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Publications messums.com

BROWSE PUBLICATIONS

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Studio Publications is the publishing wing of Messum’s, an art dealership based on Cork Street, London. Messum’s have over forty years of experience dealing in British painting from c. 1880 to the present day and represent an impressive array of contemporary British artists. They are well known and respected for their pioneering work in the field of the plein-air painters of Newlyn and St Ives and for their exploration of British Impressionism. They collected, researched and promoted works by these artists at a time when many of the paintings concerned were coming onto the market for the first time. The process of collecting and cataloguing paintings for the series of exhibitions they held subsequently, called A Breath of Fresh Air, brought to light much fresh information on these neglected artists and led to their examination of ‘British Impressionism’ as a concept. Through having examined so many paintings that had come to the market for the first time, our archivist, Laura Wortley, was uniquely placed to write British Impressionism: A Garden of Bright Images, published by Studio Publications in 1988.

Similarly, Messum’s has represented several significant studio estates over the years – including those of Lucy Kemp-Welch, Wilfrid and Jane de Glehn, Peggy Somerville, Edward Piper, Lionel Bulmer and Margaret Green. This experience has meant that they have been able to offer expertise and insight into the work of these talented individuals. This they have done for over forty years through the beautifully illustrated and well-researched range of catalogues and monographs published by Studio Publications.

Studio Publications is named after The Studio, a building set in the grounds of the Messum family home at Lord’s Wood, Marlow, in Buckinghamshire. Built at the turn of the century by the artist Mary Sargant Florence, it became a retreat for members of the Bloomsbury Group including Mark Gertler and Dora Carrington. The Studio was initially used by Florence to plan the frescoes she painted for Oakham and Bourneville Schools. Later, her daughter Alix married James Strachey, brother of the writer and critic Lytton Strachey. On Lytton’s death in 1932 The Studio came to house his library and the first translations of Freud into English took place within its walls. In Michael Holroyd’s biography of Lytton Strachey, he describes his time at The Studio: “In the middle of the building were two great wooden tables piled high with boxes and files, and on the floor were littered innumerable trunks and suitcases – all full of letters, diaries and miscellaneous papers. Cobwebs and a pall of dust blanketed everything...”

This was very much the state in which David and Millie Messum found the house when they moved here in 1974, but in the intervening years The Studio has undergone a transformation. Cleaned, extended and restored, it now houses another library and collection of pictures, fulfilling David’s long-cherished intention that it should become the centrepiece of his interest in the art world. Messum’s is now a well-established and international name. With a gallery in Cork Street, London’s foremost contemporary art street, and The Studio, they offer a comprehensive inventory of British traditional, impressionist and contemporary art and sculpture. Lord’s Wood has a long history as the home of artists and writers and it is only fitting that The Studio should continue to form the focus of artistic enterprise.