Chelsea art club
On 4 April 1845 the Lords of the Privy Council for Trade received a letter from a group of students attending the Government School of Design at Somerset House. It read: ‘My Lords, We, the undersigned, are compelled to perform a painful duty to ourselves and the School, by laying before your Honourable Board complaints relative to the conduct of the Director… We must submit that he is utterly incompetent as an Artist and Teacher to fill the station he holds.’
Set up in 1837, the School’s chief purpose was to turn out designers for the ‘taste’ industries, such as lace and silk making. However, as this scrupulously polite but disgruntled missive revealed, dissent was rife at Somerset House; a rift existed between traditionalists and those students keen to pursue a career in fine arts, not manufacturing. The upshot was the expulsion of the ‘rebels’ and in 1845 they established the rival institution that would become Heatherley’s School of Fine Art. James Mathews Leigh was the first Principal and, significantly, he had studied in France, where time-honoured ‘house-style’ teaching was being abandoned in favour of allowing students to evolve their own methods of painting. An ex-student, Thomas Heatherley, became Principal when Leigh died in 1860 and he ran the school for the next 27 years; his name has stuck through its later incarnations.
London’s oldest independent art school (after the Royal Academy schools) is still thriving and in June it moved into a new purpose-built home near Chelsea Harbour. Today, Heatherley’s stands out from the contemporary art crowd in that its focus remains firmly on working from the figure and teaching portraiture, figurative painting and sculpture, disciplines that are often sidelined at other schools. Students can choose from full-time two-year Diplomas and a wide range of non-selective part time, evening and holiday courses; most interestingly, just as it has done since its inception, the school also runs an Open Studio based on the French atelier system that allows artists the flexibility to work from a model.
Heatherley’s has enjoyed a remarkably colourful history: it was the first art school to admit women on an equal footing to men and distinguished former pupils include Rossetti, Millais, Sickert, Evelyn Waugh, Henry Moore and Posy Simmonds; Quentin Crisp was a popular life model; the school has been forced to emergency relocate on several occasions and, most bizarrely, it was saved in 1974 when the charismatic current Principal, John Walton, bought the name for 30 shillings from Pitman & Sons Ltd.
John was – and is – an eminent portrait painter who was teaching at the school, which was then based in Warwick Square, Pimlico. ‘Pitmans acquired Heatherleys in 1956 when it bought the Artist’s Magazine – it was part of the package,’ he recalls. ‘The company had no interest in the school and it soon got a terrible reputation.’ In 1969 Pitmans decided to close it down; however, to the directors’ chagrin, they found that the lease restricted the use of the premises to art school activities. ‘So, in September 1970, Pitmans reconstituted Heatherley’s as a one-studio ‘window dressing’ operation,’ smiles John, who had discovered this lease contravention. ‘It was a cover for using the rest of the studios as office premises. When I got involved there were half-a-dozen students – it was an absolute farce!’
Undeterred, John won Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) support for the school’s re-development, with tutors nominated by him and employed by the Authority. Pitmans acquiesced because it reduced costs and soon student numbers were rising again, albeit still confined to one studio and a cellar. In April 1974, Pitmans announced its intention to sell the lease back to the landlord; John purchased the Heatherley’s name for 30 shillings (‘I played my hand – it was blackmail really’), and he negotiated a licence to occupy Warwick Square until the landlord could sell the premises. When this happened, classes moved to the Black Bull in Fulham Road and the College of St Mark and St John in Chelsea and subsequently to Ashburnham Community School.
With the recent opening of the spacious Lots Road building, Heatherley’s precarious, peripatetic existence is now over. John is very excited about the school’s new home: ‘We liaised with the architects throughout the design process, harassing and annoying them,’ he laughs. ‘It’s a fine building. We’ve got seven superb working studios (each can accommodate 14 students) and a lecture theatre. We’ve had lots of students in already for summer courses and we’ve held two magnificent exhibitions.’
In the future John has ambitious plans to expand Heatherley’s teaching programme by adding courses in the ‘historic specialisms’ of anatomy and perspective. One key factor that certainly won’t change, however, is the ethos of working with the human form. ‘Looked at purely in commercial terms, we’re fulfilling a gap in the market,’ he says. ‘There’s a demand for figurative art and other art schools simply aren’t meeting it.’
At 82 John is still very involved in the daily activity at Heatherley’s. ‘I enjoy it – if my body were as fit as my brain, I’d be 21! I make a nuisance of myself, going into classes, with apologies to the tutor of course, and sticking my nose in and talking to the students.’ Since the art school wouldn’t exist without his determination and vision, I doubt anyone would begrudge him that privilege!
For information call 020 7351 4190 or visit www.heatherleys.org