded.
The Royal Institute of Oil Painters Annual Exhibition is at the Mall Galleries, SW1, until December 13, and also available to view and buy from online.
