The Secret Lives of Artists
Frank Auerbach, 1963 (b/w photo) by Jorge Lewinski (1921-2008) Private Collection/ © The Lewinski Archive at Chatsworth The Lewinski photo archive
Jorge Lewinski, a Polish refugee who served in the RAF, is a foremost photographer of artists in their studios.
The Lewinski photo archive contains b/w photographs of over 300 artists, from Britain and abroad, working and exhibiting in Britain from the 1960s to the mid 1990s. It was purchased in 2002 by the Earl of Burlington, the Duke of Devonshire's son and is held at Chatsworth.
Unlike the snap-shot aesthetic of many contemporary portraits, Lewinski has said that he wished to 'achieve a deeper kind of portrait - portraits which not only describe a person but give the viewer an insight into the imaginative world of each sitter.'
Frederic Leighton (b/w photo) by Joseph Parkin Mayall (1839-1906) © Trustees of the Watts Gallery, Compton, Surrey, UK The Rob Dickins Collection – Victorian artists
In the nineteenth-century public curiosity with celebrities extended to their homes and lifestyles. Artists encouraged this interest through building grand studio houses.
Notable photographs in the artists at home series depict G.F. Watts and Frederic Leighton.
After purchasing an archive collected over many years by Jeremy Maas, the London art dealer, one of the Watts Gallery’s trustees, Rob Dickins CBE added his own collection and generously donated it to the Watts Gallery in 2007. The Rob Dickins collection includes images of all the most promient politicians, influential thinkers, writers, artists and musicians of the age including Ruskin, Darwin, Dickens and the Pre-Raphaelites.
The Larousee archive, Paris
Around 1887, a photographer who used the pseudonym Dornac started doing the rounds of Paris society, explaining to his sitters that he planned to build up a photographic survey of the great and the good.
Not much is known of Paul Francois Arnold Cardon (1859-1941) but his series of photographic portraits are interesting in the way they bring to life the working practices of artists from the late 19th and early 20th century including Monet, Rodin and Rousseau.
Many more portraits of artists are available for licensing through other collections in the Bridgeman archive.
See all images of artists in their studios.
