33/2008

Paintings, Prints and Drawings

Front Room, Islington High Street, oil on canvas, in a plain gold painted frame, by Frank Stanton, signed and dated 1968.

Front Room, Islington High Street

painting
oil painting

33/2008

Frank Stanton (artist)

1968 (painted)

London (painted)

Twentieth century (1900-1999)

oil paint
canvas
wood
paint

painted

Oil painting on canvas, showing a representation of the artist's front room. The painting shows part of the room, with two windows with white folding shutters and window frames in the background. The walls of the room have been papered with a blue and green flock paper (for a sample of the wallpaper see 187/2010-1 and -2). The floorboards are placed horizontally across the canvas. To the left hand side of the painting is a frame with plants inside, which possibly represents a mirror or a window. Below the frame is a carved wooden cabinet with plants and a female bust on its surface. There is a bentwood and wicker chair with a blue cushion, and a red and blue woven rug on the floor. To the right of the picture, there is a coffee table with a wooden frame and a brown top, with a trailing plant on it. There is a blue vase containing a green plant on the floor. There are plants by the windows on each side.

Height: 71.5cm
Width: 91.5cm
Height: 79.5cm
Width: 99.5cm

images of living rooms
floor treatments
living room furniture
seating
storage
tables
house plants and cut flowers
ornaments
pictures
textiles
wall treatments
window treatments

Label text for the digital interactive located in the Twentieth Century Paintings Gallery (September 2015- June 2017):

‘Front Room, Islington High Street’
By Frank Stanton
Oil on canvas, dated1968

Frank Stanton and his partner Leigh Underhill opened an antique shop at 100 Islington High Street before the area became gentrified. They lived in a flat above the shop from 1959-1994 which they restored and decorated themselves.

Stanton’s paintings often depict plants and gardens. He says that this particular piece was originally meant to focus on houseplants, but as he was painting it, ‘the room took over.’

Caption for Exploring 20th Century London website:
This painting shows the artist's own home in Islington. Frank Stanton was a painter and theatre designer. He and his partner, Leigh Underhill, lived above the gallery they ran together, in Camden Passage, Islington. When they moved there in 1959 they were amongst the first 'artistic' settlers in the area, which has since become so popular with the affluent middle-classes. The carefully arranged interior features antiques and works of art from their collection.

Label text for the exhibition Home and Garden Part Four: Domestic Spaces in Paintings from 1960 to the present, Geffrye Museum (16 October 2007–4 February 2008):
Front Room, Islington High Street 1968
Frank Stanton (b.1931)
The painting records the home of the artist and theatre designer Frank Stanton and his partner Leigh Underhill which was above the Underhill Gallery, in Islington, London. Stanton and Underhill were pioneers in the wave of gentrification of Islington that took place from the late 1950s and were among the first to open a gallery there. Their gallery and home became a destination for those looking for suitable antiques and objets d’art with which to decorate their own homes.
Stanton has chosen to show the room empty of people, concentrating on the objects – a mid-twentieth-century glass topped coffee table combined with a mixture of antiques from varying origins and dates, including a small second-century Roman bust between the windows.
Stanton has a passion for plants and has explained that it is his need to explore and depict plants which drives him to paint. This work began as a study of the plants in his home but unusually, as the artist recalls, ‘the room and space took over’.
Oil on canvas
Collection of the artist

Museum of the Home

The artist agreed sign over copyright to the museum but retains moral right to be identified as the author of the work. See note on Transfer of Title form in History File.