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| House in Amberley Grove, Sydenham Barbara Jones, 1942 The Victoria & Albert Museum |
This watercolor from 1942 is the work of Barbara Jones who was one of the many artists employed during the Second World War as part of Queen Mary’s “Recording Britain” incentive which was meant to keep native artists working during the war.
Jones shows us a view of a home in Amberley Grove in Sydenham, England—a gorgeous example of the sort of eccentric, dreamy homes built in England during the Nineteenth Century during a curious and spectacular period wherein a variety of historic architectural styles were revived and all used at once. This delightfully odd home combined medieval and Gothic visual motifs straight out of fairytales with wholly Victorian design ideals. It was built in 1867 by a now unknown astronomer.
The “Recording Britain” program was founded in 1940 by the Committee for the Employment of Artists in Wartime (a division of the Ministry of Labour and National Service). Lasting through 1943, the program kept artists employed and busy, creating lasting artistic impressions of Britain during the war. This not only served to give us a record of those poor buildings a nd landscapes that would inevitably be lost during the war, but also gives us a look into the creative mindset of the period.
1 comment:
I live in Sydenham and am interested in local history and the description for this painting seems to be incorrect. There were 7 ordinary 3 storey houses built on Amberley Grove, then Amberley Road, Sydenham but nothing like this.
There was an astronomer who did have a house built in the area in 1865 but on a different road and it looked nothing like this building.
If such a building as this had been built anywhere in Sydenham and had survived until at least 1942 I am sure there would have been other evidence and images of it.
It's a complete mystery and I can only assume that either the artist herself or someone working on the Recording Britain project made an error somehow.
Maybe somewhere there is an image of Lethen Grange, the house built for the astronomer, George Frederick Chambers, bearing the correct description for the building in this painting!
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