Kenwood House is a mansion at the top of Hampstead Heath, to the North of London. It is managed by English Heritage. At the moment there is an exhibition “Heiress: Sargent’s American Portraits”. Fantastic oil paintings, each woman with a history, echoes of the time of Henry James. Even more than the oil paintings, I enjoyed the charcoal portraits. See the character of the sitter! See the skill of the artist! Recommended: it’s on until 5th October 2025.
After that, we walked out into the late afternoon sun. Kenwood is a large building. It was too much to take on the house as a sketch project at that time of day. So I sketched a small building I’d spotted on the way in. This is “Kenwood Dairy”. I sketched just a part of it.
You can see the whole dairy in this oil painting of 1797 by Julius Caesar Ibbetson:1
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The pavilion I sketched is the one on the left. There were sadly no cattle, long-horned or otherwise, for me to put in my sketch.
The dairy was built in 1795, just a two years before Ibbotson’s oil painting. It was a working dairy, built to the designs of George Saunders, for Louisa, the wife of David Murray, 2nd Earl of Mansfield. It was fashionable for 18th century upper-class ladies to run dairies.
a dairymaid.. lived in the cottage and produced the fresh butter, cream, puddings and ice-cream enjoyed by the family and their guests.
English Heritage noticeboard near the dairy
These buildings are now used as a base for volunteers at Kenwood and Hampstead Heath.
Here is work in progress on the drawing:
It was quite tricky to follow the line of that roof. I managed to get the ink lines done, then it was time to go home. I added the colour later at my desk.
While I was drawing the dairy, John was drawing me, from a nearby bench.
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Julius_Caesar_Ibbetson_(1759-1817)_-_Three_Long-Horned_Cattle_at_Kenwood_-_88029298_-_Kenwood_House.jpg ↩︎
Jane Sketching 